Little Miss Nobody

Summary

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Podcast Summary: America's Crime Lab – "Little Miss Nobody"

Podcast: America's Crime Lab
Episode Title: Little Miss Nobody
Host: Aylin Lantz (with contributors from iHeartPodcasts, Kaleidoscope, and Othram)
Release Date: October 15, 2025

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Overview

This episode delves into the heartbreaking and decades-old mystery of "Little Miss Nobody," a young girl found dead and unidentified in the Arizona desert in 1960. The story traces the tireless pursuit to establish her true identity, the technological mishaps and breakthroughs along the way, and the emotional journey of family members and investigators. Ultimately, the episode highlights how advances in forensic DNA and the dedication of both law enforcement and the community finally returned this lost child's name—Sharon Gallegos—to her family.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Discovery (03:00–11:00)

• In July 1960, a Las Vegas schoolteacher and his family, while collecting rocks in the desert near Congress, Arizona, discover the half-buried remains of a little girl.
• Details:
  • The girl is around 4–9 years old, wearing adult flip-flops cut to size, and has red-painted nails.
  • She had been burned and was badly decomposed, making cause of death difficult to determine.
• The local community rallies, nicknaming her “Little Miss Nobody” and raising money for a dignified funeral. Over 70 people attend, and her grave marker reads: “God’s little child. Date of birth, unknown. Date of death, unknown.”

Memorable Quote:

"The small little coffin is engraved with a note that says, God's little child. Date of birth, unknown. Date of death, unknown."
— Narrator (10:51)

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2. Initial Investigations and Dead Ends (11:00–21:00)

• Early investigators suspect a link to Sharon Gallegos, a 4-year-old kidnapped in Alamogordo, New Mexico, but rule her out based on faulty footprint comparisons and mismatched clothing descriptions.
• With few leads and lost evidence (clothing and records were sent to the FBI and ultimately vanished), the case grows cold.
• By 2011, with institutional knowledge fading, investigator John Shannon rebuilds the case from scratch, digging through 65+ newspaper articles and piecing together a new file from secondary sources.

Memorable Quote:

"We had nothing to go on. Zero. Nobody here knew anything about her because there was no case files. How do we find out anything about her?"
— John Shannon (12:48)

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3. Exhumation and the Limits of Forensic Technology (20:10–25:06)

• In the 2010s, with permission from a judge, detectives exhume the body and successfully extract DNA, entering the profile into NamUs and CODIS, yet no matches arise.
• DNA comparisons with Sharon Gallegos’ siblings are inconclusive due to dated technology and misinterpretation of nuanced relationships (CODIS' inability to distinguish half siblings).

Memorable Quote:

"We have DNA, but it doesn't tell us anything."
— John Shannon (20:44)

"All those organizations had a shot at trying to identify her. And these other companies all said, we can't do anything... But it seemed like every time we did something, we got a little closer, you know, a little closer to trying to find out who she was."
— John Shannon (24:09)

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4. The Othram Breakthrough (29:04–37:13)

• In 2021, Michael Vogan from Othram (a forensic DNA lab) sees the case on the news and contacts John Shannon, insisting on using Othram’s advanced sequencing.
• Obstacles: Skepticism due to past failures and lack of funds (Yavapai County had exhausted resources). Othram organizes a successful crowdfunding campaign with local news support.
• Othram uses state-of-the-art DNA extraction from her teeth, overcoming environmental degradation.

Memorable Quote:

"The DNA worked really well in our hands, which was amazing. And as soon as we sequenced, we were able to get a lot of markers."
— Kristin Mittleman (33:19)

• The new profile, uploaded to genealogy databases, produces matches pointing directly back to Sharon Gallegos’ family. Othram confirms the identification with a one-to-one DNA match.

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5. Family and Community Resolution (34:41–45:59)

• Reynaldo Chavez, Sharon’s nephew, shares emotional recollections and the weight of the case on the family.
• The family learns of Sharon’s identification during a Zoom call with investigators; mixed feelings of shock, relief, and sorrow.
• The remains are returned to New Mexico and buried beside her mother and grandmother, with family performing the burial.

