Little Miss Nobody
**Identification Updates at the end of article**
On July 31, 1960 a teacher named Russell Allen was out collecting rocks near Congress, Arizona just off Old Alamo Road (1.5 miles from Highway 93) when he stumbled upon the partially buried body of a little girl in the creek bed of a sand wash. The pathologist estimated that she had been dead for 1–2 weeks and, due to severe decomposition, most of the details vary from source to source. Her initial age estimate was between 5–7 years old, but it was later found that she had a full set of milk teeth (baby teeth) which put her age from 3–6. She was between 3'6"- 4'5" and weighed between 50–60 pounds. Near where her body was found there were two other disturbances in the dirt indicating that whoever buried her body had likely tried to dig 2 other graves before burying her where she was found. A rusty knife was also found near the body but the girl had no evidence of stab wounds. Her race couldn’t be definitively determined, but she is believed to be white and is believed to have brown hair. She was so badly decomposed that the medical examiner wrote in his original report that he “couldn’t determine a cause of death”, but many believe the manner of death to be homicide. The only other thing that the medical examiner could surmise from her bones was that she had never had any bone breaks or fractures in her all too short life.
Clothing:
- She was wearing white shorts (some sources list that they could also be pink)
- A checkered blouse with a “distinct chain pattern”
- Black leather adult male sandals (flip-flops) cut to fit her small feet and secured with straps in the back
Notable Features:
- Her presumed to be brown hair had been dyed auburn/red
- Her fingernails and toenails had been painted a “bright and vibrant red”
The police assumed that she would be identified in a matter of days or weeks, and her parents would get the worst news that any parent can receive. It was highly publicized and spread like wildfire across Prescott, Arizona. The people of Prescott cared about her and “adopted” her after no family came forward to claim her, the city rallied around this poor little girl. Since no one came forward to claim her she was given the tragic nickname of “Little Miss Nobody”.
A local radio announcer, David Paladin, used his platform to share her story. He expressed how the community should not allow this poor girl to be buried in a pauper’s grave. People all over town raised money to give Little Miss Nobody a proper burial. The funeral was held on August 10, 1960 and 70 people were in attendance. She had a pale blue coffin decorated with pink and white carnations. The service was conducted by Dr. Charles Franklin Parker and he gave a beautiful eulogy:
“Here is a little wanderer who has been in our midst. We don’t know her name. We can only guess her age. It occurs to me we may not know, but God knows. There are no unknowns, no orphans in God’s world…She doesn’t need a name today. She has the name of an angel somewhere in eternity…We may never know the whys or wherefores, but somewhere, someone is going to be watching the paper to learn what happened to a little girl left in the desert. If there has been a misdeed, a disquieted conscience will go on and on”
The message “Blessed are the pure in heart” was engraved into her headstone, and the year that her body was found. This makes the grave even more tragic, no name and no birthday. Someone left a note on her grave soon after than read:
“Forgive us, child, for the weakness of men; and, in turn, when in your final home, pray for us”
But I love that the most recent picture of her grave is still decorated with flowers and toys, a sign that people still visit and care for this little girl.
Law enforcement worked thousands of hours, traveled to multiple states, and followed hundreds of tips. They sent the knife, her clothes, and molds of her footprints to FBI labs. Then they scoured through reports of missing children, hoping that she would match one of them. The police questioned Lester Davidson who was a part of a transient (or homeless) family that hitchhiked and pan handled as they were seen near the area were Little Miss Nobody was found in the same month that her body was found. The police questioned him and two of his children for a couple of hours and couldn’t get anymore information out of them that could connect them to Little Miss Nobody.
Another avenue of investigation was that Little Miss Nobody could be the remains of 4 year old Sharon Lee Gallegos. She had been abducted from an alley behind her home in the 500 block of Virginia Avenue in Alamogordo, New Mexico around 3:00 p.m. on July 21, 1960. Two children who were with Gallegos when she was kidnapped stated that a man and woman drove up in an “dirty old green car” (believed to be a dark green 1951 or 1952 Dodge Plymouth). The man and woman offered to buy Gallegos clothing and candy if she got into the car with them, and she refused. After this they dragged her into their vehicle and fled, turning west down Fifth Street before disappearing.
Sharon Lee Gallegos was a Hispanic 4 year old girl with light brown hair and brown eyes, and she had a birthmark on her right hip. She was wearing pink shorts and white shoes when she was taken. While this connection seemed promising, authorities excluded Gallegos as an identity for Little Miss Nobody due to the fact that Gallegos was younger than the suspected age of Little Miss Nobody.
