How Family Got Justice Decades After Outgoing 19-Year-Old Was Killed in Her Hawaii Apartment

In the fall of 1971, 19-year-old Nancy Anderson packed her bags, leaving Colorado for sunny Hawaii.

“She was trying to find herself,” says one of Nancy’s nine siblings, her younger sister, Mary Schiattone.

She quickly found an apartment to share with a roommate in the Waikiki neighborhood of Honolulu, as well as a job at a nearby McDonald’s, and started making lots of new friends.

“She was very much an extrovert,” says Mary.

Nancy came home for Christmas that year, happy to spend time with her big, fun-loving family.

“There was always something going on,” says Nancy’s older sister, Carol Sampson.

Shortly after the New Year rang in, tragedy struck. On the afternoon Jan. 7, 1972, Nancy’s roommate, Jody Spooner, found Nancy dead in her bedroom from 63 stab wounds.

“It was unimaginable,” says her brother, Jack Anderson. “A beautiful 19-year-old girl with her whole life in front of her. Why? Who would do such a thing?” 

That question haunted her family and police for more than 50 years, making it Hawaii’s oldest cold case.

Nancy’s mysterious slaying is featured in “The Aloha Murder,” the upcoming episode of People Magazine Investigates, airing on Investigation Discovery on Monday, Dec. 2, at 9/8c and streaming on Max. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)

Going in-depth into the search for Nancy’s killer, the episode shows how the case was reignited in 2001 when her sister Carol asked police to reopen the case.

Momentum grew in 2019 when her brother Jack reached out to famed genetic genealogist CeCe Moore, asking her to use her unique set of sleuthing skills to find his sister’s killer. Working in tandem with authorities, Moore was able to pinpoint a shocking suspect, which resulted in a 2022 arrest.

The suspect’s arrest “was beyond anything we could possibly even dream of after all these years,” says Carol. “This was the man. This was him. This is who killed our sister.”

“The Aloha Murders” on People Magazine Investigates airs Monday, Dec. 2, at 9/8c on ID/Investigation Discovery and streams on Max.