The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office is set to announce new details and a “formal findings” in the decades-old murder of 9-year-old Carol Ann Dougherty.
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District Attorney Jennifer Schorn’s office plans to hold an early Wednesday afternoon press conference with officials from the Pennsylvania State Police to address the 1962 cold case.
The announcement comes after a Bucks County Investigating Grand Jury reviewed the evidence, the district attorney’s office stated.
The murder of the fifth-grader, which occurred at St. Mark Catholic Church in Bristol Borough, has received renewed attention in recent years.
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Despite extensive work by local, county, and state law enforcement over the decades, the case never led to an arrest due to insufficient evidence.
On Oct. 22, 1962, Carol, a student at St. Mark Catholic School, vanished after biking to Bristol Borough to return library books.
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Her parents, Frank and Dorothy Dougherty, began a search when she didn’t return home by 4:30 p.m.
News accounts from the time indicate her father found her body shortly after the search commenced, located on a church landing.
Initial evidence collected by borough and state police included brown pubic hairs found clutched in Carol’s hand, which authorities presumed belonged to her assailant.
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According to previous reporting by the Bucks County Courier Times, borough police received taunting phone calls after the murder, threatening that more children would die. Cryptic messages regarding the murder were also left in envelopes at the police station.
The local newspaper itself also received messages over time. In 1992, after covering the cold case, the paper received taunting messages and cryptic letters. Editors received a different kind of communication in 2012 in the form of odd emails predicting the girl’s killer would finally be revealed.
No such revelation has occurred in the years since.
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Editor’s Note: This article was corrected to note Carol Ann Dougherty was 9 years old at the time of her murder, not 11.
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