Murder of Sharon Lee Gallegos

On March 15, 2022, investigators in Arizona announced the identification of Gallegos's remains, almost 62 years after the discovery of her body. The child had been kidnapped from outside her grandmother's home in Alamogordo, New Mexico by two unknown individuals ten days prior to the discovery of her body.

Gallegos became known as "Little Miss Nobody" after contemporary efforts to identify her proved unsuccessful and no family or friends came forward to identify or claim her body. Her 2022 identification is the oldest cold case solved in Yavapai County; efforts to identify her abductors/murderers are ongoing.

In January 2022, samples of the child's DNA were sent to Othram Inc. in the hope advances in forensic genealogy may identify a close relative of the child and thus establish her identity.

On March 15, 2022, the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office announced that Little Miss Nobody had been identified as Sharon Lee Gallegos. The child's identification was made via the usage of genetic genealogy analysis conducted by Othram Inc.: a corporation specializing in the usage of forensic genealogy to identify unidentified decedents. The child's identity had been established in February, although the official announcement of her identification was withheld pending Gallegos's surviving relatives' notification of developments.

Due to recent advances in technology and DNA profiling, a decision to exhume the body of Little Miss Nobody to obtain a DNA sample was made in 2018, with The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children offering to pay for the exhumation and required testing. Resultingly, samples of the girl's DNA were successfully obtained from her body, and entered into both the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children databases for comparison with nationwide unsolved murders and missing person reports.

A renewed forensic examination of Little Miss Nobody's remains following her 2018 exhumation determined the highest likelihood of the child's age as between 3 and 6 years, with her height most likely being 3 ft 6 in. These updated estimates were based upon both the skeletal and dental conclusions from the examination of her remains.

In March 1961, a possibility arose that the decedent may have been one Deborah Jane Dudley; a four-year-old girl missing from Virginia. Investigators had failed to find the bodies of Dudley and her remaining siblings after the body of her seven-year-old sister, Carol Ann, was found wrapped in a blanket on February 9, 1961; she having died due to a combination of the malnutrition, exposure, and neglect she had endured from both her parents. Deborah's remains were later found in Southern Virginia. She was later interred alongside her sister. The children's parents were later charged with both murders.

On August 8, 1961, Sheriff Cramer led a party of law enforcement officers and a camera crew to film the location where the child's body had been found. Later that afternoon, Sheriff Cramer and Yavapai County Attorney George Ireland presented evidence—including the adult-sized rubber sandals which had been cut to fit the child's feet—to the media, with Sheriff Cramer stating: "Somewhere, there is someone who has the answer that we have been looking for; maybe this will be the thing that will bring that person forward." The footage of this scene and the interview with Sheriff Cramer was later broadcast on television in the hope fresh leads toward establishing the identity of the child would ensue, although the program brought no significant new information.

At approximately 3 p.m. on July 21, 1960, while playing with her two cousins (aged five and eleven), Gallegos was kidnapped in an alley at the rear of her Virginia Avenue home. The couple offered to buy Gallegos some candy and new clothing if she would get in the car with them; Gallegos refused and was then dragged by the arm into the "dirty, old green car" (believed to be a dark-green 1951- or 1952-model Dodge or Plymouth sedan) by the female abductor, who had exited the vehicle. This woman was described by the witnesses as a short, bespectacled and heavy-set individual in her 30s, with dirty blonde hair; the man was described as a fair, thin Caucasian with a long nose and straight, sandy-colored hair. Immediately after the woman dragged the child into the car, the driver sped away; the vehicle was last seen turning west onto Fifth Street at high speed.

On July 31, 1960, the partially buried body of a female child was found in Sand Wash Creek Bed on Old Alamo Road in Congress, Arizona, approximately 48 kilometers from the town of Wickenburg and roughly half a mile west of Highway 93. Her body was discovered by a Las Vegas schoolteacher named Russell Allen, who had been searching for rocks to decorate his garden.

The funeral of the unidentified child was conducted on August 10, 1960. She was laid to rest in Mountain View Cemetery, with the campaign for funds to provide a dignified burial—as opposed to anonymous interment inside a pauper's grave—being spearheaded by local talk radio announcer Dave Palladin. In interviews, Palladin stated his primary motivation was that he found the thought of a "little girl buried in Boot Hill" as being "insufferable" to him; adding his insistence that the child received a decent Christian burial. Prior to her funeral, the child had become colloquially known within and around Yavapai County as "Little Miss Nobody"—a name which remained affixed until her 2022 identification.

At a press conference held to announce the formal identification of Little Miss Nobody, a spokesman for the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office informed all present prior to the actual announcement of Gallegos's identity of his hope nobody would again refer to her by the media moniker by which she had been known since 1960, adding the "unidentified little girl who won the hearts of Yavapai County in 1960, and who occupied the minds and time of our sheriff's office and partners for 62 years, will now, rightfully, be given her name back." A nephew of Gallegos then informed the media of the compassion given to his aunt by Prescott residents in the decades she had remained unidentified, stating: "[My family] were amazed how the people rallied around her. Thank you for keeping my aunt safe and never forgetting her."

Sharon Lee Gallegos (September 6, 1955 – c. July 21–24, 1960) was a formerly unidentified American murder victim known as Little Miss Nobody whose body was found in Congress, Yavapai County, Arizona on July 31, 1960. Her remains were estimated to have been discovered within one to two weeks of the date of her murder. Due to the advanced state of decomposition of the child's remains, the specific cause of death of Gallegos has never been established, although her death has always been considered to be a homicide.