The only DNA investigators had to identify a killer was a speck so small it was invisible to the naked eye, 0.4 nanograms, recovered from a 12-year-old girl’s skirt in 1964. Kept in a freezer at the Elmira Police Department since her death, preserving the DNA unbeknownst to detectives and investigators at the time.
For 61 years that sample sat in that freezer while the case went cold and the leads dried up and the detectives who worked it retired and died and were replaced by detectives who inherited their files and their frustration. Then in 2022 an FBI special agent named Kenneth Jensen packed that sample in dry ice inside a cooler and shipped it to a laboratory in Texas that specializes in doing the impossible with damaged evidence.
Then everything froze. An ice storm had shut down the FedEx hub in Memphis, the largest in the world, where the package was routed. The shipment sat stranded. If the dry ice gave out, decades of waiting would end in irreversible loss.
“We couldn’t even get a hold of anyone at FedEx during the historic storm.”
When DNA is tested, it is consumed in the process. There was no second sample, no backup, no second chance. This was it. This was the last shot at justice for a 12-year-old girl who had been waiting 61 years for someone to say the name of the man who killed her. The resolution of Mary Simpson’s murder marks one of the oldest homicide cases in the United States to be solved using forensic genetic genealogy.
This is how it happened.
Mary Therese Simpson was born in 1951 in Elmira, New York to Ellsworth and Rose Simpson. She had an older brother and an older sister. After her parents separated in May 1963, she lived with her father. By the accounts of everyone who knew her, she was as an ordinary 12-year-old girl in the specific way that makes the word ordinary mean something beautiful.
She loved to dance. She was always happy. She never hurt anyone. She had the kind of face that made adults smile without knowing why. She lived with her father on the east side of Elmira. She visited relatives regularly, the close-knit pattern of a family that stayed connected even after the separation.
On Sunday, March 15th, 1964, she spent the afternoon visiting relatives near East Market and Harriet Streets. She was last seen heading home at about 6:30 p.m. At the corner of East Market and Harriet Streets. Her father reported her missing at 10:30 p.m. 4 hours. The distance between the last time anyone saw her alive and the moment her father picked up the phone.
In those 4 hours, the city of Elmira went from being the ordinary safe place that 12-year-old girls walked home through on Sunday evenings to being something else entirely. The kind of place where a father sits by the phone as the minutes stretch past the point where there is a comfortable explanation. 4 days later, on March 19th, Mary’s body was discovered in a wooded area near Combs Hill Road in Southport by a man hiking with his sons.
Her remains had been partially concealed under debris and large stones. Investigators determined she had been sexually assaulted and strangled, and her mouth had been stuffed with twigs and dirt. Her body was found in a wooded section of Southport under twigs, branches, leaves, dirt, and four heavy stones, the largest weighing more than 100 lb, by a man who was hiking with his two sons near Combs Hill Road.
Only part of her hand and a sneaker were visible. 7 miles from where she had been standing at 6:30 the previous Sunday evening. Her body was covered with debris and four heavy stones, the largest weighing more than 100 lb. Whoever had done this had not been panicking. This was deliberate. This was someone who stayed long enough to conceal what they had done.
The investigation began almost immediately. Detectives across Elmira flooded the area. Officers went door-to-door. Tips started pouring in. Witnesses were interviewed for hours. People across the community came forward with anything they thought might help. More than 300 people were questioned, including those as far away as Arizona.
The Star-Gazette reported that seven suspects agreed to take lie detector tests. And still no charges were laid. The reward money was donated to a charity in Mary’s name. Occasional anniversary stories appeared in the Star-Gazette, increasing the reward to $5,000. And still nothing despite hundreds of tips being called in.
Every lead was followed. Every suspect cleared. The physical evidence was collected and logged and stored. Mary’s clothing, the items near the scene, everything a 1964 investigation could document. And then a specific decision was made by detectives who could not have understood its significance.
Mary’s clothing was placed in a freezer, not evidence storage at room temperature, a freezer. That decision, made by investigators who had no concept of DNA, made in a year when the structure of DNA had only been understood for 11 years, made in a department that was doing everything right without knowing the most important thing they were doing, preserved 0.4 nanograms of biological material that would sit undisturbed for six decades. Nobody knew they had just preserved the answer.
