On July 31st, 1960, a family on the lookout for interesting rocks near a creek bed off Old Alamo Road in Congress, Arizona stumbled across the partly-buried and dreadfully decomposed body of a little girl. It appeared that whoever had killed the child or left the body there had made more than one attempt at digging a grave, for there were multiple disturbances in the sand around where the remains were found.
The girl’s face was deemed “recognizable,” but very little else about the identity of the child could be determined. Because she had a full set of baby teeth, it was thought that she could be anywhere from four to nine years old, though the most likely age was between five and seven. She stood between three-foot-six and four-foot-five, and weighed around sixty pounds. She was clad in a pair of white shorts, and a shirt with a chain pattern printed on it. Forensic examination concluded that she had died one to two weeks before her body was discovered.
There were also a few strange details about the girl’s appearance. Her fingernails and toenails had been painted bright red. Her naturally brown hair appeared to have been dyed a reddish auburn color. And the sandals on her feet had been made out of a pair of adult-size flip-flops that had been cut down to fit her, and then attached to her feet with leather straps.
Though a bloody pocket knife was found not far away, it did not appear that the child had been stabbed, and indeed, it was never determined whether she had been murdered, had simply died accidentally, or died from some undetermined illness. Because of the supposed multiple attempts at grave digging, some investigators speculated that perhaps the girl was the child of migrant workers, and that possibly she had died of natural causes and been buried in the desert because her family had no money for a formal interment.
Police distributed a description and photos of the unknown girl far and wide, along with descriptions of her clothing and other details, but the girl’s identity was never established, even though questions and tips about her poured in from a curious public. In spring of 1961, it was briefly believed that the child might have been four-year-old Debbie Dudley, who had vanished from her Virginia home some time before, but Debbie’s body was later found, and her parents were subsequently charged with negligent homicide, as they admitted to starving seven of their ten children, including Debbie, to death.
The unidentified child found in Congress, Arizona was buried in August of 1960. A campaign led by local radio personality Dave Palladin had collected enough funds to ensure that the girl was given a proper funeral and headstone, on which was inscribed the name that Palladin had given her: “Little Miss Nobody.”
The child’s DNA was successfully extracted and added to a national database, and in 2022, she was finally identified as the nearly five-year-old Sharon Lee Gallegos, who had been abducted by an unidentified couple from the alley behind her family home in Almagordo, New Mexico, while she played with two of her cousins. Evidently, the pair who kidnapped the child had been stalking her for several days prior to snatching her on the afternoon of July 21, 1960, as a number of witnesses had noted the suspects watching the girl from their dark green sedan, and even asking neighbors probing questions about her. In addition, Sharon’s family members observed a change in the child’s behavior in the days preceding her abduction; she had become fearful and withdrawn, and no longer wished to run errands on her own, which she had always enjoyed in the past.
Following the identification of the victim, authorities set about attempting to put a name to the kidnappers, who were only described as a small female and a freckle-faced male. Though sixty-two years have passed since the abduction and murder of Sharon Lee Gallegos, police are still hopeful that the cold case can ultimately be solved.
Crime Immemorial 