Pennsylvania 1962 Cold Case Solved — He Walked Free 40 Years Until a Family Secret Surfaced

Pennsylvania 1962 Cold Case Solved — He Walked Free 40 Years Until a Family Secret Surfaced

Investigators in Bucks County say they have finally cracked the 63-year-old murder case of a 9-year-old girl. CBS Philadelphia reporter Alicia Roberts tells how authorities were able to solve the case and what the family’s reaction was. She was 9 years old and she never passed by that church without stopping to pray.

On October 22, 1962, Carol Ann Doherty rode her bicycle to the library, as she did almost every afternoon. And on the way, she stopped once again at the Church of St. Mark. She never returned home. That same evening, her father found her. For the next 63 years, the case remained unsolved: there were false confessions, a suspect who passed two polygraph tests, and a grand jury that came close to a solution in 1994 but was never able to close it.

It took a botched DNA test and a report that gathered dust for decades before investigators finally got an answer. Here’s how they came to this. Pubic hair found at the crime scene helped narrow down the suspects. By itself, it could not unequivocally name the killer. And bridging this gap without DNA evidence distinguishes this investigation from most “cold” cases that are usually solved thanks to forensics.

Bristol Borough, Pennsylvania, in the early 1960s was a town where families knew each other by sight and children moved around with a freedom that later generations would never know. Carol Ann was a fifth-grade student at St. Mark’s Parish School. She was known as a devoted reader, a child who would no sooner finish one library book than she would already be thinking about the next one.

Her parents, Frank and Dorothy Doherty, described a home where warmth and strict routine reigned. She had a younger sister, Kay, who was not yet three years old, and who was the last member of the family to live to see the case solved. Carol Ann’s two friends waited for her outside the church that day while she went inside to pray one last time.

Investigators later determined that the attack occurred at approximately 3:35 PM. She still hadn’t returned home by 4:30 PM. Dinner in the Doherty family always went on schedule, without exception, and her absence forced her parents to go out into the neighborhood to walk her route. Dorothy found the bike first, parked outside the church, exactly where Carol Ann had left it to go in to pray.

She searched the building and found nothing. She returned a second time. Nothing again. Frank came in alone. Shortly before 6:00 PM, he found his daughter’s body on the stairs leading to the choir. She did not survive. On the same day, investigators seized physical evidence, including strands of hair, at the crime scene.

In 1962, collecting evidence at a crime scene was still a fairly imperfect method. The samples were packaged, labeled, and stored, with no real way to extract identifying information from something as small as a single hair. What investigators gathered that day outlived the technology needed to work with it by more than three decades.

Bristol Police, led by Chief Vincent Faragalli, acted promptly. Within a few days of the murder, three names emerged. The first was Frank Zucchero, a 60-year-old jack of all trades known in the city for his love of drinking. That day he was seen near the church: he was staggering in that direction shortly before the alleged time of the attack.

During an interrogation by eight officers that lasted several hours, Zucchero confessed to the crime. This confession turned out to be untenable. Investigators later determined that the statement had been made under duress, and Zucchero was released without charge. The second was Wayne Roach. According to sources, he was 18 or 19 years old, a teenager from nearby Morrisville.

Roach physically resembled another man who would later become a key figure in the case, a detail that at the time made him a likely suspect based on appearance alone. His name was written in Carol Ann’s notebook, and neighbors reported seeing scratches on his face in the days after the murder. The police searched for him and eventually found him.

Roach provided a confirmed alibi. He was working in Virginia on the day of the murder. He was acquitted. The third was Father Joseph Sabadish, a priest assigned to St. Mark’s Church. When investigators asked him to explain where he had been that day, he lied. In fact, he was in the nearby town of Hulmeville, where he was buying underwear for a married woman he was courting.

It was an affair he did not want to disclose to the police, and it was this lie that caught the attention of investigators. Chief Faragalli wanted to continue the investigation into the priest. Monsignor Paul Baird, his supervisor, objected, and church authorities blocked further access. Not stopping there, Faragalli and another officer intercepted Sabadish during one of his regular visits to the parish and took him for a polygraph test anyway.

He passed the test and was released. Three men, three different reasons for suspicion. Three separate paths, one after the other, led investigators nowhere.

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But in January 1963, a neighbor gave the police a fourth name. He reported the strange behavior of a man who lived near the church, someone whom investigators had not yet spoken to. This man was 24-year-old William Schrader.

When investigators began to check Schrader’s past, it turned out that it was not spotless. He grew up in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, and spent much of his youth in correctional facilities—a pattern of violent behavior that emerged early and never fully disappeared. At the age of 17, he joined the army, but was dishonorably discharged a year later.

Shortly thereafter, he shot another man, was convicted of attempted murder, and served time at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. After his release, he settled in Bristol, where he had relatives, living less than two blocks from St. Mark’s Church—close enough to walk past without arousing suspicion. When the police took him in, Schrader stated that he was at work at the time of the murder.