Memorable Moments:

"We always hoped. We never gave up hope... Every time the police would contact us... maybe they found her. She's still alive. We'll get to meet her."
— Reynaldo Chavez (43:49)

"The people really took care of my aunt for us. They took care of her wanting to find out who she was. And if it wasn't for their dedication and commitment, we probably would have never found out."
— Reynaldo Chavez (38:23)

"We were invited to go to the funeral, and they treat us like family. That's just a very powerful experience. To be part of that."
— John Shannon (45:31)

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6. Lessons on Forensic Technology and Unsolved Cases (39:33–46:24)

• The episode raises sobering questions about the reliability and application of forensic DNA. Early errors in imputation and misunderstanding relationships caused years of delay.
• Many other unidentified children exist; advanced DNA and genealogy tools like Othram’s could be life-changing for numerous families.

Memorable Quote:

"It was unbelievable to see that you can use advanced DNA technology incorrectly and get the wrong answer... we're talking about confirming someone's identity as a perpetrator or victim of a crime, taking away someone's name and voice forever."
— Kristin Mittleman (38:56)

"Everyone deserves to be buried with their family, to be able to be visited, to have people that know where they are, know their story. Everyone deserves their voice."
— Kristin Mittleman (46:10)

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• On the original community effort:

  "The city residents of Prescott donated the money to buy a casket and put her in the ground in Prescott Cemetery."
  — John Shannon (10:36)

• On the frustration of cold cases:

  "It's just honestly so tragic... someone that young either doesn't have people looking for her or somehow they don't know where to look for her."
  — Aylin Lantz (09:27)

• On poor DNA science:

  "It's like if you were to read a book and you could only see half the pages, maybe you would infer the wrong ending to a story."
  — Kristin Mittleman (30:59)

• On family grief and hope:

  "We couldn't be there for her. And to find out that, you know, she wasn't lost or forgotten, and there was a whole community, not just one, there was a whole community that was taking care of her. It just, you know, our family couldn't believe it."
  — Reynaldo Chavez (44:27)

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Important Timestamps

• Discovery in the desert: 03:00–05:12
• Early investigation and funeral: 05:13–11:00
• Detective John Shannon reconstructs the case file: 12:48–19:05
• Exhumation and initial DNA attempts: 20:10–25:06
• Othram’s involvement and successful DNA analysis: 29:04–37:13
• Family’s reaction and Sharon’s reburial: 38:12–45:59

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Conclusion

This episode tells a painstaking, emotional, and ultimately hopeful story—demonstrating the power of perseverance and technological advancement to solve even the coldest of cold cases. Through the lens of “Little Miss Nobody,” listeners witness the obstacles of missing evidence, misguided science, and long-held grief, as well as the dedication of law enforcement, scientists, and communities. Thanks to Othram’s DNA technology and support from strangers, Sharon Gallegos finally goes home, bringing peace to her family and justice to her memory.

Final reflection from Kristin Mittleman:

"Everyone deserves their voice." (46:10)

Transcript

[Narrator]

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[Reynaldo Chavez]

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[John Shannon]

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[Aylin Lantz]

In 1960, the body of a little girl was found in the Arizona desert. Like a lot of cold cases, there wasn't much to go on. No eyewitnesses, no overwhelming evidence left at the scene, no clues as to who she was or who killed her. But this case got even more complicated because when DNA came on the scene, it pointed detectives in the wrong direction. Unwinding, the truth came down to whom to trust. This is America's Crime Lab. I'm Aylin Lantz. Lesser producer Catherine Fenollosa is here. And this case was almost ruined, essentially by bad DNA technology.

[Narrator]

Yeah, it's a story of what can go wrong when technology is in the wrong hands.

[Aylin Lantz]

What's the story?

[Narrator]

So, Ailin, this is one of the oldest cases that the national center for Missing and Exploited Children has ever been involved with. And it's also one that few other labs would touch. It starts on a Sunday in July in 1960, and a Las Vegas schoolteacher is looking for rocks with his family. They like to decorate their garden with rocks. And they pull off a small highway outside of Congress, Arizona. And this is a road that runs between Phoenix and Las Vegas. But where the family stops, it's miles from anywhere. It's just kind of desert sand as far as you can see.

[Kristin Mittleman]

Ooh.

[Narrator]

So very isolated, extremely isolated. And Congress, Arizona, is a former mining town. It's tiny, and even today there are under 2,000 residents. So you can kind of picture very small. And as the family is looking for rocks, they've sort of wandered from the highway and they're walking through the desert sand, and they stumble upon the half buried body of a little girl.