In 1961 the police suspected that Little Miss Nobody could be the body of one of the Dudley children. Kenneth and Irene Dudley left Syracuse, New York with six of their ten children (two were adults and two had previously died) to find work in the carnival/circus. By the end of their travels only one of their children was still alive, the rest had died due to severe abuse and neglect. The children who died are: Claude Arthur Dudley (1955–1958) whose body was found in Florida, Norman James Dudley (1949–1959) whose body was found in Louisiana, Charles Augustus Dudley (1951–1959) whose body was also found in Louisiana, Carol Ann Dudley (1953–1961) whose body was found in Virginia, and Deborah Jane Dudley (1956–1960) whose body was located in Kentucky but had died in West Virginia.
When the Dudley’s were arrested in Fuqua, North Carolina and placed in the Brunswick County Jail, not all of the bodies had been found. And Deborah Dudley’s body was still missing when Little Miss Nobody was found, however, her body was eventually found and identified which ruled her out as a possible identity.
In many cases the police are blamed for not investigating thoroughly or for investigating poorly, but this does not apply to the investigators of this case. They did everything that they could to identify this girl but no one ever came forward to claim her or provide any evidence that might lead to an identification, so the case went cold. They didn’t have the proper technology at the time to truly investigate this case and get definitive proof of anything. And, over time, her case faded to the back of everyone’s memory. A sad and tragic tale of a forgotten little girl.
That was until 2018 when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) paid to have Little Miss Nobody’s body exhumed for modern DNA testing and to create a forensic reconstruction. This was when they created the first facial reconstruction (the one featured at the beginning of this post) of Little Miss Nobody.
Theories:
While no other identities have been proposed, many theories exist
The Pedophile Theory: Many believe that Little Miss Nobody was kidnapped by a pedophile or ring of pedophiles who were using her for a horrible purpose. Due to the level of decomposition there was no way to tell if she had been sexually abused before her death. This theory is mostly based upon the fact that her fingernails are painted and her hair is dyed, which many view as odd for a child her age. However, a lot of kids will want certain “adult” seeming things to be more like a parent or sibling, so that could be easily explained away. Proponents of this theory believe that her hair was dyed and her nails were painted to fit the fetish of the pedophile she would be used by. Some also believe that her hair was dyed and her nails were painted to make her look older, either to fit a fetish age or hide what they were doing by disguising her age.
I did some research to look for a child sex ring in Arizona and was bombarded with results for the last five years. A girl in foster care who was left in the care of a child predator and sex-trafficker, 27 child predators were arrested after a sting in 2020, and many others. As disgusting and heart-wrenching as that was, it was even more disheartening to learn that trafficking rings are rampant in Arizona (and most states near the border).
But there also wasn’t other evidence of a child sex ring in Arizona or Yavapai County at the time and there was only one other body of a young girl noted around that time. She had been found almost 2 years earlier, on October 31, 1958. She was found in Grand Canyon, Arizona, and is estimated to be between 11–14, and is also a Jane Doe known as “Little Miss X”. It is important to note that Little Miss X’s hair had also been dyed, but not the same colors as Little Miss Nobody. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are connected, a lot of people dye their hair but it is quite odd.
The Illegal Immigrant Theory: From its inception America has been a place of possibility and many people come here to get a better life. However, the Mexican government was getting upset that America was “taking their workers” because of the drain of workers leaving Mexico’s turmoil to find opportunity in the states. So the American government brokered a deal with the Mexican president called the “Bracero” program, which lasted from 1942–1964. Within the confines of this program only a certain number of people were allowed to come over the border after an application process on short-term work contracts, so what had once been an easy way to get a better life became illegal. Hundreds of thousands were illegally crossing the border meaning that Mexico wasn’t getting the results that they wanted. The Mexican government went back to the U.S. in 1954 to demand that they curtail illegal immigration, and this led to Operation Wetback. This was where the American government would round up illegal immigrants and return them to somewhere in Mexico (most of the time not really where they were from).
