SALT LAKE CITY—A Utah judge ordered the release of a 66-year-old suspect in the 1977 killing of a Hawaii teenager after prosecutors in Honolulu said they weren’t ready to proceed with a murder charge against him.
Gideon Castro was arrested in January at a Utah nursing home on a fugitive warrant for suspicion of second-degree murder in the death of 16-year-old Dawn Momohara. He had waived the right to challenge his extradition during a hearing in Salt Lake City last month. Castro, who is ill, appeared by video from a jail hospital bed.
While he was still awaiting extradition, Honolulu prosecutors told their counterparts in Utah this week that they were not proceeding with the case against Castro because of “recent complications involving a material witness in this case and the state of the evidence.”…