[Aylin Lantz]

Oh, no.

[Narrator]

She's wearing a shirt and a pair of shorts. Her finger and toenails are painted bright red. She's got a pair of adult sized flip flops on that have been cut down to fit her small feet.

[Aylin Lantz]

Oh, that image.

[Narrator]

She has a full set of baby teeth which are in pristine condition. And her brown hair has a little bit of like an auburn tint, which leads some people to speculate like maybe it had been dyed. The police are called and they go out to the scene and they find a set of footprints which they document. They also find a blood stained pocket knife nearby. And it looks like there are also two shallow holes that have been dug. Maybe failed attempts to dig holes to bury her before.

[Aylin Lantz]

Hmm.

[Narrator]

Whoever's done this half buries her in a third hole. Hmm. The family calls the police. And I wanted to find out what happened next, so I called John Shannon. He's an Investigator with the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office.

[John Shannon]

Our deputies responded and the normal processes that they would do at the time, trying to identify her, doing an anthropology, trying to find out what was there, wrote down her clothes, wrote down there was a knife there. And what evidence was collected at the time was stored at the county courthouse in Prescott.

[Narrator]

And an autopsy is ordered, and pathologists examine her body. And they determined that she probably died a week or two before she was discovered and she had been burned. But because her body's been left out in this intense heat, it's also really badly decomposed. So they're unable to determine exactly how she died. But in examining her, they don't see any signs that she had been previously injured. There are no old broken bones that have healed. Like, no other signs of, like, old traumas.

[Aylin Lantz]

Mm. At first, it was striking me that we have a lot of information, like the color of her hair, all of her teeth. But then when I heard that she'd been burned, was out in the heat, was decomposing suddenly, I'm thinking, this is gonna be hard to even identify her.

[Narrator]

So initially, they think she's between 6 and 8 years old. But then as time goes on, other reports guess she's anywhere between four and nine. She weighed about 55 pounds, and she was three and a half feet tall.

[Aylin Lantz]

Why does a kid that age have to meet that fate? That's.

[Narrator]

I know. It's horrible.

[Aylin Lantz]

I hate the beginning of each one of these stories.

[Narrator]

So they mark her death as suspicious, even though they don't know exactly how she died. Initially, John Shannon says investigators think they might have a lead.

[John Shannon]

They had thought that she was Malamogordo because a little girl was missing in Alamogordo.

[Narrator]

So at first, investigators think she might actually be a little girl who went missing from Alamogordo, New Mexico, which is over 500 miles away from where this body is found.

[Advertisement Voice]

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[Narrator]

But then the description of her clothing, her age, and her footprints don't match up with the little girl who was missing from New Mexico. Law enforcement dismisses any connection. The local newspapers run stories about this discovery of the little girl's body on the front page. But with really no leads and not much evidence, the case goes cold.

[Aylin Lantz]

That is just honestly so tragic to me that someone that young either doesn't have people looking for her or somehow they don't know where to look for her. I mean, any case, it's tragic. But this little child, who presumably, you know, relies on people to not have anyone finding her, it's Just. It just gets me that much more. I don't know.

[Narrator]

You're not alone. So the residents of neighboring Prescott, Arizona, become captivated by her story and the community nicknames her Little Miss Nobody. I know. It kind of broke my heart when I heard that name.

[Kristin Mittleman]

Yeah.

[Narrator]

A local radio announcer leads a campaign to raise money for a funeral, because the other option was her body was going to be buried in what they called Popper's field. And he feels we need to give this little girl a proper burial, even though we don't know who she is.

[John Shannon]

The city residents of Prescott donated the money to buy a casket and put her in the ground in Prescott Cemetery.

[Narrator]

The small little coffin is engraved with a note that says, God's little child. Date of birth, unknown. Date of death, unknown.

[Aylin Lantz]

I mean, in a way, there is something beautiful about being able to set someone to rest. But I'm also like, wait, what? You're just putting all this evidence in the ground when you haven't solved the case? I'm sure I'll find out. Katherine won't.

