Police Solve Case Of 9-Year-Old Girl Who Disappeared While Selling Candy 62 Years Ago

Police solved a case that started 62 years ago when a 9-year-old Camp Fire girl disappeared while selling chocolates, Fox News reported.

The Spokane, Washington, police department said it would hold a press conference Friday morning to reveal who they believe to be guilty of the 1959 murder of Candy Rogers, who 9 years old at the time, Fox 28 reported.

Police scoured the area surrounding Rogers’ home at the time of her disappearance, eventually finding her body nearby an abandoned rock quarry with officials determining she had been raped and strangled to death with a petticoat, Fox News reported. The case is one of the oldest in the state’s history.

DNA testing eliminated several suspects in the homicide, including serial killer Hugh Bion Morse, who is believed to have killed at least four women, Fox News reported. Morse, who was known to chew grape gum, was once linked to Rogers because the substance was smeared on her body.

Another suspect was nearby resident Alfred Graves, 50, who killed himself the day Rogers’ body was found and was never cleared through DNA, Fox News reported. Graves was accused of inappropriately touching women and newspaper clippings on rapes of women and children were found in his home, while bits of ropes and bobby pins were found in the trunk of his car.

James Howard Barnett was also a suspect in the case, and even Barnett’s wife said, after his death, that she suspected he killed Rogers, The Spokesman-Review reported. Barnett killed himself in 1960 after being arrested for alleged sex abuse of a child.

The news conference will be live-streamed on the Spokane Police Department’s Facebook page, according to Fox 28.