Investigators checked this. His version did not stand up to scrutiny. The employer’s records confirmed that he was elsewhere. Faced with these discrepancies, Schrader was unable to provide a clear explanation. He voluntarily provided a sample of his hair for analysis. In 1963, investigators were unable to compare it to what they found at the crime scene a few months earlier.

The necessary forensic technologies simply did not exist then. Investigators conducted a polygraph test. He passed it. With no other evidence to hold him, the police released him. A sample of his hair was sent for storage in the evidence archive. It lay there for the next 30 years, waiting for analysis methods that had not yet been invented.

Three decades have passed, but Carol Ann’s case has not been forgotten. Chief Vincent Faragalli, who led the initial investigation, never left her side. He kept her picture on his desk for years. It was a silent, constant reminder of the one case he had failed to close, and a reminder to every detective who came into his office that the case was still open.

In 1992, the local newspaper, the Bucks County Courier Times, published a series of investigative journalism pieces on the 30th anniversary of the murder. A new wave of public attention brought the case back into active consideration, and in 1993 technology finally caught up with the evidence collected as far back as 1962.

During the investigation, police collected hair samples from 176 men who were somehow connected to the case. 141 of these samples were tested. One by one, all the men were eliminated from the list of suspects, except for William Schrader. His sample was the only one that could not be ruled out as a match to the hair found at the crime scene.

The method was microscopic hair comparison. Experts studied color, texture, and structural details under magnification. This was reliable enough to rule out an individual with real certainty. But it could not provide certainty of a genetic match. At best, it could be said that the sample was consistent with the evidence, not that it belonged to one person beyond any other possibility.

This limitation defined the rest of this case. The other pieces started falling into place around the same time. Schrader’s friend contacted police, claiming to have seen him near St. Mark’s Church on the day of the murder. Investigators also noted that Lucky Strike cigarettes, which Schrader was known to smoke, were found at the scene as early as 1962.

By 1994, four separate threads pointed to the same person. A false alibi from 1963, a friend’s testimony, a brand of cigarettes at the crime scene, and hair evidence that no one else could refute. Investigators believed they were finally close to a solution. That year, prosecutors convened a grand jury.

William Schrader, who was serving time in Louisiana on another conviction at the time, was extradited back to Pennsylvania to testify. During questioning, he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and made no response. Father Joseph Sabadish also testified, along with Carol Ann’s father, Frank Doherty, who provided his own account of that day 32 years ago.

Investigators checked both suspects. Both passed a polygraph test. Neither man was charged. Both were released. Narrowing the circle from 176 men to one was a significant result, but this was still not enough for a criminal charge. They needed evidence specific enough to place Schrader at the scene of the crime, not just evidence that failed to rule him out.

For investigators who believed they were finally getting closer to an answer, it was a collapse. The grand jury dissolved without reaching a decision. This raises a real methodological question: Is ruling out every other possible suspect evidence, or does it just narrow the field? Investigators ruled out 140 other men.

The hair comparison alone did not prove that Schrader’s hands touched Carol Ann herself. And it is this distinction that is the reason why, even with everything they had, the grand jury could not move forward. The result revealed a limitation that had haunted the case for decades. Investigators had suspicions, conflicting testimony, and physical evidence, but still nothing that they believed could establish beyond a doubt who killed Carol Ann.

Dorothy Doherty died in 1975, 13 years after her daughter’s murder, never knowing who was responsible. Frank Doherty lived a decade longer, telling reporters as early as 1992 that he still hoped to see the case solved in his lifetime. He died in 2001. He didn’t get that answer either. Investigators in Pennsylvania didn’t fully understand where Schrader had been or what he had done in the years since they first released him.

After leaving Pennsylvania, William Schrader settled in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, where he married a woman he met through prison connections. She had two daughters, one of whom was a minor, both with special needs. Investigators later determined that over the following years, Schrader subjected many of the children in the home to serious, sustained abuse, including a child he conceived himself.

The family also took in a 12-year-old neighbor, Katherine Smith, as a foster child. She also became one of his victims. No one in Pennsylvania knew about all this. To Bristol, Schrader was just a man who had once been questioned and released. On Halloween night in 1970, a family argument ended with Schrader’s adult stepson kicking him out of the house.

Before leaving, he threatened to return and burn down the house. That night a fire broke out. All adults managed to escape. The 2-year-old child he and his wife adopted also survived, but only because Katherine Smith rushed to save her. Katherine did not survive. It was 15 years before family members finally testified, and Schrader was convicted of arson and involuntary manslaughter of Katherine.

He was sentenced to 21 years in prison and was still serving that sentence when investigators from Pennsylvania came for him in 1994. He died in prison in 2002, never having been charged with Carol Ann’s murder.