[Narrator]

I also remember it's 1960, right? So they're sort of going about this by the book for the Times. And I'll get into what they do with some of the evidence in just a minute. But they hold a funeral, and more than 70 locals gather at the Congregational Church for her funeral. The pastor, Dr. Charles Parker, gives a really emotional speech. He says someone somewhere is wondering what happened to a little girl left in the desert. And they bury her with a headstone that reads, little Miss Nobody, blessed are the pure in heart. So for over 60 years, that's how she's known Little Miss Nobody. But that starts to change in 2011. So a woman working on a completely different cold case in Colorado turns up in Prescott, Arizona, and she's asking about Little Miss Nobody. John Shannon says no one really knew what she was talking about because, you know, it had been five decades since the little girl was found dead, and the detectives who originally worked on the case had retired people had passed away. Just institutional memory had faded. But investigator John Shannon says detectives started to look around to find out, like, what is this case? Who is this Little Miss Nobody?

[John Shannon]

We had nothing to go on. Zero. Nobody here knew anything about her because there was no case files. How do we find out anything about her? And so where do we start?

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[Aylin Lantz]

I get that they found this girl's body in 1960. So it's been decades. But how are there literally no case files for this crime?

[John Shannon]

That's a little bit hard to explain because between 1962 and roughly 1990, whatever original files that were ever put together were purged.

[Narrator]

And this isn't unusual. I mean, back then all the files were on paper. And you know, over the years, police departments move or run out of space for storage. There are floods. I mean, you know, things happen and files get lost. John does find a retired detective and he learns that evidence was sent to the FBI back in the 60s. And so he reaches out to them.

[John Shannon]

So we did contact the FBI. They had the clothes, but they're gone. And they actually did a footprint from a footprint in the sand and tried to identify that and determine they couldn't. And then when we went back to them, they had no files. Their files were gone.

[Aylin Lantz]

So all the evidence is gone. Vanished.

[Narrator]

Yeah. The detectives really have nothing.

[John Shannon]

It was this big gigantic puzzle that we had to put together piece by piece.

[Narrator]

Now John is an investigator, so naturally he's a curious guy. So he thinks, where do I go now? And so he heads down to the local historical museum.

[John Shannon]

Everything that we came up with was developed through research, getting newspaper articles, and there was something like 65 different newspaper articles all talking about this little girl.

[Narrator]

John makes himself at home in the museum and he starts to dig.

[Aylin Lantz]

And.

[John Shannon]

Read all those and took all the names we could find of the people involved. The preacher, the radio disc jockey was involved, the deputy, retired judges, retired detectives, and put all that into some kind of case file. And you know, it was hours and hours and hours and hours.

[Aylin Lantz]

My first thought was maybe this girl is from really far away. Because, I mean, if they found her body here and they can't figure out who it is. But then also part of me wonders, what if this was some kind of murder and, like, maybe the parents or somebody is actually close by. So I don't know. I'm curious.

[Narrator]

She's found in the desert sand off of the highway. But that highway is, even though it's in a very remote area, does connect to more populous areas, obviously. Las Vegas and then Phoenix, Arizona.

[Aylin Lantz]

Someone's trying to drop a body in a remote area. They might just jump on the highway and stop by and keep going.

[Narrator]

You can see why this case is so difficult. So investigator John Shannon now has a new case file with old newspaper clippings. And from reading those, he's got a lead.

[John Shannon]

And that's when we said, oh, she's buried here. And we didn't know that either. So after we got all the documentation together, I had to write up a justification to the county attorney to go to before the judge to get a court order to exhume her because there was no family, you know, we didn't know who she was.

[Narrator]

A judge grants the request, and they dig up her casket. They're able to get her skeletal remains. Now the detectives partner with namus, the National Missing and Unidentified Person System.

[John Shannon]

And we actually end up getting her DNA. And then from there, it was, okay. We have DNA, but it doesn't tell us anything.

[Aylin Lantz]

So they have her DNA, but they still don't know anything about her.

[Narrator]

They don't.

[John Shannon]

And they develop a DNA profile and it's given back to NamUs, and it's entered into CODIS. But that doesn't do us any good because there was nothing to match to it.

[Narrator]

John Shannon is discouraged, but he doesn't give up. Detectives keep circling back to one idea. Aylin. Remember I mentioned that back in 1960, police thought there was a chance that Little Miss Nobody was actually a little girl who had been kidnapped in Alamook, Gordo, New Mexico.

[Aylin Lantz]

Yeah, but I thought they ruled that out.

