Carol Dougherty, 9, was slain in Bristol in 1962. Why her killer may finally be ID'd.
The murder of Carol Ann Dougherty, among Bucks County’s oldest and most disturbing unsolved homicides, could go from cold case to case solved if science gives investigators a break.
The Pennsylvania State Police, assisted by the Bucks County District Attorney's office, will submit DNA believed to be from the killer to a Texas-based lab that specializes in solving cold case murders. Testing and research could take up to a year, and identifying the perp is not guaranteed, said D.A. Jennifer Schorn. But state investigators believe developments in forensic DNA testing, combined with genealogical sleuthing, is the best chance to reveal who raped and strangled the 9-year-old at St. Mark Church in Bristol on Oct. 22, 1962.
“We’re optimistic,” Schorn said this week. “And I really have to give credit to PSP (Pennsylvania State Police) for reviewing this case and keeping it alive.”
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A lack of funding had prevented DNA testing, estimated at $50,000. But special grants and private credits from Othram labs in Woodlands, Texas, covered the cost, Schorn said.
“Historically, the costs to do something like this have been extraordinary,” Schorn said.
She cautioned, however, that the evidence consisting of pubic hairs believed to be from Carol's killer is badly deteriorated. In addition to unsuccessful tests done by the FBI in the 1960s, the hairs were retested in the 1990s when the Bristol Borough police renewed their investigation into the murder. The reinvestigation was prompted after this news organization published a six-part narrative account of the murder, based on a review of the police files and interviews with the original investigators. By then the forensic evidence had degraded, having been subjected to years of extreme heat and cold in the attic of the borough municipal building, where it had been stored.
But the combo of DNA testing and searching a suspect's family tree for those with closely matched genetic markers could bring the Dougherty case to a close.
“You’ll have both those tests done, DNA and genetics," Schorn said, "and pray God we’re successful, because the sample is pretty degraded, which was the sticking point with the prior lab. It was so degraded they were not able to get a sufficient sample. Technology has changed greatly since then.”
Genetic DNA forensics has revolutionized crime-solving across the country, and has been especially helpful solving cold case homicides. Among those cases is the eerily similar murder of Marise Chiverella, 9, who was raped and strangled in Hazleton in March 1964.
In 2022 -- 58 years after Marise's murder -- state police announced they had identified her killer: James Forte, a bartender who lived a few blocks from her family's home. It is Pennsylvania's oldest resolved cold case.
In Carol’s case, the focus will be on two prime suspects: the Rev. Joseph Sabadish, a parish priest, and William Schrader, who lived on Lincoln Avenue, a quick walk around the corner from the Radcliffe Street church.
Sabadish was suspected when could not account for his whereabouts at the time of Carol's murder. Decades later, he was labeled a "predator priest" by the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, which had conducted a grand jury investigation into sexual abuse of children by clergy in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
Schrader, who became a suspect during the 1990s reinvestigation, also could not account for where he was at the time of the murder. He had done prison time in Louisiana in the 1970s for killing a teenager in an arson, and had also been accused of molesting little girls. When he was extradited and placed before a Bucks County grand jury during the reinvestigation of Carol's murder, he invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to self-incriminate.
Both suspects are dead.
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Dougherty, a fifth-grader at St. Mark, was on her way to return a library book when she stopped at the church, likely for a quick prayer, as parish children were encouraged to do in 1962.
When she didn’t return to her Landreth Manor home by dinner time, her parents, Frank and Dorothy, searched for her. Seeing her bicycle parked outside the church, her father went in and found her dead. In a 1992 interview, Frank Dougherty said he confronted Sabadish about his daughter's death as the priest heard Saturday confessions at St. Mark. Neither he nor his wife ever fully recovered from the trauma of Carol's death, he said.
Kay Talanca, Carol's younger sister, has waited years for a resolution, and is hopeful the police will identify the killer.
“Maybe today’s science can answer the question,” she said. “I know my parents are at peace because they’ve since closed their eyes and aren’t here anymore. But I would like to know, and my family would like to know.”
JD Mullane can be reached at 215-949-5745 or at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Forensic DNA test may solve cold case of Carol Dougherty, Bucks County