The man who raped and killed 9-year-old Carol Ann Dougherty at a Bristol Township church in 1962 was finally identified Wednesday as William Schrader, a serial child abuser and longtime suspect in the cold case that shook the girl’s Bucks County community, prosecutors said.
Authorities identified Schrader — who died while in prison for other crimes in 2002 — at a news conference in Doylestown to share the findings of a grand jury investigation into Dougherty’s death. Pennsylvania State Police and Bucks County prosecutors kept the case alive by tracking down eyewitnesses, reviewing forensic evidence and obtaining a confession that Schrader made to his stepson years after Dougherty’s death, investigators said.
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Dougherty, a fifth-grade student at the school at St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church, went missing on the afternoon of Oct. 22, 1962. She was last seen riding her bike to stop for a snack and meet friends at the Bristol Borough Free Library. Doughtery never made it there and didn’t return home for dinner, prompting her family to search the community.
That Monday night, Dougherty’s father found Carol Ann dead inside St. Mark’s. She had been raped and strangled with the use of a ligature, investigators determined, and male pubic hairs were clutched in her hand at the scene.
Police knew she had ridden her bike down Lincoln Avenue, which runs adjacent to St. Mark’s, not long before she was killed.
“Living on Lincoln Avenue was an absolute predator, and a predator whose prey was little girls — and that was William Schrader,” Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said Wednesday.
Schrader, who grew up in Luzerne County, had a violent past that traced back to his childhood. He was in and out reform school and later joined the Army, but he was dishonorably discharged a year later. He was convicted of attempted murder in the shooting of another man in Luzerne County and served time at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. After his release from prison, Schrader settled with family members in Bristol. He was 22 at the time of Dougherty’s death.
Investigators initially focused on three other suspects, but ruled each one out after they provided legitimate alibis.
About two months after the murder, police questioned Schrader after a witness reported having seeing him cut through his lawn nearby the church the day Dougherty was killed. Schrader’s alibi that he had been working that day was proven false when investigators obtained timecards from his employer. Schrader agreed to give police a pubic hair sample, but then fled to Florida to evade further investigation. He ultimately settled down and got married in Louisiana.
Provided Image/Bucks County DA’s Office
William Schrader, the man suspected of raping and killing 9-year-old Carol Ann Dougherty in 1962, is shown above in a mugshot taken by Bristol Township police during his initial questioning in the case.
Schorn detailed an insidious pattern of sexual abuse committed by Schrader against his stepdaughters, his biological children and his grandchildren over the ensuing years.
“The generational sexual abuse that this man inflicted upon every female child and woman in his life, he didn’t stop until the day he died,” Schorn said.
During a domestic dispute with his wife in 1985, Schrader intentionally set fire to the family’s home. A 12-year-old girl the couple had been fostering died in the blaze, resulting in Schrader’s conviction and imprisonment.
In 1993, after Pennsylvania State Police analyzed 141 pubic hair samples in the Doughtery investigation, they determined Schrader was the only person who could not be eliminated as the source of the hair found in the girl’s hand. He was extradited to Bucks County, where he again denied responsibility for Dougherty’s death, and was then sent back to prison in Louisiana. Charges could not be filed against Schrader in the Dougherty case because the hair fiber analysis was not sufficient evidence to move forward and DNA testing proved inconclusive.
In more recent years, Schorn said Schrader’s surviving family members shared their “deepest, darkest secrets” to help detectives bring closure to the case. In November, Schrader’s stepson, Robert Leblanc, told police that Schrader had twice confessed to killing a little girl at a Pennsylvania church. LeBlanc said Schrader had told him he lured the girl into the church to rape her and that he “had to kill the girl in Bristol to keep her from talking.”
Years after Dougherty’s death, another witness came forward to Bristol police to report that he had seen Schrader outside the church the day of the murder.
The Dougherty investigation gained renewed attention last year because of a 14-episode podcast series produced by longtime sports radio host Mike Missanelli, whose uncle was the police chief in Bristol in 1962.
Kay Dougherty, Carol Ann’s sister and the lone surviving member of her immediate family, praised Missanelli and others for their dedication to the case at Wednesday’s news conference.
“After so many decades of unknowing, this finding finally brings closure and a truth to a wound that never healed,” Dougherty said.
Michael Tanenbaum
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