Who killed Nori Amaya? DC restaurant owner slain in her apartment on Halloween 2009

Who killed Nori Amaya? 

It’s a question her brother has been asking for years.

The unsolved murder of a D.C. restaurant owner on Halloween night 17 years ago was recently featured in the popular true crime podcast “Crime Junkie.” 

Amaya’s younger brother spoke to News4 about his sister, the case and his quest to find her killer. 

Carlos Amaya has been waiting 17 years for answers.

“You have to worry. I mean, someone did this,” he said. 

Nori Amaya was strangled to death in her D.C. apartment Halloween weekend in 2009. 

Back then, the siblings ran a popular U Street restaurant together called Coppi’s Organic. It has since closed. 

Carlos Amaya and his sister were extremely close. He was the one who discovered her body. 

It’s taken him years to come to terms with her murder. 

“I am healed. You have to heal first to understand and to continue the fight because this has been a fight,” he said. “This has been a consistent fight to figure out what happened to her.” 

His sister loved to dance. In fact, he says, she called herself the “salsa queen of D.C.” He says on the night of the murder, his sister went to dance at three different spots in the District before taking a cab back home to her apartment on 16th Street NW. 

Her building had surveillance, which caught her returning home that night. But, Carlos says, the cameras did not help crack the case. 

“It was Halloween. Everyone had masks,” he said. “There’s also certain areas in the building itself that weren’t visible through camera.” 

He says the killer did leave behind clues. There was DNA left at the scene, but even after all these years, police have not been able to find a match. 

And that’s not all. Carlos said the killer may have cut off his sister’s fingernails after the murder. 

“You got to have a very unique mind to go and remove some nails,” he said. 

D.C. police declined an interview with News4 and said, because the case is still open, they couldn’t share any new details. 

That’s something that has frustrated Carlos over the years. 

“When you tell us, ‘Hey, you know, we can’t give you nothing,’ and then you say you’re doing something, but in the end, it’s all about results. There are no results right now,” he said. 

He hopes advancements in technology will help find his sister’s killer one day. He wants this to be the last Halloween he spends wondering what happened to her. 

“Justice is a word at this point. I wouldn’t even be able to tell you what would I feel if when, once that comes and it will come. It’s just when and how and what sort of parts are missing to that puzzle,” he said. 

Anyone with information about Nori’s murder, no matter how small, is asked to contact D.C. police.