A 12-Year-Old Girl Was Murdered in 1964. DNA Just Solved the Case.

She Was 12. Her Killer Had No Name for 61 Years.

On March 15, 1964, 12-year-old Mary Theresa Simpson left her relatives’ home in Elmira, New York, to walk back to her own. She was last seen at 6:30 p.m. Four days later, her body was found in a wooded area seven miles from her house. She had been partially buried under four heavy stones. Her mouth was stuffed with dirt and twigs. She died of asphyxiation.

For 61 years, the man who killed her had no name.

In February 2026, Elmira Police Chief Kristen Thorne stood at a press conference and announced that DNA had finally identified Mary Theresa’s killer - making it the oldest case ever solved through DNA evidence.

‘This is a historic day for the Elmira Police Department,’ Thorne said. ‘Justice after 61 years.’

The Evidence They Kept for Six Decades

What made the breakthrough possible was a decision made long before DNA testing existed.

Investigators preserved physical evidence from the 1964 crime scene for decades - including Mary Theresa’s cat-eye glasses and a fan club card found near her body. DNA recovered from her skirt was entered into a national database in 2003. No match. Re-submitted in 2014. Still nothing.

In 2022, Elmira Police Sergeant William Goodwin received a grant for advanced DNA testing. The sample - just 0.4 nanograms, too small to see with the naked eye - was shipped to Othram Technologies in Texas, a lab known for working with damaged or degraded evidence.

It almost did not make it there.

The Ice Storm That Almost Ended Everything

FBI Special Agent Kenneth Jensen, who was assisting the Elmira Police Department, packed the sample in dry ice and sent it to the Texas lab through FedEx. The package was routed through the FedEx hub in Memphis - and then an ice storm shut the hub down entirely.

The shipment sat stranded. The dry ice was running out.

‘We couldn’t even get ahold of anyone at FedEx during the historic storm,’ Jensen, now a forensic case manager at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, told NCMEC. ‘I was petrified that my act of shipping it through FedEx was going to lose the only chance of solving it.’

Jensen contacted fellow FBI agents in Memphis, who located the package inside the frozen hub. They put it in a bureau freezer until the storm passed, then shipped it to Texas.

‘It was a massive scavenger hunt to find it,’ Sergeant Goodwin told NCMEC.

The Man Who Died Without Being Caught

The Othram lab uploaded a DNA profile into two public genealogy databases. FBI analysts built family trees from the results, eventually identifying a son who voluntarily submitted a DNA sample.

His father was Alfred Raymond Murray Jr. - a truck driver who had lived and raised a family in Elmira. Murray had a prior arrest record involving children, including charges of molesting two 7-year-old sisters when he was 17 years old. He died of natural causes at age 73 and was buried in Elmira.

Murray was 32 years old when he killed Mary Theresa Simpson.

To confirm the match, NCMEC provided funding and forensic expertise to exhume Murray’s remains in November 2025. Dozens of officers - many of them retired - were present for the moment. DNA from the exhumation confirmed what the database had indicated.

The case was closed. Alfred Raymond Murray Jr. was the killer. He had been dead for years.

‘I Always Said It Would Never Happen in My Lifetime’

Linda Galpin is 78 years old. She was 16 when her little sister was murdered. She rushed home from out of town and saw Mary Theresa lying in a casket. ‘I couldn’t believe she was in a casket,’ she told NCMEC. ‘I tried to jump in it. I wanted to be in there with her.’

For 61 years, she thought about her sister every single day.

When the call came, the news was bittersweet.

‘I’m just glad justice was finally done,’ Galpin said. ‘I always said it would never happen in my lifetime.’

It happened. The man who killed a 12-year-old girl in 1964 and spent the rest of his life without consequence has now been named. His victim has been remembered. Her sister, at 78, finally has an answer.

References: Justice After 61 Years: Solving the Murder of 12-Year-Old Mary Theresa