The investigation eventually went cold. The files were kept, the case stayed open, but without a break it had nowhere to go. And Elmira moved on in the way that cities move on, not forgetting exactly, but absorbing the grief daily life of a community that had no other choice.
The case never fully closed in the minds of the people who worked it. Every few years a new detective would pull the files. Every anniversary of her disappearance, the local newspaper would run something. A reminder that she was still out there, that the question was still open, that whoever had covered her body with four heavy stones had never been made to answer for it. The reward sat at $5,000 for years. Tips came in, none of them held.
In 2000, 36 years later after Mary’s death, the New York State Police Forensic Lab examined her clothing more carefully than had been possible in 1964. Technology had advanced significantly. DNA had been used in criminal prosecution since 1986. The lab found something on Mary’s skirt. DNA found from semen on her skirt was entered into a national DNA database, but there were no matches.
The CODIS database, the Combined DNA Index System maintained by the FBI, contains DNA profiles from individuals convicted of qualifying offenses. When new evidence is submitted, it is automatically compared against every profile in the system. A match means a name. No match means the person who left that DNA had either never been arrested for a qualifying crime or had never been swabbed.
The killer’s DNA went into CODIS in 2003, Nothing came back. It was resubmitted again in 2014. Still nothing. 11 more years had passed. The database had grown significantly. More profiles, more comparisons, more opportunities for a match. Still nothing. The man who killed Mary Teresa Simpson had apparently never been arrested for a crime that required a DNA sample.
He had moved through the criminal justice system, if he had moved through it at all, without ever leaving a genetic record. He was invisible to the system in the one way that mattered most. Murray was known to police at the time in relation to other matters. He had some kind of record, but whatever it was, it was not the kind of offense that required a DNA swab.
And without that swab, he stayed invisible. This is the moment in the investigation that should feel hopeless. Two CODIS submissions, two returns of nothing. The technology that was supposed to break this case had been tried twice and come back empty both times. The case had every reason to go permanently cold. Then something changed in the wider world of forensic science that nobody in Elmira had anticipated.
The technology that solved the Golden State Killer in 2018, investigated genetic genealogy, opened a completely different pathway. Instead of looking for a direct DNA match in a criminal database, genealogical DNA analysis looked for relatives. Family members who had submitted DNA to consumer ancestry platforms. Second cousins.
People who had no idea their DNA test was about to help solve a 1964 murder in a city they might never have visited. The resolution of Mary Simpson’s murder marks one of the oldest homicide cases in the United States to be solved using forensic genetic genealogy. The problem was that the sample on Mary’s skirt, 0.4 nanograms, was almost too small to work with.
Standard genealogical DNA analysis required a more substantial profile. This would require a lab that specialized in extracting usable sequences from degraded minimal evidence. A lab that could do the impossible with material that other labs could not process. That lab existed. It was in The Woodlands, Texas.
It was called Autum Technologies. Getting the sample to Autum required funding. And getting the funding required one sergeant in the Elmira Police Department to believe that after 58 years the answer was still findable if someone was willing to try one more time. Sergeant William Goodwin had been working Mary Teresa Simpson’s case for years by the time he applied for the grant.
He was a cold case detective in the Elmira Police Department. He had pulled the files. He had reviewed the evidence logs. He had seen the entry about the clothing in the freezer and the CODIS submissions that returned nothing. He had read the reports from the officers who worked the case in 1964. Men who had knocked on hundreds of doors and chased hundreds of leads and come up empty every time.
And he had looked at the advances in forensic genealogy that had started producing results on cases nobody thought could be solved. In 2022, after requesting a grant in partnership with the FBI, EPD announced that it received funding from a non-profit organization that helps fund cold case investigations. This funding was allocated to having DNA found on Simpson’s blouse in 2000 tested and analyzed by a forensic laboratory in Texas.
The non-profit was called Season of Justice. Their purpose is precisely this, providing funding for investigative agencies and families to move cold cases forward when government resources are insufficient. They said yes. The grant funded the submission of Mary’s clothing to Othram Technologies in The Woodlands, Texas. In February 2023, forensic evidence from the case was submitted to Othram’s laboratory in The Woodlands, Texas.
