January 7, 1972

On January 7, 1972, Nancy Anderson was found unresponsive in her apartment, located at 2222 Aloha Drive in Waikiki. Nancy had been stabbed multiple times and died at the scene.

HPD investigators have recently sought the services of Parabon NanoLabs, a DNA technology company in Virginia that specializes in advanced DNA analysis services. One of the services used in this case was DNA phenotyping, which is the process of predicting physical appearance and ancestry from unidentified DNA evidence.

Using DNA evidence from this investigation, Parabon produced trait predictions for a person of interest (POI) in this case. Individual predictions were made for the subject’s ancestry, eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling, and face shape. By combining these attributes of appearance, a Snapshot composite was produced depicting what the POI may have looked like at 25 years old and with an average body-mass index (BMI) of 22. These default values were used because age and BMI cannot be determined from DNA.

It is important to note that Snapshot composites are scientific approximations of appearance based on DNA, and are not likely to be exact replicas of appearance. Environmental factors such as smoking, drinking, diet, and other non-environmental factors — e.g., facial hair, hairstyle, scars, etc. — cannot be predicted by DNA analysis and may cause further variation between the subject’s predicted and actual appearances.

UPDATE: In 2022, Tudor Chirila was indicted for Anderson’s murder by an Oahu grand jury after his DNA was found to match a sample recovered from the scene. Chirila was extradited from Nevada and died on December 25, 2023 while awaiting trial.