CRIME HUNTER: A child sex murder; Jane Doe no more; missing brothers

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Every day, I make notes, send myself emails and copy links of stories I find interesting – it is impossible to get to them all.

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Here are several I’ve put away over the last few weeks. They range from a case before I was born to one that chilled me to the bone when I was a teenager.

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KILLER ID’D IN CHILD’S COLD CASE MURDER

If the kid squawked, sex monster William Schrader knew he was sunk. So, after raping nine-year-old Carol Ann Dougherty inside St. Mark’s Church in suburban Philadelphia on Oct. 22, 1962, he strangled the girl to death.

The horrific child murder slipped into the mists of time and into an evidence box in the cold case room of a building in Bucks County, PA. Schrader was in the frame from the beginning.

Dialling the story back to the autumn of 1962, the little girl was last seen riding her bicycle to the library. But candy and a soda came first!

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She did not return home, and her worried father found her body inside St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church.

Cops say Schrader was a factory worker at the time who lived near the church. He was questioned and provided a hair sample, flunked a polygraph. Detectives determined that “he lied about his alibi, with timecards proving he was not at work on the day of the murder.”

And then he fled, first to Florida, then Texas, before finally settling in Louisiana.

Schrader died in 2002. There is no extradition treaty with hell.

‘CLOSURE AND TRUTH’

“Our family lived without answers, and the uncertainty surrounding Carol’s death became a part of who we were,” her sister Kay Dougherty Talanca said. “After so many decades of unknowing, this finding finally brings closure and truth to a wound that never healed.”

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Schrader confessed to his stepson that he “had to kill the girl in Bristol to keep her from talking.”

The killer had a “pattern of violence and sexual violence, particularly against young, pre-pubescent and adolescent females.” His criminal history spanned multiple states, including a 1985 conviction in Louisiana for the gruesome death of Catherine Smith, 12. The child died after Schrader “intentionally set fire to his house, knowing she and other family members were inside.”

More? He also “sexually abused nearly every female child he lived with or had access to, including his own biological daughter and granddaughters,” most between the ages of six and 13. The “psychopath … had a deviant sexual arousal for prepubescent victims… incredibly impulsive, with little or no self-control, and comfortable with the high risk associated with these crimes.”

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DEATH IN A CORNFIELD

I’ve known Tammy Jo Alexander since the day the terrified teenager was discovered executed on Nov. 9, 1979. For many years, I knew her only as Jane Doe, then Caledonia Jane Doe.

Growing up across Lake Ontario from Rochester, we listened to their radio stations, watched their local news and could tell you that yes, House of Guitars was on Titus Ave.

Reports said the dead teen was found in a rain-drenched Livingston County cornfield sans identification. Does anyone know her?

Sadly, no one did. That would take 36 years.

Sheriff Thomas Dougherty said on the 46th anniversary, cops never lacked leads, just not THE lead. Her killer remains unknown.

“It is not too late to provide her family with closure, as other similar cases have been solved in the course of this investigation,” Dougherty said in a recent appeal.

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TEENAGE RUNAWAY

Alexander – who would have turned 62 on Nov. 2 – was murdered on Route 20 in farm country. She had been shot in the head and back and left for dead, to be found by a farmer who owned the field.

The petite teen had run away from her home in Florida that same year.

WHERE ARE THE SKELETON BROTHERS?

Parents who snatch their children, you can tell, it’s in the eyes. They burn with the certainty of a third-year humanities student, carrying a placard and doing things that once would have earned them a punch in the face.

Only THEY know what’s best for their kids. Everyone else, be damned.

John Skelton, 53, fits into this neat slot. His three young sons have not been seen since 2010. He was convicted of wrongfully imprisoning them. Now, he’s about to walk out of prison, according to The Detroit News.

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CHARGED WITH MURDER

Sullivan failed to return the boys – Andrew, 9, Alexander, 7, and Tanner, 5 – to his ex-wife after Thanksgiving 2010.

In a 2018 interview with WDIV, he said he told police that he turned all three of them over to an “underground sanctuary” in Ohio because he felt that his ex-wife was a “danger” to them.

The brothers have never been seen again – and their heartbroken mom, Tanya Zuvers, had them declared dead in March. She also tried to get a judge to declare that Skelton was responsible for their deaths but was denied.

Sullivan claimed in 2018 that a van arrived on Thanksgiving night and took the boys to an “underground sanctuary” run by two women and a man in his 60s.

Cops never found anything to support that claim, and before the weekend was out, he tried to kill himself. In the intervening 15 years, he has continually changed his story.

Sullivan had been set to be released from a Michigan prison on Nov. 29. Instead, on Wednesday, he was charged with three counts of open murder and tampering with evidence.

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun

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