Othram scientists developed a usable DNA extract from the evidence and applied forensic grade genome sequencing to build a comprehensive DNA profile of the unknown suspect. But getting the evidence to Othram was not straightforward. FBI Special Agent Kenneth Jensen, who was assisting the Elmira Police Department in New York, knew what was at stake.
If this sample failed, the case would likely die with it. He packed the fragile evidence in dry ice in a cooler and sent it to a lab in Texas known for doing the impossible with damaged DNA. Then everything froze. An ice storm had shut down the FedEx hub in Memphis, the largest in the world, where the package was routed. The shipment sat stranded.
Jensen watched the tracking. The package was not moving. The Memphis hub, through which an enormous percentage of FedEx shipments are routed, was completely shut down by the ice storm. The dry ice inside the cooler was not permanent. It was bought specifically for this shipment based on the expected transit time.
Every additional hour the package sat stranded was an hour closer to the dry ice giving out. If the temperature inside the cooler rose, the evidence would be compromised. When DNA testing is performed, the DNA itself is consumed in the process. There was no going back. No second sample. No backup preserved for exactly this contingency.
This was the last of the evidence. 0.4 nanograms, invisible to the naked eye, sitting in a stranded FedEx package in a Memphis hub that Jensen could not reach on the phone. He waited. The storm broke. The package moved. It arrived in Texas intact. The dry ice had held. Authram scientists developed a usable DNA extract from the evidence and applied forensic grade genome sequencing to build a comprehensive DNA profile of the unknown suspect.
The genetic profile extracted from the DNA sample by Authram was uploaded to public databases. At that point, the FBI began investigating genetic genealogy, building extended family trees, and narrowing down potential candidates based on a number of factors, including age, location, and historical records.
A suspect emerged, not by name in a shingle file. A genetic shadow of a person who had left 0.4 nanograms of biological material on a 12-year-old girl’s clothing 61 years ago and had apparently never thought it would matter. The case gained momentum between 2024 and 2025 when EPD, the FBI, and New York State Police began conducting interviews with potential relatives within the family tree of the suspect profile.
The genealogy search produced family connections. Distant relatives whose DNA was in public ancestry database. From those relatives, investigators built outward, constructing a family tree, cross-referencing historical records, narrowing the candidates by age and location, and what was known about who had been in Elmira in March 1964.
The suspect was listed as John Doe in the case documentation. A genetic profile pointing toward a specific family, a specific location, a specific window of time. Across 2024 and into 2025, law enforcement conducted further interviews, leading them to a man believed to be a family member of John Doe.
That person submitted a buckle DNA sample for further testing. A living family member voluntarily submitted a DNA sample. They did not know what they were contributing to. They cooperated with investigators who explained they were working on a cold case and needed help. The buckle swab took seconds. The result took longer. Testing from the New York State Police Forensic Investigation Center confirmed a paternal relationship to the DNA recovered from Mary Teresa’s clothing.
The living family member was the biological son of the man who killed Mary Teresa Simpson. That confirmation pointed investigators toward one name, Alfred Murray Jr. Was an Elmira resident who died at age 73 in March 2004, almost 40 years to the day after Mary Simpson went missing. Murray was a US Army veteran of the Korean War and was married with several children and grandchildren, according to his obituary.
Murray was 32 years old when he allegedly killed 12-year-old Mary Teresa Simpson. He was a Korean War veteran, a husband, a father, a truck driver, a man who had lived an ordinary visible life in the same city where he had committed the worst act of his existence. He had attended community events. He had grandchildren. His obituary had been written and published in the local paper when he died in 2004.
He had been dead for 20 years by the time his name emerged from the genealogy search. He was not in CODIS. He had never submitted DNA. The hundreds of people interviewed in 1964, he may have been among them. Murray was known to police at the time in relation to other matters. Known to police. Living in the same city.
Never connected. Investigators needed one more confirmation. A familial DNA match through a living son was powerful evidence. But there was one more step available. One more confirmation that would close every remaining gap. Murray was buried in Elmira. The genealogy search produced a name. Then it produced a living person willing to submit a DNA sample.
