Suspect named in 1962 rape and strangulation of 9-year-old girl at Pennsylvania church

BUCKS COUNTY, Pa. (TCN) -- More than 60 years after a 9-year-old girl was found raped and strangled in a church, her suspected killer has been formally identified.

On Oct. 29, the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office announced that a grand jury investigation identified Carol Ann Dougherty’s suspected killer as William Schrader, who died in 2002 at age 64. The grand jury reached its conclusion using a “combination of decades-old evidence and recent investigative developments,” the press release said.

The grand jury detailed its findings in a 53-page report based on eyewitness statements, Schrader’s confession and lies, his fleeing the state, forensic exclusion of other suspects, crime scene evidence, and testimony from a clinical psychologist, the announcement said. 

The findings concluded that Schrader committed rape and first-degree murder in connection with Dougherty’s death. 

During the grand jury’s investigation, forensic psychologist Veronique Valliere testified that “the perpetrator was a psychopath who had a deviant sexual arousal for prepubescent victims,” the release said.

Dougherty left her Bristol, Pennsylvania, home on Oct. 22, 1962, to ride her bike to the library. She stopped for candy and a soda and was last seen outside St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church, where her father would ultimately find her body after searching for her when she did not return home for dinner. An investigation determined she had been raped and fatally strangled with a ligature. 

Schrader lived close to the church at that time, and he was questioned by the police. He and 176 other men provided a pubic hair sample. He subsequently failed a polygraph test and his alibi was disproven. Schrader said he had been at work, but timecards showed he had not been there the day Dougherty was killed. 

He left town after being questioned and moved south, eventually settling in Louisiana. Over the next decades, he was charged with crimes in multiple states, including the death of a 12-year-old girl in 1985.

Law enforcement frequently reviewed the Dougherty case, the press release said, and hair samples from 141 men were tested. All were eliminated except for Schrader, whose sample was analyzed again in 1993.