[Narrator]

They did. At the time, they said her clothing wasn't the same. They also said the New Mexico girl, whose name was Sharon Gallegos, was 4, and little Ms. Nobody was probably older. Michael Perry from the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office said there were also some other issues.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

They were able to get footprints off.

[John Shannon]

Of the body, but the FBI came.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

Back later on and said that those footprints were not a match. The footprints from the body in Arizona were not a match to the footprints of Sharon Gallegos.

[Aylin Lantz]

Interesting. I'm kind of surprised that they're confident that it's not the same little girl. I mean, how exactly are they matching footprints? I'm guessing the body of the girl in the desert has changed from decomposition. Like, how do you measure that?

[Narrator]

Yeah, and even though that lead was Discounted back in 1960, John Shannon and his colleagues just can't get it out of their minds.

[John Shannon]

So we were kind of snooping around, actually, not alamogirdle. There was nothing that Alamo Gordo could supply that gave us any clues because all they saw was a girl abducted, and she left town. And that's all they really knew about it, and that's all their records had.

[Narrator]

John decides to do a little digging on his own to find out anything he can about the New Mexico girl, Sharon Gallegos. And he finds an obituary for her mother. It turns out that Sharon had siblings.

[John Shannon]

I got a copy of the obituary, and it mentioned brother Johnny. Namus was very helpful in trying to find him, which we did. Namus found him in Germany, and we had the FBI go and get his DNA.

[Aylin Lantz]

Oh, wow. So this case from 1960, starts in the Arizona desert, brings us to New Mexico and now Germany.

[Narrator]

So the FBI helps orchestrate this, and authorities contact Johnny with a request. And Johnny is the brother of the missing girl, Sharon.

[John Shannon]

We believe that there might be a match here, but we need your DNA to compare it to the little girl's DNA.

[Narrator]

Johnny gives his DNA and it's compared, and a report comes back saying this little girl is not Sharon Gallegos, the little girl in New Mexico. But the results are also inconclusive. Basically, it says, we can't tell you who little miss Nobody is.

[Aylin Lantz]

This is so frustrating. I just want to know.

[Narrator]

At this point, detectives turn to the top forensic experts in the country for help.

[John Shannon]

All those organizations had a shot at trying to identify her. And these other companies all said, we can't do anything. We can't tell you anything about her. We don't know how. We can't identify it. And it was. It was frustrating. But it seemed like every time we did something, we got a little closer, you know, a little closer to trying to find out who she was. And I am. It's. Sorry. You're emotional. When you get to a solution.

[Narrator]

The sheriff's office has used up any money they had on the case. Their best lead was proven wrong. And everyone's telling them it's hopeless.

[Aylin Lantz]

I mean, that's very frustrating. And it's. It's. It's weird to think that they have DNA from her and they still can't even figure out who she is.

[Narrator]

And then one day in 2021, a guy named Michael Vogan is watching the news and he sees a story about Little Miss Nobody and he picks up the phone to call John Shannon.

[Michael Vogan]

So here I come, calling the investigator and I'm like, this is new. And he's like, I already tried it. I'm like, yeah, but this is different. Why can't we take a shot at this?

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[Narrator]

What kind of man would let this happen to his family?

[Advertisement Voice]

Inspired by shocking actual events, I'm working.

[Narrator]

On a story about the Murdaughs.

[Advertisement Voice]

Their abuses of power are playing out in real time.

Starring Academy Award winner Patricia Arquette and Jason Clark. It's only cheating if you get caught. Hulu Original Series Murdoch Death in the Family New episodes Wednesdays on Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers.

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[Narrator]

Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of meaningful beauty. When Dr. Saba and I decided to do a skincare line together, he said to me, we are going to give women meaningful beauty. And I said, that's exactly right. We want to give women meaningful beauty, which means each and every product is meaningful. It has a reason to exist. It's efficacious. You're going to get results, and then you just go out and live your life. Meaningful Beauty Confidence is beautiful. Learn more@meaningful beauty.com.

[Aylin Lantz]

So remind me who Michael Vogan is.

[Narrator]

He works with OTHRAM as the director of case management. He's kind of a point person with detectives. And one day when he sees this news story about the Little Miss Nobody case still going unsolved, he begs John Shannon to give it one more try.

[Michael Vogan]

I said, you may have had a profile that wasn't applicable for this type of analysis. You may have missed matches.

