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Post by Graveyardbride on Mar 18, 2014 13:00:52 GMT -5
Police Probe Unsolved 1964 Elmira MurderPolice are continuing their investigation of a murder involving a 12-year-old girl who disappeared 50 years ago – on March 15, 1964, – in Elmira, New York, and whose body was found four days later. Work on the case has been ongoing through the years, Police Chief Michael Robertson said. The case has drawn renewed attention because of the half-century mark this year, he said. “As a law enforcement agency, we strive to solve every crime, and that certainly is magnified when it’s a homicide. It’s even more magnified when it’s a 12-year-old kid that never had a chance,” he said. “We would certainly love to solve it.”
About 3 p.m. on the Sunday that she vanished, Mary Theresa Simpson had left the apartment on North Main Street where she lived with her father, Ellsworth Simpson. She told him she was going to visit a cousin, but she instead went to see her mother, Rose Simpson, who was separated from her father and lived on Dewitt Avenue. After about an hour, she left and went to her grandfather’s house on Cieri Street and played with her cousins. She was last seen heading home at about 6:30 p.m. at the corner of East Market and Harriet streets. Her father reported her missing at 10:30 p.m.
Police had not ruled out foul play as they searched for Mary in vacant buildings, abandoned homes, junkyards, excavations and used car lots.
On March 19, 1964, her frozen, fully clothed body was discovered in a wooded section of Southport under twigs, branches, leaves, dirt and four heavy stones – the largest weighing more than 100 pounds – by a man who was hiking with his two sons a quarter-mile east of Combs Hill Road. Only part of her hand and a sneaker were visible. Her mouth had been stuffed with dirt and twigs. Eugene Golden, the police chief at the time, said he was thoroughly convinced she was murdered in the vicinity of where her body was found but did not elaborate further. According to the Chemung County medical examiner, she had been either choked and/or strangled. Officials later revealed there was evidence of sexual molestation.
Family members, teachers, neighbors and others interviewed by the Star-Gazette in 1964 described Mary as a sweet, quiet, polite girl who was shy with strangers. She had moved a lot — five times in six years — and didn’t make friends easily, but when she did, the friendships lasted. She was a Girl Scout, belonged to the YWCA and had won a trophy for cooking. She made her first communion at St. Patrick’s Church in Elmira in May 1959. She attended St. Patrick’s School in Elmira until June 1963, when she completed the fifth grade. She entered the sixth grade at Curtiss Elementary after moving with her father to Hammondsport. The family subsequently returned to Elmira and Mary was enrolled in sixth grade at Booth School. She disappeared a week later.
As the investigation of her murder continued over the years, hundreds of people have been interviewed, including more than a dozen Chemung County residents who were given lie-detector tests. At one time, the Star-Gazette offered a reward that had grown to $5,000 for information leading to the conviction of her killer. Various tips had come in through the years, and Mary’s case was reactivated several times, then-District Attorney John Trice said in 2007.
At that time, Trice had sought help from a team of Project Alert investigators from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The team gathered evidence and prepared it for DNA testing at a laboratory in Texas. Nothing very useful came from the Texas lab, Robertson said, noting that a DNA sample was developed by the New York State Police lab. “We will be using them for anything from here on out,” he said.
To this day, the police department continues to search for any new lead in the case, Robertson said. “I think, to a man, we can almost all say that we’d like to solve that.”Source: Ray Finger, The Star-Gazette, March 17, 2014.
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Post by natalie on Mar 19, 2014 18:53:26 GMT -5
That's sad. I wonder how accurate the DNA profile was considering how old the sample was once they had the technology to do DNA testing, and assuming they did a good enough job not allowing it to be contaminated. There's also the possibility that the offender has never killed or committed any other crimes since, which is why they haven't found the person because he never made it into the offender database. I'd assume he's probably quite old, or maybe even dead, by now. I doubt they'll ever be able to solve this case, sadly.
