At 19, Nancy Anderson was a talented, aspiring actress and a good writer when she moved to the islands, her brother Jack Anderson said.

She would have been 66 years old today had her life not been cut short by someone who stabbed her multiple times on Jan. 7, 1972, and left her body on the bedroom floor of her Waikiki apartment.

Nancy Anderson was killed just two months after arriving from Colorado to experience living in Hawaii before going to college.

After 47 years her killer has not been found, and no suspects were ever arrested. But with advances in DNA technology, Honolulu police are still testing evidence in her Waikiki homicide, said Detective Michael Ogawa, one of two on the Honolulu Police Department’s cold-case detail.

Over the years the Anderson family has pushed to keep the case and interest in it alive, Ogawa said Friday.

Of HPD’s 250 cold cases, police decided to feature this one now because evidence is still being tested.

Ogawa would not say who or how many suspects they are looking at.

Nancy Anderson was one of 10 children who lost had their father six years earlier, Jack Anderson said at a news conference Friday at HPD headquarters via video teleconferencing from Seattle. “To lose Nancy, who was just a wonderful person, it was just absolutely a horrible thing. … It just left a hole in our hearts and in our family.”

Her nine siblings remain alive and are “still waiting for answers,” he said. “But we come from a very loving family and very forgiving family, so we’re not looking so much for any kind of retribution. … We just simply want as much closure as closure can possibly give.”

In 1995, another brother, Andy Anderson, inquired into whether any DNA evidence was left at the scene.

Police told him a bloody towel was dropped down a stairwell at the apartment. Anderson told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 2006 that he believed the murderer’s DNA was left on the towel when he wiped his hands on it.

In 2005, he came across a 2001 Honolulu Star-Bulletin article about the 1975 slaying of a 16-year-old girl — a case that resembled his sister’s murder. The suspect had been confined to the Hawaii State Hospital and was seeking release.

The Star-Bulletin reported the suspect in the 1975 killing had a pattern of offering rides to young women at bus stops, and had attacked at knifepoint five females, ages 16 to 25, from 1972 to 1973.

Andy Anderson speculated that since his sister, who worked at the Ala Moana Center McDonald’s, did not have a car, her killer may have been someone who offered her a ride.

Ogawa said the results of evidence testing done at the time excluded the 1975 murder suspect as a suspect in the Anderson case.

Police had made a thorough search of Anderson’s apartment at 2222 Aloha Drive and the surrounding area and interviewed more than 20 people, but turned up nothing.

He said the evidence recovered in the Anderson case was previously been tested. Initial persons of interest were ruled out through polygraph tests, police reported in 2006.

Ogawa said HPD has reviewed about half of its 250 cold cases since the 1960s. “We can only look at them one at a time,” he said.

The challenge of tackling a cold case is “the people factor,” he said. Many of the witnesses are “really old” or no longer around, don’t remember or no longer want to be involved, he said.

HPD has been consistently receiving inquiries and tips since it launched a cold-case webpage for homicides in 2018 at honolulupd.org.

That page — Aole Poina, which means “never forgotten” — is prominently featured on the police website.

“Although no single tip has led to the resolution of any particular case, many of the tips have provided potential tips, some of which were not known to previous investigators,” Ogawa said.

“A large purpose of this cold-case project is not only to ultimately bring someone to prosecution, but at least to remind (the surviving families) that somebody still cares.”