[Narrator]

Michael's convinced that the DNA testing that's been done so far wasn't designed for forensic DNA. And so it could be missing clues to her identity or it could actually even lead them away from the truth. I asked Kristin Mittleman from OTHRAM to explain. For starters, she says the evidence was 62 years old and had sat in the hot Arizona sun.

[Kristin Mittleman]

There was degradation caused by the heat. There was contamination from plants, animals, everything that is out there at that time, bacteria, obviously, and that made it very difficult to work those remains. So when they weren't able to get enough DNA markers using the correct science, they did something called imputation, where they use software, software that isn't forensic, to try to impute what the DNA would look like. And then they tried to compare the DNA to DNA that family references had given to the case. They said that Little Miss Nobody was not sharing. Galegas, Let me get this straight.

[Aylin Lantz]

They had somehow filled out their missing DNA markers and predicted the rest of the profile through some kind of calculation or mathematical way of guessing at the DNA. But what they inferred was actually wrong.

[Kristin Mittleman]

It's like if you were to read a book and you could only see half the pages, maybe you would infer the wrong ending to a Story.

[Narrator]

And then there was another issue. The FBI got DNA from Sharon Gallegos family in Germany. They got DNA from someone who they thought was her mother's brother, but he was actually a half brother.

[Kristin Mittleman]

It was a half sibling relationship, which CODIS isn't good at identifying relationships unless itself or parent child. And so they hired a genealogy group to actually do advanced DNA testing and to do these comparisons. And that's the report that actually said that it's certain that Sharon Gallegos was not Little Miss Nobody. And then the case was over. How is the detective supposed to know that there's another lab in Texas called Othram that's going to build a different profile?

[Aylin Lantz]

I completely get why the investigator is skeptical when this guy from Othram calls him and says, hey, our lab in Texas has technology that can work because he's been promised that before, and it didn't lead anywhere.

[Narrator]

And there was also the money issue because Yavapai County Sheriff's office had run out of funds to work on the case.

[Michael Vogan]

I said, okay, well, let's crowdfund it. We have this group of people online that would probably help.

[Narrator]

So Michael from Othram calls the reporter who did the recent news story.

[Michael Vogan]

I reached out to her and I said, hey, we're gonna take a shot at this. Do you think you guys could put a story out and help us publicize this crowdfund? She said, I would love to, because I would love to see this little girl get her name back.

[Narrator]

Aylin, I should explain that AAM has a website that lists unsolved cases, and anyone can go online and donate money to have a particular case solved. And so the reporter, Brianna Whitney, puts out another story.

[Michael Vogan]

And kudos to her and the sheriff's office. They both put out this blast. And within 24 hours, we raised the money to do it, which was still like a record to this day. I don't know how they pulled that off, but they did.

[Narrator]

Now Little Miss Nobody's remains are sent to the Texas lab and they pull DNA from one of her teeth.

[Kristin Mittleman]

The DNA worked really well in our hands, which was amazing. And as soon as we sequenced, we were able to get a lot of markers.

[Narrator]

This more detailed DNA profile is uploaded to genealogy sites, and suddenly they're getting clues of Little Miss Nobody's real identity.

[Aylin Lantz]

Oh, my gosh.

[Narrator]

That's when Michael Vogan gets a call from David Mittleman, from Othram.

[Michael Vogan]

David called me and he goes, hey, who did they think this person, this little girl was? And I Go. It was Sharon Gallagher is the little girl's name from New Mexico. And he goes, I think that's her. And I go, no way. And he goes, yeah. Can we talk to someone there? I said, sure. We got on the phone, we talked.

[Narrator]

To the investigator, and that investigator, John Shannon, he's tracking down more clues. Outside of the family in Germany, we.

[John Shannon]

Found there was other people here in the United States that popped up.

[Narrator]

One name that popped up was Reynaldo Chavez. His mom was Sharon's older sister. So the older sister of the girl who went missing. And now the case is starting to move pretty quickly. Ronaldo and his siblings get a call from the sheriff's office.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

So they reached out to me, and they asked me a lot of questions about, you know, what happened, who was still alive. You know, they really didn't say what.

