Ending A 60 Year Mystery: DNA Identifies Sharon Lee Gallegos, USA
Sharon Gallegos was playing outside in a yard in New Mexico. She was abducted. It took years to identify remains found in the desert as her. 1960
We are starting to collect a few of these stories now and they are the ones we delight in. DNA is the key with old cases. Here we have a partial solution to an awful crime from over 60 years ago.
We go to Alamogordo, New Mexico, USA. The date was 21st July 1960. There played a little four year old girl. She was with friends running in and out of her grandmother’s backyard. The scant information I have seen indicates a car stopped in the alleyway. A woman and man were in it. The woman abducted the child after an attempt to entice her into the vehicle failed.
10 days later a teacher was hiking in the wilderness near Congress, Arizona. He came across the partially buried remains of a child. Congress is a nine hour drive from Alamogordo.
It was suggested that the little girl may have been the same one that had been snatched in New Mexico, but clothing was wrong and a footprint did not match. The tracks around the dry creek bed, where she was discovered, indicated she had been driven to the location. A man’s footprints were found close by.
A medical examination could not determine how the child had been destroyed by these faceless, inadequate killers. They did declare that an attempt had been made to burn the child after death. There was no doubt it was a homicide.
The little girl was buried and known from then on as ‘Little Miss Nobody.’
On Tuesday 14th March 2022 the results of DNA testing gave this child a name. It was Sharon Lee Gallegos, from Alamogordo.
When Sharon was taken the police did their best from what I can tell. The FBI became involved and some information was patched together. The suspect car was said to have been a Green Dodge or Plymouth. It was described as dirty. The woman’s companion was fair haired and thin featured. The couple had offered the child sweets if she got into their car. When she refused she was dragged in.
Enquiries indicate they may have been watching the girl for some days leading up to the abduction.
The haunting thing for me is that the little girl was found with painted toe and finger nails. I will leave that thought there.
Unless the offenders were very young then they will almost certainly be dead now. There is no definite in this speculation. I would love to be the cop who walked in on their aging evil and dragged them away no matter how frail they had become. It is unlikely though. We can only hope that the misery they caused Ms Gallegos was a thousand times worse for them in their lifetime.
Take Care
Tim
Other DNA triumphs:
A very full description and references can be found in this Wikipedia article:
