HONOLULU — Former Hawaii legislator Suzanne Chun Oakland vividly recalls a chilling event from her high school years in 1977.
On a typical morning at Honolulu’s McKinley High School, 15-year-old Chun Oakland gathered with her friends before class when she received the shocking news that a fellow student, Dawn Momohara, had been found dead on the second floor of the school.
“We got word of it quickly; it was just eerie,” Chun Oakland recounted. Although she did not know the victim personally, the unsolved case has haunted her and countless others connected to McKinley High for nearly fifty years. Recent advancements in DNA testing have led to a breakthrough in the case, resulting in the arrest of a 66-year-old man, Gideon Castro, who resides in a nursing home in Utah.
Castro, a former student of McKinley, is scheduled to appear in court in Salt Lake County. He remains in custody with a bond set at $250,000, according to officials. Attempts to reach Castro’s attorney for comment were unsuccessful.
According to law enforcement, Momohara’s death was a tragic case of sexual assault and strangulation. “I felt really sad when I heard the news of the arrest,” Chun Oakland shared. “For our student body, naturally, there was that fear. What if he is capable of harming another person?”
On March 21, 1977, shortly after 7:30 AM, Honolulu police discovered Momohara’s body lying face up, partially unclothed, with an orange cloth tightly wrapped around her neck.
For Grant Okamura, who served as a 28-year-old band teacher at McKinley during that time, the memories of that specific morning remain vivid, even if the details have faded. He remembers the moment when one of his flute players, who was also Momohara’s sister, arrived at school oblivious to the traumatic news. When summoned to the office, she walked into the band room completely inconsolable.
“Other students were trying to comfort her, but I couldn’t hold band class. How could we?” recalled Okamura. “She just sat there sobbing.” The sister did not return to school for several weeks following the incident.
The passage of time has clouded his memory of the sister’s name, and efforts to locate any relatives of Momohara have been unsuccessful. Okamura noted that he met Momohara a few times when she would wait in the band room for her sister to finish class.
On the day before Momohara’s tragic death, she received a phone call from an unidentified male and had told her mother she was heading to a nearby shopping center with friends. That would be the last time her mother would see her, as recounted by homicide Lieutenant Deena Thoemmes.
Police had circulated sketches of potential suspects and identified a vehicle that witnesses described as a 1974 or 1975 Pontiac Lemans. One witness reported observing the vehicle parked on campus the night before her death, although by the time he returned, both the car and driver had vanished.
Investigations failed to identify a suspect, and as time passed, the case lost momentum, leaving the McKinley community in a pall of sadness.
In 2019, detectives working on cold cases sought the help of a forensic biology team to re-examine various pieces of evidence, including Momohara’s underwear. By 2020, they successfully developed a DNA profile. In 2023, new leads emerged concerning two brothers who had been interviewed back in 1977.
Notably, Castro was among those questioned just days after Momohara’s murder. At that time, he claimed to have met her at a school dance and last saw her at a carnival on campus in February 1977. His sibling was also questioned, having interacted with Momohara at the dance.
In November 2023, Honolulu police traveled to Chicago and clandestinely gathered DNA from one of the brother’s children. While the brother was ruled out as a suspect, DNA samples from both Castro’s adult son and Castro himself later pointed toward Castro’s guilt.
Castro was apprehended last week at the nursing home in Millcreek, located south of Salt Lake City, for second-degree murder.
Neither Okamura nor Chun Oakland had any recollection of Castro during their time at McKinley. After graduating in 1979, Chun Oakland eventually entered politics as a Democratic member of the Hawaii Senate. She expressed that Momohara’s murder remained a painful memory for her throughout her career, particularly as she encountered various victims in her capacity as a lawmaker and as part of the nonprofit Sex Abuse Treatment Center, which provides aid to survivors of sexual assault.
Feeling a sense of relief, Chun Oakland expressed appreciation for the recent arrest. “The community and our leaders understand the significance of preserving evidence, which could eventually yield justice for the victim and their families,” she said.