This matter surfaced publicly more than once in the following years. In 2016, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office questioned Father Sabadish’s accuser as part of a much larger investigation into decades of clergy abuse in the state. The same investigation that would later lead to the creation of a comprehensive grand jury report on the activities of the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania.

In 2022, the resolution of another Pennsylvania child murder that occurred a decade earlier brought new attention to similar unsolved crimes and reminded investigators of the possibilities offered by advances in forensic genealogy. And in 2024, a 14-episode podcast called “Coldest Murder,” hosted by Philadelphia radio host Mike Missanelli, gave listeners a detailed, episode-by-episode look at the case. Missanelli had a personal connection with her that few in the audience knew about. Chief Faragalli was his uncle.

There was one story that remained unknown for 30 years in a family that already knew more than the investigators. Robert LeBlanc, stepson of William Schrader, told Louisiana police in 1994 that Schrader had personally confessed to him of killing a girl in a church in Pennsylvania. Robert reported this again in 2007. Both times the information remained in Louisiana. It never made it to Bucks County.

It wasn’t until 2024 that investigators in Pennsylvania learned what Robert had been trying to tell the police for three decades. That same November, they traveled to Louisiana and questioned him in person. His testimony matched other evidence in the case, and investigators found it credible. That same year in October, physical evidence from 1962, including a ten-year-old hair sample, was sent to a forensics lab in Texas for re-DNA analysis, made possible by grant funding.

The material was stored in the attic of a municipal building for decades, exposed to extreme temperature changes. An attempt to obtain a DNA profile suitable for analysis was unsuccessful. The evidence was simply too destroyed. The two threads eventually intersected in one year: a confession that took 30 years to reach the right investigators, and a last honest attempt to obtain the form of proof that this case never had.

One succeeded, the other didn’t. Together they were going to change everything. So without DNA, prosecutors now had to decide if everything else was enough: the hair, the false alibi, the cigarettes, the friend’s story, and now—the stepson’s confession from thirty years ago. On October 29, 2025, Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn announced the results of the investigative grand jury convened specifically to investigate this case.

The grand jury heard testimony from Dr. Veronique Valliere, a forensic and clinical psychologist who specializes in the assessment of sex offenders. Her assessment focused on behavioral consistency, how patterns of violence, deception, and control tend to recur throughout a person’s life, rather than arising once and disappearing.

Investigators have already documented just such a pattern in Schrader’s own biography. The lie he told in 1963, the abuse uncovered in Louisiana, the fire that killed a 12-year-old girl in 1970. The profile of the person responsible for Carol Ann’s death, compiled by Dr. Valliere, matched this data point by point. The grand jury’s findings were detailed in a 53-page report approved 2 days earlier by Presiding Judge Raymond McHugh.

Based on hair evidence, eyewitness testimony, and the testimony of Robert LeBlanc, the grand jury concluded that William Schrader was responsible for the sexual assault and murder of Carol Ann Doherty. Schrader, who died in 2002, will never stand trial. But after 63 years, Bucks County officially closed the case. Kay Doherty was the only member of her immediate family left to hear the announcement.

She grew up in a home where her sister’s murder was never forgotten. The photograph on the police chief’s desk, a newspaper series every decade, a question her father carried with him until the day he died. She stood before reporters and spoke about what 63 years of uncertainty meant for her family.

How an unanswered question shaped almost every day of their lives and how both of her parents died without ever knowing what she knows now. She said this discovery has finally healed a wound that never fully healed, and while nothing will bring her sister back, the family can now give her peace. Her story has been told, and her memory has been honored.

After so many decades of obscurity, this discovery finally brings closure and truth to a wound that never healed. There is one more thread that is worth completing here. Mike Missanelli, the radio host whose podcast helped bring new attention to the case in 2024, is Vincent Faragalli’s nephew. Faragalli died in 2001 without receiving an answer.

More than 20 years later, his own nephew played a role in finally getting it. Every “cold case” that is solved is a reminder that investigations do not always end when public attention fades. Sometimes the answer survives the mystery itself. If you appreciate documentaries based on evidence rather than assumptions, subscribe to the channel.

And we would like to know what piece of evidence do you think was the most important in solving this case? Share your thoughts in the comments below. One thing is worth making clear before we finish. DNA never confirmed this case. It was impossible to test him. The case was closed thanks to a hair sample that did not rule out the involvement of one man, combined with the testimony of the stepson, who had been with investigators for decades.

The grand jury’s verdict is a formal legal decision. This is not the same as a criminal conviction, and William Schrader was never tried in court. This distinction is important and should be recognized, not ignored. This is the reason why this case even now bears a note that only irrefutable forensic evidence could erase.

Here’s what is known for sure. For 63 years, one question has outlived almost everyone who first asked it. The investigators, the parents, the police chief who kept her photo on his desk. In the end, the very investigation conducted by the people who kept it from fading finally provided the answer.