Then it produced a grave in Elmira, New York. And then investigators did something that changed everything. They dug him up. In November 2025, investigators exhumed the grave of Alfred Raymond Murray Jr. In Elmira, New York. What they found confirmed something that had been true since March 15th, 1964, and ends with a detail about where Murray is buried that nobody at the press conference thought to mention.
But, the strangest part of this case is where Murray was buried the entire time, a detail almost nobody noticed.
After the confirmation of the DNA from the family member in November of 2025, Elmira police and the District Attorney’s Office exhumed the grave of John Doe with financial assistance thanks to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for testing by forensic anthropologist from Detroit, Michigan. Biological samples from the exhumation of the body for comparison testing matched the DNA from the sperm found on Mary Teresa Simpson’s clothing. They found that the odds of that DNA belonging to another person were less than 1 in 320 billion.
On February 10th, 2026, members of the Elmira Police Department held a media conference to discuss the developments that led to the closure of the case involving the 1964 murder of Simpson, including the identification of the person found responsible. Elmira Police Sergeant William Goodwin unveiled Alfred Raymond Murray Jr. as the sole suspect in the murder and assault of 12-year-old Mary Teresa Simpson in 1964. According to police, Murray had no known connection to Mary Teresa Simpson or her family. He did not know her. She did not know him.
She was walking home from her relatives house on a Sunday evening, and he was a 32-year-old man who encountered her on that route and made a choice that ended her life and went undetected for 61 years. He was never tried. He was never convicted. He died in 2004, almost 40 years to the day after Mary Simpson went missing, March 15th, 1964, March 18th, 2004.
Three days apart. Six decades apart. He spent the last four decades of his life in Elmira, raised his family there. I had grandchildren there. I attended church there, perhaps. Went to the grocery store and the hardware store and lived the ordinary visible life of a man with no significant criminal record in the same mid-size city where he had hidden a 12-year-old girl under four heavy stones in a wooded area and stuffed her mouth with dirt and twigs and walked away.
Officials say that the investigation revealed no signs that Murray had any relation to Simpson or her… he had no reason to know her. He chose her anyway. And then he lived with that choice for 40 years until his heart stopped and he was buried in Elmira. He is still there in the same city.
This is the detail that the press conference did not dwell on. Not the one in 320 billion probability. Not the ice storm that nearly destroyed the last evidence. Not the 61 years of waiting. The man who killed Mary Teresa Simpson is buried in Elmira, New York. The same city where she grew up. The same city where her family has lived.
The same city where the Elmira Police Department kept her clothing in a freezer for 61 years without knowing what it was preserving. He cannot be prosecuted. He cannot be sentenced. He cannot stand in a courtroom and hear what he did to a family pronounced out loud by a judge. The DA’s office confirmed he died before they could bring charges.
The case is closed. He is named. He cannot be touched. What the family has is the name and the knowledge that 0.4 nanograms of evidence, invisible to the naked eye, preserved by detectives who had no idea what DNA was, survived 61 years in a freezer and survived an ice storm in Memphis and survived every technical challenge that stood between 1964 and 2026 to say his name out loud.
Simpson’s clothing was kept in a freezer at the EPD since her death, preserving the DNA unbeknownst to detectives and investigators at the time. That decision, made without any understanding of its significance, is the reason this case was solved. If you have a loved one who is an unsolved homicide victim, ask the investigating agency one question.
“Was physical evidence preserved and has it been submitted to a genealogical DNA lab, not just CODIS, genealogical?”
Using current technology, that question is free. For Mary Teresa Simpson, it took 61 years and an ice storm and 0.4 nanograms of evidence to get the answer. But, the answer was always there, in a freezer in Elmira, waiting.
Mary Teresa Simpson was 12 years old. She walked home on a Sunday evening in March 1964 and never arrived. Her clothing went into a freezer. 61 years later, that clothing gave her family the name they had been waiting six decades to hear. Alfred Raymond Murray, Jr. was 32 years old when he killed her. He died in 2004 at 73 years old in the same city where he buried her under four heavy stones.
He is still there. He never faced a courtroom. What he could not escape was a speck of DNA smaller than anything the naked eye can see, preserved by detectives who had no idea what they were saving, waiting with infinite patience for the world to develop the technology to read it. It waited 61 years. It was worth the wait.
