Former Nevada deputy attorney general charged with 1972 fatal stabbing of teen girl

On Wednesday, a former Nevada deputy attorney general was arrested and charged in the 1972 cold-case murder of a teenage girl.

Fifty years ago, 19-year-old Nancy Anderson had recently graduated from high school and moved to Hawaii, the New York Post reported.

On January 7, 1972, police discovered Anderson dead inside her apartment. The young woman had been gruesomely attacked and suffered more than 60 stab wounds.

Police questioned knife salesmen who had been to Anderson’s apartment hours before her death. The men provided their fingerprints to detectives and agreed to polygraph tests. The police also questioned Anderson’s former boyfriends and the apartment’s property manager.

The cold case was reopened multiple times over the decades. Many suspects were investigated, but despite law enforcement’s best efforts to close the case, they could not identify the murderer.

It was not until December 2021 that authorities received a new tip recommending an investigation into Tudor Chirila Jr., a former Nevada deputy attorney general.

Chirila’s background

Chirila was a successful attorney in Reno, Carson City, and the Lake Tahoe area. He became Nevada’s deputy attorney in the late 1970s.

In 1998, Chirila was indicted for his role in defrauding the government in bankruptcy proceedings involving the Mustang Ranch, a brothel in Nevada.

Joe Conforte, the boss of the brothel, had his business seized by the IRS. Conforte was accused of attempting to defraud the government and regain ownership of the business by purchasing it back under the hidden ownership of another company.

Chirila acted as the president of the company A.G.E. Corp., and Conforte was allegedly the hidden owner of the company. In 1990, Chirila and the company illegally bought the brothel from the IRS. In court, the attorney testified that he knew Conforte owned A.G.E. Corp.

Chirila’s suspected involvement in Anderson’s murder

Following the tip to investigate Tudor Chirila Jr. for the 1972 murder, police collected a DNA sample from his son, John Chirila, in March 2022. Authorities confirmed that John’s DNA matched that of the biological child of the person whose DNA was found in Anderson’s apartment.

With that new evidence, authorities secured a search warrant and collected a DNA sample from Tudor Chirila Jr. on September 6.

The now 77-year-old man attempted suicide two days after police collected the sample. On Wednesday, he was arrested in Reno and charged with second-degree murder for the fatal stabbing of Nancy Anderson.