A missing 4-year-old, “Little Miss Nobody” identified after 62 years

A 62-year-old missing person case was solved this week by the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office in Prescott, Arizona.

In a press release, the Sheriff’s Office announced they had partnered with numerous organizations including the National Center for Exploited and Missing Children (NCMEC); the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUS); Othram, the laboratory that conducted the DNA analysis; and a long list of others over the years, have finally identified the little girl whose remains were found in the desert in Yavapai County in 1960.

According to the press release:

“Sharon Lee Gallegos was 4 years old when she was abducted from her grandmother’s front yard in Alamogordo, NM on July 21st, 1960. The Alamogordo Police Department and the FBI searched for the little girl but were unable to find her or the suspects who were said to be in a 1951 or 1952 dark green Plymouth. Though Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office and the Alamogordo Police Department in 1960 initially suspected the remains found in the desert to possibly be that of Sharon Gallegos, technology and science was not sophisticated enough at the time to make the identification. Initial thoughts on the age of the remains, the clothing she was found in, and a mismatched footprint, at the time ruled out the abducted child from New Mexico as Little Miss Nobody.”

The case went cold until 2015 when cold case investigators from the state of Colorado got involved with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office. The body of the unidentified child was exhumed and DNA was extracted in an attempt to identify them, but the attempt was unsuccessful.

In 2021 the YCSO launched an effort to raise funds to pay for a lab that specializes in identifying remains for law enforcement through advanced genome sequencing technology. The effort was able to successfully identify Gallegos as the person buried with no name since 1960.

“I salute the detectives and the volunteers with the cold case unit who took this case to heart in 2015 and did not let go until the unfortunate moniker of Little Miss Nobody could be removed from the headstone that sits in a cemetery here in Prescott” said Sheriff David Rhodes of Yavapai County.

Here’s a link to the original post:

https://www.facebook.com/YavapaiCountySheriff

Here is a timeline of events that led to her discovery: