CNA Staff, Oct 31, 2025 /
15:48 pm
Authorities announced this week that the killer of 9-year-old Carol Ann Dougherty, raped and murdered in a Pennsylvania Catholic church 63 years ago, has finally been identified as William Schrader, who died in 2002.
The Bucks County Investigation Grand Jury found that Schrader is “definitively linked” to the murder “through the combination of decades-old evidence” and a recent breakthrough in the case, the district attorney’s office said in a statement.
The breakthrough came last year when Pennsylvania State Police interviewed Schrader’s stepson, Robert Leblanc, in November 2024, who said Schrader “confessed to him on two separate occasions that he murdered a little girl in a Pennsylvania church.”
Schrader allegedly told his stepson he lured Carol Ann inside the church, raped her and “had to kill the girl in Bristol to keep her from talking.”
“We believe it may be the only rape and murder of a little girl in a church in the United States,” Bucks County D.A. Jennifer Schorn said at a news conference on Oct 29.
In 1962, a witness reported seeing Schrader — who lived a block and a half from the church — outside the church around the time of the murder, and police initially questioned him, the D.A.’s office said.
Schrader failed a polygraph test and lied to investigators about his alibi, saying he had been at work at the time of the murder. He also provided a pubic hair sample, authorities said.
Knowing he was under investigation, Schrader fled Pennsylvania and moved to Florida and then Texas, eventually settling in Louisiana.
The pubic hair was tested in 1993, and it showed “significant similarities” to hair found in Carol Ann’s hand, according to the DA. Of samples collected from 176 men over the years, 141 pubic hair samples were tested during the decadeslong investigation, and “all other individuals were eliminated,” officials said.
The grand jury’s findings, detailed in a 53-page report approved this week by Judge Raymond McHugh, identified Schrader as an “absolute predator” whose criminal history included assaults with deadly weapons in multiple states.
According to the prosecutor, “Schrader’s life was marked by a pattern of violence and sexual violence, particularly against young, pre-pubescent, and adolescent females.”
The grand jury found that Schrader also “sexually abused nearly every female child he lived with or had access to, including his own biological daughter and granddaughters.”
He was convicted in 1985 in Louisiana for the death of 12-year-old Catherine Smith after he intentionally set fire to his own house, knowing she and her family were still inside.
On Oct. 22, 1962, Carol Ann, an avid reader excited to check out the next book in a mystery series she was reading, was riding her bike to the Bristol Borough Free Library to meet her friends, according to the Bucks County District Attorney’s office.
On her way, she had stopped to buy a soda and candy and was last seen alive outside of the doors to St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church in Bristol, where she was raped and strangled to death.
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Her parents began to look for her when she did not return home for dinner. Her father found her body inside the church.
Carol Ann’s sister, Kay Dougherty, speaking at Wednesday’s news conference, expressed her gratitude to Vincent Faragali, the Bristol police chief at the time of her sister’s murder, who kept a framed photograph of Carol Ann on his desk throughout his career to remind him of “a promise he made to seek justice for her.”
She also thanked Faragali’s nephew, Mike Misanelli, a journalist who in 2024 produced a podcast that brought attention to the case.
Doughterty said :“My parents both passed away without knowing on this earth who murdered their daughter. … After so many decades of unknowing, this finding finally brings closure and a truth to a wound that never healed.”
“Our family lived without answers,” Dougherty said, crying, “and the uncertainty surrounding Carol’s death became a part of who we were, a shadow that touched every day of our lives.”
“Though I know nothing can bring Carol back,” Dougherty said, “we can finally let her rest in peace knowing that her story has been told, her truth revealed, and her memory honored.”
Amira Abuzeid is a senior editor at Catholic News Agency.
