"My dad had such a dynamic personality that if you ever met my dad, you would never forget him," said Gypsy Tarricone in a phone interview from New Mexico.

The long-time Oahu resident remembers her dad Joe as a doting father who loved to cook.

"He was a big, loud Italian man," she said, "friendlier than all heck."

The last time Gypsy saw her father was in the summer of 1978. He came to visit her and her son while they were living at an apartment on Liholiho Street. It was his first time in Hawaii.

After he left that summer, he didn't call. Gypsy's six other siblings didn't hear from him either. Even his parents whom he always visited, had no idea where he was.

"That's just unusual for my dad," Gypsy said. "He was such a family man, so super friendly, so that was just so out of character."

And for 29 frustrating years, there were no answers, until last June.

A contruction worker dug up a bag of bones while demolishing a home on Canyon Road in Pierce County Washington state.

Old-fashion police work led authorities to two people -- Tarricone's former girlfriend Renee Curtiss and her brother Nicholas Notaro; both were arrested Monday. The girlfriend used to live in that home on Canyon Road.

Det. Ed Troyer of the Pierce County Sheriffs department said, "our detectives traveled to different states, talked to different witnesses and established a timeline that puts him and those people there at the same time."

Police said the brother and sister have confessed to chopping up Tarricone's body with a chainsaw and then burying it.

For Gypsy, knowing about her father's gruesome end is the beginning of some closure.

"I can tell people now, you might not get what you when you want it, but they do come true because that's always been our prayer," she said, "let us know, let us know."

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