There were no updates in the case until 2019 when cold case detectives asked a forensic biology unit to examine several items of evidence from the scene, including Momohara's underwear

Before Dawn Momohara was killed, she got a call from an unknown male and told her mother she was going to a shopping center. That was the last time her mom saw her, police said.

DNA technology has led to the arrest of 66-year-old Gideon Castro, who attended the same high school as the victim, Dawn Momohara.

Susie Chun Oakland arrived to a crime scene at McKinley High School in Honolulu that March morning nearly a half century ago.

Honolulu Police say modern forensic tests allowed them to identify and arrest a suspect in Dawn Momohara's 1977 murder.

Two Native Hawaiian brothers who were convicted in the 1991 killing of a woman visiting Hawaii allege in a federal lawsuit that local police framed them under pressure to solve a high-profile murder.

Nearly a half-century after Dawn Momohara’s body was found, Gideon Castro, 66, was arrested in a Utah nursing home and charged with her murder.

Dawn Momohara was 16 years old when her body was found on the second floor of McKinley High School in Honolulu in 1977. For decades, detectives had failed to identify a suspect in the murder case but now, thanks to a breakthrough in DNA technology, they have arrested a former classmate, police confirmed.

Student Dawn Momohara, 16, was found dead inside McKinley High School on Monday, March 21, 1977, according to the Honolulu Police Department. “A teacher had found her and it was early in the morning, second floor of the English building,” Susie Chun Oakland, a former student, told KHON in 2019.

Experts say DNA testing is how most cold cases are now being solved. It helped identify a suspect in the murder of a McKinley High School student with evidence preserved from

Ian and Shawn Schweitzer argued in a federal lawsuit that local police had failed to arrest a leading suspect.

Former Hawaii lawmaker Suzanne Chun Oakland remembers arriving at school one morning in 1977 to an eerie buzz.