The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
DISAPPEARANCE OF CONNIE SMITH
Case of girl who went missing from Lakeville in 1952 still unsolved
A body excavated in Arizona last fall is not that of Connie Smith, a girl who went missing in Litchfield County 66 years ago. However, Connie’s remains may still be buried somewhere in Arizona.
The question is: where? Officials had hoped a Sept. 5, 2018, excavation at Citizens Cemetery in Flagstaff, Ariz., would unearth the lost remains of a girl dubbed Little Miss X. The teenage girl’s body was found in the Grand Canyon in 1958, but, after an initial investigation turned out to be inconclusive, the remains were reburied and lost in the 1960s, officials have said.
When Smith’s family was able to provide a DNA sample of their missing girl in 2004, Arizona officials renewed their efforts to try to find Little Miss X, so new tests could be done to determine whether she was, in fact, Connie Smith.
However, tests on the recently recovered remains show it was not the body of Little Miss X, said Lt. Gerrit Boeck of the Criminal Investigation Division of Arizona’s Coconino County Sheriff’s Office.
“It is definitely a disappointment,” Boeck said. “We were hoping to solve this case and provide closure to families of loved ones.”
The identity of Little Miss X remains unknown, but Little Miss X is thought to be the strongest lead in resolving the disappearance of 10-year-old Connie Smith from Lakeville in 1952.
The disappearance
Connie Smith, 10, went missing from Camp Sloane in Lakeville on July 16, 1952. It was a hot morning, and as Connie’s fellow campers headed to
“It is definitely a disappointment. We were hoping to solve this case and provide closure to families of loved ones.”
Lt. Gerrit Boeck, Criminal Investigation Division, Arizona’s Coconino County Sheriff ’s Office
breakfast, the girl, who was 5 feet tall and 100 pounds, left the camp for unknown reasons. She was last seen around 7:50 a.m. wearing blue shorts, a long-sleeved shirt and a bright red zippered windbreaker, according to case details confirmed by Detective Michael Downs of the Western District Major Crime Squad.
She was thought to be carrying a black zippered purse containing photos of her friends. Headed to downtown Lakeville on foot, she was last seen by several passing drivers on Route 44, where Belgo Road intersects.
Truck drivers were questioned in Connie’s disappearance. Carnival workers and gypsies from Arkansas who camped along Route 22 and were hired as barn painters were interrogated.
She was the granddaughter of a Wyoming governor and, after she
disappeared, the largest missing-person manhunt in Connecticut’s history ensued.
Former carnival worker William Henry Redmond, charged in 1988 with strangling a Pennsylvania girl a year before Connie’s disappearance, was interrogated by police but passed a polygraph test concerning the Smith case. Redmond was too ill to stand trial for the 1951 strangling. He died in 1992.
In April 1953, traveling salesman Frederick Pope confessed to Ohio police that he knew where Connie was, Detective Downs said. Pope alleged that he and his associate, Jack Walker, picked up Connie along Route 44, promising her a ride back to Wyoming. In the confession, Pope claimed Walker killed Connie in Arizona. Pope later beat Walker to death with a tire iron, he told police.
Upon deeper examination, Pope’s story fell apart, Downs said. He later admitted the story was a hoax so he could get
admitted into a mental hospital. He was dismissed as a suspect.
For each new lead, Connie’s father, Peter Smith, boarded a plane back East to follow up, officials said. He posted reward signs and kept up with the case, but his efforts were fruitless.
Little Miss X
The Connie Smith case stalled until Little Miss X was found in the Grand Canyon on Oct. 31, 1958. She was found on a hillside off a dirt road on Skinner Ridge, south of the Grand Canyon National Park, according to a coroner’s inquest. The body was unclothed and lying prone; it was thought to have been in the location for more than one year. The hair was thought to be artificially tinted. Clothes, a comb, jewelry and a nail-file case were found nearby.
After eliminating connections to missing local Arizona girls, the remains were buried in Citizens Cemetery in Flagstaff on
Sept. 23, 1959, according to the death certificate.
Three years later, acting on a tip from a letter received from Connecticut State Police, Arizona forensics personnel exhumed Little Miss X’s remains and performed a comparison of her teeth with those of Connie’s dental records, Downs said.
At the time, the tests proved inconclusive. Connie Smith’s brother, however, remains optimistic that Connie and Little Miss X might be the same person. Nels J. Smith, who was 13 at the time of his sister’s disappearance, is now 79 and living near Sundance, Wyo.
Smith said four of five dental points from Little Miss X were identical to Connie’s dental chart, and fillings were of the same technique and material used by the Smith family dentist.
“The gap in the teeth was still there, and Mother used to joke that it was so wide, you could throw a cat through it,” Smith said.
But his father refused to
see the similarities and determined it couldn’t be Connie, Smith said, because he wanted her still to be alive.
And investigators at the time were not certain about the connection either. So Little Miss X was reburied later in 1962 and lost.
The Arizona connection
In addition to Arizona detectives, one investigator from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was on scene for the excavation in September.
“We are disappointed wasn’t as fruitful as expected,” Boeck said. “The Cold Cases detectives and families had a lot invested.”
Little Miss X is one of Arizona’s Coconino County Sheriff Office’s 30-plus cold cases, Boeck said. Joe Sumner, a volunteer investigator on the Cold Case Unit, has said her case is believed to be the oldest cold case homicide.
“We pored over a bunch of old records and came it up with a good educated guess,” Boeck said about the September excavation. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t Little Miss X, but another’s remains.”
Boeck said investigators are still exploring other possible burial locations.
“At this point, we are going over other leads,” he said. “Back to the drawing board.”
Despite the setback, Smith remains optimistic that his sister will at some point be found.
“I was disappointed when they came up with the excavation, but the renewed investigation of cold cases is encouraging,” Smith said. “Things are still in limbo now, but anything is possible. I am seriously paraphrasing Yogi Berra: It isn’t over ‘til it’s over.”
With a DNA sample now on hand with which to compare to any remains found, the connection could eventually be made between Connie and Little Miss X. It’s just a matter of finding the remains, investigators say.