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eddie
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Post by eddie on Jun 22, 2015 16:54:34 GMT -5
I spoke to mary that day as she left her moms place on ceri st, as did several other kids in the neighborhood.we told police then what she had said to us i remembered this for the last 50 year's she even showd us what she had in a little purse
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Post by Joanna on Jun 22, 2015 22:36:07 GMT -5
I spoke to mary that day as she left her moms place on ceri st, as did several other kids in the neighborhood.we told police then what she had said to us i remembered this for the last 50 year's she even showd us what she had in a little purse Thank you for providing your firsthand information on this case. What did she say to you that day? Did anyone have any ideas about who may have killed her?
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Post by Sam on Jun 23, 2015 0:47:56 GMT -5
I spoke to mary that day as she left her moms place on ceri st, as did several other kids in the neighborhood.we told police then what she had said to us i remembered this for the last 50 year's she even showd us what she had in a little purse Welcome to the group, Eddie. Things like that stick with you. Did she say anything that day that might have been a clue to who killed her?
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eddie
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Post by eddie on Jun 23, 2015 6:46:52 GMT -5
Yes she told us that she lived with her dad. and she said she had to get home because her dad told her if he found out she went to her moms he'd kill her! And i quote.she also had a purse and she said, i believe she said her mom gave her 50 cents.as kids we said yea sure and she showed us the 50cent piece. I told her she better get home and she walked away police talked too us and we told them that also.
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Post by kitty on Jun 23, 2015 15:22:34 GMT -5
Yes she told us that she lived with her dad. and she said she had to get home because her dad told her if he found out she went to her moms he'd kill her! And i quote.she also had a purse and she said, i believe she said her mom gave her 50 cents.as kids we said yea sure and she showed us the 50cent piece. I told her she better get home and she walked away police talked too us and we told them that also. So do you think that her father may have killed her?
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eddie
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Post by eddie on Jun 24, 2015 8:20:58 GMT -5
Yes i do if you look into the family and who's related too who After her saying this to us all and kinda knowing some of the family members it just makes you wonder In 1964 it was different hen now we knew everybody on the street and then some. Id like to know who was on the investigation team I knew who told about it on the news it was bruce flarity .i have had questions that i wish i could have asked but most of them are gone now
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Post by jane on Jun 25, 2015 21:24:17 GMT -5
Yes i do if you look into the family and who's related too who After her saying this to us all and kinda knowing some of the family members it just makes you wonder In 1964 it was different hen now we knew everybody on the street and then some. Id like to know who was on the investigation team I knew who told about it on the news it was bruce flarity .i have had questions that i wish i could have asked but most of them are gone now
Her father could have killed her, but the article says that she had been covered with four stones, one that weighed 100 pounds. This sounds more like something kids would do than an adult. It's possible that she was accosted and killed by teenage boys. The way her body was concealed seems juvenile to me. If her father or another adult had killed her, I think that they would have buried her and she would have been farther from home. Just my 2 cents' worth.
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9box
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Post by 9box on Oct 16, 2015 22:35:25 GMT -5
Stones aren't necessarily a teen thing, an adult would know to cover her with weight as to not let animals drag her out of hiding as easily. Also, I know EXACTLY where her body was, I used to hunt and camp up there all through the 70s with my friends and it was legend by then, the poor little thing. Teen kids would have had to drove her body there(unlikely), because you could only get up there from Elmira by using Mt. Zoar Rd. on the Southside, or up through West Elmira then over Fitches Bridge into Golden Glow, then up Combs Hill Rd. Kids would have hidden her in bushes near the scene of the murder, not take her way out there. Also, There is a trail that led to her body that very few people knew about that also led to the cliff where Roricks Glen used to be. I doubt her dad killed her but I'm betting it was someone that knew her.