[Narrator]

Was going on, who was still alive. Sadly, Sharon's mom passed away in 2011, and her big sister Reynaldo's mom died in 2017.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

We knew that my mom's sister had been kidnapped. You know, my mom told us that, but she didn't really want to go into specifics because it brought up a lot of emotion. It's still very hard for my uncle to talk about it. And it was still very emotional for him. You know, he felt helpless. He said, you know, being 10 years old, being, you know, the boy in the family, and he said he just felt helpless.

[Narrator]

Even though the family didn't really want to talk about Sharon's disappearance, the whole community knew about it. Years later, Reynaldo enrolled in classes at the local community college.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

And my biology teacher, Mrs. Casaya, when she was reading Rolf, she goes, reynaldo Chavez. And, you know, you raised your hand, say you were here. She said, oh, your aunt was kidnapped in 1960. I mean, in front of the whole class. And then everybody, everybody in the classroom, including myself, we were shocked. And I was like, how do you know about that? Oh, we can talk about it after class. What it happened to be is Ms. Kassiah, her husband was the FBI agent on the case in the 1960s. He said it was really a hard case for him.

[Aylin Lantz]

So what happens?

[Narrator]

So after Reynaldo and his family have the Zoom meeting with authorities in Arizona, they quickly get on the phone.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

So I got on with my other two siblings, and we're like, what do you think? Do you think they found Sharon? Do you think they're going to tell us that they know where she is? You know, those ideals went through our head. But also, you know, that's a long time and 62 years.

[Narrator]

Meanwhile, Kristin says Othram is busy testing the DNA from Little Miss Nobody's remains.

[Kristin Mittleman]

We actually started to see that the matches we were getting were actually consistent with Sharon Gallego's family. So we contacted the detectives, we asked if there was a reference sample. We were able to do a one to one match, and it worked.

[Narrator]

Investigators call to set up a zoom meeting with Ronaldo and his family. And John Shannon is on the call.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

You know, he talked to us a little bit about it and said they've been working on this case. And then they told us about Othram Labs. And then they said, excuse me. And then they told us they had identified our aunt, that they had identified her remains. You know, we were all like, what? You know, we were all kind of shocked and, you know, we were, you know, a lot of things are going through our mind. They found my aunt, but, you know, she's. She's died. And then we had all kinds of questions. How did you find her? How old was she when they. When they discovered her remains? And so the rest of the zoom call was really about explaining the whole thing, how it came about and how Othram Labs is really the ones who were able to make the identification.

[Narrator]

Investigator John Shannon tells Reynaldo about the funeral the community in Prescott, Arizona held and how people donated money to buy Sharon a casket and bury her.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

The people really took care of my aunt for us. They took care of her wanting to find out who she was. And if it wasn't for their dedication and commitment, we probably would have never found out.

[Aylin Lantz]

I'm also thinking it's kind of wild that the original investigators had that hunch that Little Miss Nobody was Sharon. But so many times they were told no.

[Narrator]

And the initial DNA testing proved even more conclusively that it wasn't her. But Kristen Mittleman says it was basically all bad science.

[Kristin Mittleman]

It was unbelievable to see that you can use advanced DNA technology incorrectly and get the wrong answer. So that case to me was terrifying because it showed me that people would go to great lengths to get an answer, but not necessarily consider if good science was actually behind that answer. And we're talking about confirming someone's identity as a perpetrator or victim of a crime, taking away someone's name and voice forever.

[Aylin Lantz]

It does make me think about how much DNA is used in courtrooms and investigations. And I think sometimes it gets simplified to the DNA says X, so the answer is Y. But it's actually a very delicate science at times. And the testing methods are not all the same. That's blown my mind working on this podcast in general. So now that we know that the girl in the desert is Sharon from New Mexico, what do we know about her?

[Narrator]

Actually kind of a lot. So Sharon was 4 years old and she lived with her mom, her grandmother, aunts and cousins.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

She had light brown hair, hazel eyes, and she had a nickname. My great grandmother called her Wera, which means the light one. She was a very energetic, feisty little girl. She liked being by her grandmother's side. She'd just sit at the kitchen table watching my grandmother make tortillas and beans, of course, a staple in my grandparents house. She really loved playing with her cousins because they lived in a multi generational home. She liked being outside.

