The murder of Carol Ann Dougherty at a Pennsylvania church remained unsolved for decades. Now authorities have named a suspect in her murder.
Bucks County cold case of girl’s 1962 church murder solved
Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Shawn announced details of the grand jury report that solved the 1962 murder of 9-year-old Carol Ann Dougherty.
On an October day in 1962, Carol Ann Dougherty was on her way to meet a friend at the library in her small hometown in Pennsylvania. The 9-year-old never made it there.
She parked her bike outside and stopped to say a short prayer at St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church. When she did not return home for dinner, her parents began looking for her.
Noticing her bicycle, her father entered the church and discovered her partially clothed and battered body in the choir loft.
Her murder remained unsolved for 63 years.
On October 29, the Bucks County, Pennsylvania, district attorney announced that the identity of Carol Ann Dougherty’s killer has finally been determined, according to the Bucks County Courier-Times, part of the USA TODAY Network.
Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Shawn released a grand jury report alleging that William Schroeder raped and strangled Carol on October 22, 1962, in the choir room of St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church. She is said to have been a happy and pious child who loved reading.
Schrader died of a heart attack in July 2002 at the age of 64.
“This case has remained unsolved for decades, but it’s not for a lack of hard work, dedication and dedication to seeking the truth,” Sean said. “We believe this may be the only rape and murder of a young girl to occur in a church in the United States.”
Schrader was one of the few suspects in the case, but he passed a polygraph test and then abruptly left the country for Florida. In 1970, he was sentenced to 21 years in prison for setting fire to and killing a 12-year-old girl in Louisiana.
Carol Ann Dougherty’s case remained unsolved and disappeared from the public consciousness until the 1992 Bucks County Courier Times series “The Choir Loft Murders” prompted a reexamination of the evidence and made Schrader the focus of a new investigation.
When he was extradited to Pennsylvania for questioning and forced to testify before a grand jury, Schrader invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked about the murder of Carol Ann Dougherty. He was not charged and sent back to Louisiana.
A man who said he met Schroeder in prison in the 1960s told parole officials that Schroeder told him shortly before his death that he had “committed the perfect murder” and that he had “raped a girl on the altar” before killing her to keep her quiet. Robert LeBlanc’s parole officer told Bucks County authorities, and LeBlanc, who has since died, admitted the information to investigators in 2024.
The DNA evidence was retested in 2024 and submitted to a Texas lab that specializes in cold cases, according to the Bucks County Attorney’s Office.
“This incident has plagued the Bristol Borough community for years,” said Bristol Borough Police Chief Joe Moores. “(Investigators’) pursuit of the truth and teamwork finally brought answers to Carol’s family and our community… Their pursuit of the truth has finally come to fruition.”
“Our family is living without answers, and the uncertainty surrounding Carol’s death has become part of who we are,” her sister Kay Doherty Taranka said, according to 6ABC News.
“After decades of going unnoticed, this discovery finally brings closure and truth to a wound that never healed.”