The theory is that Little Miss Nobody’s father or mother was either a repatriated Bracero (one whose term has ended), an illegal immigrant who wasn’t chosen for the program, or someone who had been in the U.S. illegally and was returned to Mexico only to try to cross the border again. The latter is the most likely to me because of the hair dye. Maybe her parent was trying to make her look more “American”, so she wouldn’t be forced back to Mexico. This would explain the hair dye quite reasonably. Also, a parent who was an illegal immigrant probably couldn’t afford to get children’s shoes, so they worked with what they had…They cut down adult flip-flops to fit Little Miss Nobody’s feet. The journey to America is hard for any adult, for a child of her age it is unimaginable. While trying to cross the border people have died from: hyperthermia, hypothermia, hit and run, run over by trains, drowned in rivers, got trapped between rocks, got bitten by a poisonous snake (note that there are 17 different kinds of rattlesnakes in Arizona, including the deadly Mohave), and a plethora of other things. To put it simply, she didn’t make it through the journey.
The U.S. Border Patrol said that between 1998–2018 7,442 people have died while trying to cross the border into the U.S., an average of about 372 deaths per year. While the International Organization for Migration (a U.N. organization) counted 1,905 deaths between 2014–2018 and a San Diego group “Border Angels” estimates 10,000 deaths since 1994. Her parent still wanted to bury her, so they tried to find the right place and tried three times before finding the right place. The family never came forward due to fear of deportation.
Sharon Lee Gallegos: Although the police have ruled her out no DNA has actually been used to disprove this theory. The only reason that she is excluded was the fact that Gallegos was younger than Little Miss Nobody’s suspected age. Now, not only has Little Miss Nobody’s age range has been updated to 3–6 (i.e. now in range to be around Sharon’s age), but in 1961 the police believed that she could be Deborah Dudley who was only 3. So I don’t know why this hasn’t been investigated into more than it was in 1960, but I still think that this theory still has weight. The only strange thing is why would the people kidnap Sharon just to (presumably) kill her. Even if Little Miss Nobody is Sharon Lee Gallegos, it still leads to so many more questions. They do look similar, but it is kind of hard to tell due to the poor quality of the only images that I could find of Sharon Lee Gallegos.
I have scoured through NAMUS and NCMEC looking for any missing kids that fit the description of Little Miss Nobody and the time period. I just can’t find anything that fits neatly. I’ve looked at around 100 profiles of missing children and missing persons posters, and still nothing. I am convinced that whoever Little Miss Nobody is, she wasn’t reported missing. There is a chance that someone out there knows someone who is a relative of Little Miss Nobody, but just hasn’t heard of or been exposed to this case. It’s hard, when you’re in the true crime community, to understand that some people just don’t pay attention to these cases. I talked to a family friend who lived in Arizona from 1958–1975, and she had never heard of this case before. So there is a chance that the person who has the answers to this case just doesn’t know about it so spreading the word is still extremely important. However, I think the best, and possibly only way, to identify this little girl is through DNA testing and/or genetic genealogy. Both of which, I hope, are planned for Little Miss Nobody since she has DNA on file. At this point many of the people who could’ve been involved with the death of this little girl have passed away, so DNA may provide us with the answers they can no longer give.
I don’t forget, and I can’t forget. I wasn’t even alive when she was found, and I’ve never been to Arizona. I still care, and I still think that her case could one day be solved.
Although it has been 60 years, 3 months, and 20 days, we are no closer to finding the identity of this poor little girl. If you have any information that could lead to the identity of Little Miss Nobody please contact the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office at (928)-771–3260 and ask for John Shannon (the Cold Case investigator) in regards to case number 1960. Or contact the Yavapai County Medical Examiner’s Office at (928)-771–3163 and ask for Ambree Borg (Medicolegal Death Investigator). If you wish to remain anonymous, you can contact the Yavapai Silent Witness Hotline at 1-(800)-932–3232. Remember that no piece of information is too small, and they are still accepting tips in regards to Little Miss Nobody’s case.
Updates:
*Update 1: As of January 20, 2022 she is undergoing testing by Othram Inc.
*Update 2: On March 15, 2022 Little Miss Nobody was identified as Sharon Lee Gallegos, although she was previously excluded DNA confirmed her identification.
Sharon Lee Gallegos was described by her nephew, Ray Chavez, as a “feisty” and “happy-go-lucky”. She loved to play with her cousins and run errands around the neighborhood. However, she was more reluctant to do these things in the lead up to her abduction. With hindsight, we realize that she was likely scared by her future abductors (and probable killers).
It has been released that the car not only contained a man and a woman, but two children as well.
Police are working to fill in the blanks of Sharon’s abduction and subsequent murder. If you have any information that could lead to Sharon’s abductor(s)/killer(s) please contact the proper authorities listed above.
Sources:
