50-Year-Old Cold Case Solved – Lawyer Arrested for Bay City Native’s Murder

The murder of a 19-year-old woman originally from Bay City appears to have been solved thanks to DNA evidence linking a lawyer from Nevada to the crime scene.

Bay City Woman Found Dead in Hawaii

Nancy Anderson was found dead in her Hawaii apartment on January 7, 1972. The 19-year-old woman had moved from Bay City to Hawaii just a few months prior to her death. Law & Crime reports that rumors began to circulate that the woman had taken her own life but police reports indicated that stab wounds were consistent with murder.

Anderson's murder has remained unsolved for the last five decades.

DNA Evidence Leads to a Nevada Lawyer

During the 1972 investigation, police recovered a towel in the victim's apartment that appeared to contain DNA from the woman's killer. However, DNA testing at that time was only in its infancy.

Roughly 50 years later, a tip led police to 77-year-old Tudor Chirila, an attorney from Nevada. His son, John Chirila consented to a DNA test that revealed a biological link to evidence found in the victim's apartment in 1972. An analysis of John Chirila's indicated that he was the biological son of the person that had left DNA evidence behind.

Police arrested the elder Chirila last Tuesday (9/13) in Reno Nevada. Law & Crime reports Chirila was a resident of Honolulu at the time of Anderson's murder. After leaving Hawaii, Chirila went to law school, graduated, and practiced law for decades in Nevada. He served as the Deputy Attorney General for the state and made an unsuccessful run for the Nevada Supreme Court in 1994.

WJRT reports that Anderson was a 1971 graduate of Bangor John Glenn High School.