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Post by Sam on Oct 17, 2015 1:03:10 GMT -5
Stones aren't necessarily a teen thing, an adult would know to cover her with weight as to not let animals drag her out of hiding as easily. Also, I know EXACTLY where her body was, I used to hunt and camp up there all through the 70s with my friends and it was legend by then, the poor little thing. Teen kids would have had to drove her body there(unlikely), because you could only get up there from Elmira by using Mt. Zoar Rd. on the Southside, or up through West Elmira then over Fitches Bridge into Golden Glow, then up Combs Hill Rd. Kids would have hidden her in bushes near the scene of the murder, not take her way out there. Also, There is a trail that led to her body that very few people knew about that also led to the cliff where Roricks Glen used to be. I doubt her dad killed her but I'm betting it was someone that knew her. Welcome to the group and thank you for sharing what you know with us. I have a question about the rocks that she was covered with. If one of them weighed 100 pounds, it would have been hard for one person to put it on top of her, unless she was in a hole and he was able to roll it on top of her using some kind of leverage.
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Post by cowboysdude on Oct 17, 2015 15:17:54 GMT -5
Yes i do if you look into the family and who's related too who After her saying this to us all and kinda knowing some of the family members it just makes you wonder In 1964 it was different hen now we knew everybody on the street and then some. Id like to know who was on the investigation team I knew who told about it on the news it was bruce flarity .i have had questions that i wish i could have asked but most of them are gone now
Her father could have killed her, but the article says that she had been covered with four stones, one that weighed 100 pounds. This sounds more like something kids would do than an adult. It's possible that she was accosted and killed by teenage boys. The way her body was concealed seems juvenile to me. If her father or another adult had killed her, I think that they would have buried her and she would have been farther from home. Just my 2 cents' worth.
I'm going to say it's not a kids who did this for a couple different reasons... based on what I'm reading I'm thinking it was her father. Mouth was full of dirt and twigs... that could be her father punishing her for lying about being at her mom's.... The rest is an effort to try to hide the body.... Back then punishment was a bit more brutal then today and parents pretty much could do what they wanted and it sounds like an angry father and he could have hit her and she could have hit her head or he hit her so hard he killed her. The way the body was found tells me that the person was scared and trying to do whatever they could to hide it.
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Post by cowboysdude on Oct 17, 2015 15:20:06 GMT -5
Stones aren't necessarily a teen thing, an adult would know to cover her with weight as to not let animals drag her out of hiding as easily. Also, I know EXACTLY where her body was, I used to hunt and camp up there all through the 70s with my friends and it was legend by then, the poor little thing. Teen kids would have had to drove her body there(unlikely), because you could only get up there from Elmira by using Mt. Zoar Rd. on the Southside, or up through West Elmira then over Fitches Bridge into Golden Glow, then up Combs Hill Rd. Kids would have hidden her in bushes near the scene of the murder, not take her way out there. Also, There is a trail that led to her body that very few people knew about that also led to the cliff where Roricks Glen used to be. I doubt her dad killed her but I'm betting it was someone that knew her.
I can not argue with this logic... again the stuff in the mouth was either punishment [her father] or someone who knew her didn't want her to talk... people do some strange things... That could also be a way to hide evidence of some kind.
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berta
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Post by berta on Oct 18, 2015 10:09:40 GMT -5
Is her father still living? They have the killers DNA, certainly her father had to be a prime suspect , was a DNA sample ever taken from her father ? Maybe the statements given by the young witnesses back then weren't considered creditable ? Or maybe mistakenly got left out of the case files? Investigators are asking for any clues anyone may have to help solve this case, it wouldn't hurt to give law enforcement this information again.
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Post by lipstickhippie on Oct 18, 2015 10:40:36 GMT -5
I was born in 1966 and raised in the Elmira area, I had never heard about this murder until the article was published in the Star Gazette last year (which is bizarre considering my fascination with unsolved homicides). I'm wondering if anyone ever took a second look at the man who found her body? It's not unheard of for a killer to interject himself into a murder investigation, to even be the one who discovers a body. Just seems weird to me that he was able to find her even though she was under dirt, leaves, twigs, and large boulders..and that the place where she was found was pretty secluded and accessible only by a trail. Obviously the guy who found her knew the area.
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