Utah judge orders release of suspect in 1977 Hawaii killing after prosecution stalls

SALT LAKE CITY — A 66-year-old suspect in the 1977 killing of a Hawaii teenager was released from a Utah jail on Thursday after prosecutors in Honolulu said they weren’t ready to proceed with a murder charge against him. While Castro was still awaiting extradition, Honolulu prosecutors told their counterparts in Utah this week that they were not proceeding against him because of “recent complications involving a material witness in this case and the state of the evidence.” “Please understand we view this as only a temporary setback, and we remain fully committed to continuing our efforts to prosecute this matter in the near future,” Kelsi Guerra, a deputy prosecuting attorney in Honolulu, wrote in a Monday letter to Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Clifford Ross. An attorney for Castro had said during a hearing last month in Salt Lake City that he intended to fight the charges upon his return to Hawaii, where he is still a resident, according to jail records. A McKinley High School graduate who was the school’s band teacher at the time of Momohara’s death said he was disappointed to learn of Castro’s release.