ARVADA, Colo. — Genetic genealogy is a technology that not only continues to grow in Colorado, but across the country.
Investigative Genetic Genealogist Michele Kennedy, who owns the company Solved by DNA based out of Castle Rock, said since 2018, dozens of cases in Colorado have been solved with investigative genetic genealogy. And more law enforcement agencies are using it to solve crimes.
In fact, a Colorado family finally got the closure they needed after this technology was used to help identify the alleged killer of Nancy Anderson more than 50 years after her murder.
"She would be your best friend today," said Nancy’s brother, Mike Anderson. “Nancy was the third girl, but the fourth child.”
Nancy was part of a family of 10 kids from Bay City, Michigan. Most of the family moved to Arvada, Colorado in June of 1971 to get a fresh start after their dad died, but Nancy didn’t stay in Colorado long.
“She was a little unrestful and wanted to do something adventurous,” Nancy’s sister Betty Burk said.
Her siblings said she moved to Honolulu in October of that year but came back to Arvada to visit for Christmas — a visit Betty said she will never forget.
“She acted a little strange,” Betty said. “She thought something was going to happen to her. I think Nancy was afraid of something or someone.”
Turns out, that premonition was true.
On Jan. 7, 1972, Nancy’s roommate found her dead in their Honolulu apartment. Someone had stabbed her to death. City and County of Honolulu Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Scott Bell prosecuted the case.
“There were 63 separate and distinct injuries at least,” Bell said.
He said investigators found three towels at the scene. A blood-stained towel near Nancy’s body had the DNA profile of an unknown man, so they kept the towels for evidence.
“By the end of 1972, their investigative leads had run dry and there was nothing further for them to investigate,” Bell said.
Fast forward a few decades, and Bell said investigators were able to test the evidence and run a DNA profile through some state and offender databases. It is technology only available now that Honolulu had developed an accredited DNA laboratory. However, initially, there were no hits. That’s where Chief Genetic Genealogist at Parabon NanoLabs CeCe Moore came in.
Nancy’s family had reached out to her.
“When I work a case, I’m not in touch with the family, so right off the bat this made the case very special to me,” Moore said.
Bell said Honolulu police asked Moore to get involved in 2019. She came up with a new approach, analyzing the ancestry of that DNA profile.
“There was actually two places the DNA was going back to in Italy. Southern Italy, more central, then Sicily and then other trees were going back to Romania,” Moore said. “I just decided to try something new and go through the Honolulu city directory from the time Nancy was murdered and look for people who had Italian last names or Romanian last names.”
That’s how she came across the name Tudor Chirila, realizing he could be the person responsible for Nancy’s murder.
Investigators tested the DNA of Chirila, who was living in Reno, Nevada at the time, and were able to compare his profile to the DNA found on that bloody towel years earlier.
It matched.
“The Honolulu prosecutor’s office secured an indictment against Mr. Chirila in late September of 2022 and sought to extradite him to Honolulu,” Bell stated.
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Bell said Chirila was a graduate assistant in Hawaii at the time of Nancy’s murder, and later went on to serve as deputy attorney general in Nevada. He was extradited but got sick in a Honolulu jail and died on Christmas Day in December of 2023 at the age of 78. He was scheduled to go to trial in March of 2024. The case was closed this April after his murder charge was dismissed.
We asked Bell a hypothetical — had Chirila been alive today, and Bell prosecuted the case, would he have been found guilty?
Bell said yes.
“Even though he wasn’t found guilty in a court of law, he was found guilty in our hearts,” said Nancy’s sister Janet Christensen.
Genealogist Kennedy said investigators can now solve the unsolvable.
“Since 2018, there’s been about 75 cases in the state of Colorado that have been solved using investigative genetic genealogy,” she said.
Kennedy is currently working on eight cases. Four of those are in Colorado. Nancy's family now believes modern science can solve most cases.
“If you’ve got a case out there and want it to be solved, don’t give up,” said Nancy’s brother Mike.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation said it has been using the technology since 2019 in both violent crimes cases and cases of unidentified human remains. CBI said genetic genealogy has helped track down identities of suspects and identify human remains in 32 cases so far.
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