Nancy Anderson biography: 10 things about Bay City, Michigan native

Who was Nancy Anderson?

Nancy Elaine Brown Anderson was born in Bay City, Bay County, Michigan, United States. She was the fourth among the 10 children of U.S. Navy veteran Merle Vern Anderson and Thelma Bernice Brown Anderson.

The six younger siblings of Nancy are Mary Beth Anderson, Betty Anderson, John F. Anderson, James Lloyd Anderson, Janet Anderson and William Brian Anderson. Nancy was 6 years younger than her brother Michael DuWayne Anderson, 4 years younger than her sister Carol Jane Anderson and 3 years younger than her sister Gail Patricia Anderson.

After leaving Bay City, Nancy worked at a McDonald’s restaurant in Waikiki, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. She shared a seventh-floor apartment with Jody Spooner at 2222 Aloha Drive in Waikiki.

According to Spooner’s friend Richard Hacker and Spooner’s boyfriend Kim Weaver, Nancy dated several different men. Nancy’s manager Pedro Repolio described her as a dependable and friendly employee and while she was not promiscuous, she was too friendly, according to her co-worker Julie Torres.

On January 7, 1972, Nancy was killed allegedly by Tudor Chirila Jr., an alumnus of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Mānoa, Honolulu. That day, she was not scheduled to work.

At around 12:00 p.m., Renaware Distributors door-to-door knife salesman Parker Graham and his trainee Jeffrey Alward introduced themselves to Nancy. The two salesmen made an appointment to meet her at her apartment in Waikiki to demonstrate their products.

From around 1:30 p.m. to 1:45 p.m., Graham and Alward gave a sales talk before Nancy at her apartment. At around 2:30 p.m., Spooner arrived home and joined them.

Neither Nancy nor Spooner was interested in the products but the two salesmen gave them a pie cutter as a gift then left. While Spooner took a nap, Nancy went to a Bank of Hawaii near the apartment and opened an account from around 2:15 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.

When Spooner woke up, she found Nancy fatally stabbed inside the apartment and called police. At 5:29 p.m., Honolulu Police Department officers Milton Galase and George Gibbons responded to the apartment.

After Nancy’s death, Graham and Alward volunteered fingerprints and passed polygraph tests. Spooner, her co-workers and her former boyfriends were also cleared of suspicion.

Nancy was 1 year older than Spooner and 8 years younger than Chirila. Here are 10 more things about Nancy:

1. On March 16, 1957, her maternal grandmother Phydelias Cecelia “Fay” Sabourin Brown died in Bay City at age 54.
2. On January 8, 1966, her father was critically burned in the explosion of a boiler at The Dow Chemical Company in Midland, Midland County, Michigan where he was working as a fireman. 
3. On January 24, 1966, her father died in a hospital in Midland at age 39.
4. In 1970, she graduated from John Glenn High School in Bay City.
5. In October 1971, she moved from Bay City to Waikiki.
6. In November 1971, she met Craig Winters on the beach in Waikiki. They became friends and kissed on several occasions but were never intimate. In the same month, Repolio and his friend Ronald Borges gave her a ride home. Both Borges and Borges’s friend Gerald Kihano later went on dates with her.
7. On November 10, 1971, she turned 19.
8. From December 1, 1971 to December 6, 1971, Susan Davidson lived with her and Spooner in their apartment in Waikiki. Davidson slept on a bed in her room. During the same period, she met David Chambers through Winters, his roommate. She and Chambers made plans to go on a date but it never materialized and they were never intimate. In the same month, she met William Menor and they became friends. She and Menor started dating but they never had sex.
9. On January 6, 1972, she went to Chambers’ workplace at the International Market Place in Waikiki to invite him to her apartment at 11:30 p.m. but when he went there, no one was home so he left his card under her door. He had not heard from her since.
10. On January 7, 1972, Chirila allegedly stabbed her 63 times inside her apartment in Waikiki.

On September 14, 2022, officers from the police department of Reno, Nevada, USA arrested Chirila at a hospital in Reno. On September 15, 2022, he pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and being a fugitive from another state.

On December 25, 2023, Chirila was pronounced dead at a hospital. Why he allegedly killer Nancy and whether or not they knew each other are still unknown.