[Narrator]

And then one day in mid July 1960, Sharon was playing in her yard with some of her siblings and cousins when an old green car pulled up.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

There was this green vehicle with a couple in it, a man and a woman, and there was two other children in the vehicle with them. And they had been kind of scouting out the neighborhood the week before. Come to find out that this couple was asking a lot of questions about Sharon, specifically about my grandmother, who she was, you know, how many kids does she have? Then on the day that it actually happened, my aunt Sharon was outside playing and the car drove up in an alley. They said, hey Sharon, would you like some candy and we'll buy you new clothes? And she was standing there, didn't want to go. The lady came out, grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the car. My mom's cousins were there, and there was some neighborhood kids and they ran inside and said, hey, you know, a lady just pulled Sharon into a car. My mom and my grandmother were like, what? Call the police right away. And then it all started.

[Narrator]

Police set up roadblocks pretty immediately, but there were no signs of the green car or Sharon. Reynaldo's mom, Sharon's big sister, she heads out with friends to search the neighborhood. And the local newspaper ran stories about Sharon's kidnapping. And then there was an interesting twist. Aylin. Remember investigators initially thought little Miss Nobody might be Sharon?

[Aylin Lantz]

Yeah.

[Narrator]

Well, Reynaldo says police reached out to his family back then and asked if someone would come look at this little girl's body that was discovered in the desert.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

And it was determined that instead of having my grandmother go to identify the body, and they asked my grandmother's best friend to go and identify the body. And you know, she determined, oh no, this body's too Big. It's not Sharon. It was just devastating to my grandmother. Losing her, not knowing what happened. It affected the whole entire family. From there on out, everybody was very vigilant about where the kids were, and, I mean, we all knew about it.

[Aylin Lantz]

I can only imagine growing up, Reynaldo and the whole family living with this. I mean, his young aunt just grabbed out of the family's yard.

[Narrator]

And for years, it was really just too painful to talk about. Rinaldo says it wasn't until he was about 12, when he started asking his mom more about Sharon's disappearance.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

We always hoped. We never gave up hope. Every time the. Excuse me.

[Narrator]

Oh, it's okay.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

Every time the police would contact us, because throughout our lives, it was, you know, the police would contact my grandmother, then my mom, and then us. You know, we were still like, you know, maybe they found her. She's still alive. We'll get to meet her.

[Narrator]

Reynaldo says that knowing the truth of what happened to Sharon did bring some peace.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

You know, we couldn't be there for her. And to find out that, you know, she wasn't lost or forgotten, and there was a whole community, not just one, there was a whole community that was taking care of her. It just, you know, our family couldn't believe it.

[Narrator]

Sharon's remains were sent back to New Mexico. Ronaldo and the family gathered for a funeral, and they buried Sharon next to her mom and her grandmother.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

The day before, me and my uncle and my brother, we dug the. The small grave that we put her in. We did it ourselves. Yeah, we. We wanted to do that.

[Narrator]

John Shannon and Michael Perry and a whole team had worked on this case for years, and I was curious how they were feeling.

[John Shannon]

Well, I think that the best way to say that is we were invited to go to the funeral, and they treat us like family. That's just a very powerful experience. To be part of that.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

And just the gratitude that the family expressed towards us, it was just a very humbling experience.

[Narrator]

The sad thing about this case is that Sharon isn't alone.

[Reynaldo Chavez]

There are literally thousands of other children.

[Narrator]

Like her that are unidentified.

[John Shannon]

They're unaccounted for.

[Narrator]

And the truth is that technology like.

[John Shannon]

Ours could be aiding police everywhere in identifying these kids.

[Kristin Mittleman]

Everyone deserves to be buried with their family, to be able to be visited, to have people that know where they are, know their story. Everyone deserves their voice.

[Narrator]

The couple who took Sharon in the green car were never found, so that part of the mystery is still an open investigation.

[Aylin Lantz]

America's crime lab is produced by Rococo punch for Kaleidoscope. Erica Lance is our story editor and sound design is by David Woje. Our producing team is Kathryn Fenollosa, Emily Forman and Jessica Alpert. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne, Mangesh Hadi Gadour and David and Kristen Mittleman. And from iHeart, Katrina Norville and Ally Perry. Special thanks to Connell Byrne, Will Pearson, Kerry Lieberman, Nikki Etor, Nathan Etosky, John Burbank and the entire team at othram. I'm Alin Lance Lesser. Thanks for listening.

[John Shannon]

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[John Shannon]

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[Narrator]

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[John Shannon]

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[Narrator]

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[Narrator]

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