Arizona's 'Little Miss Nobody' ID'd After 62 Years

CONGRESS, AZ — She's "Little Miss Nobody" no more.

A girl whose remains were found by a Las Vegas school teacher buried in the Arizona desert in 1960 was finally identified more than 60 years later as 4-year-old Sharon Lee Gallegos.

Gallegos was kidnapped from her grandmother's home in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 21, 1960. A man and woman reportedly dragged her into a "dirty, old green car." Her remains were found partially buried at Sand Wash Creek in Congress, Arizona, 10 days later.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, she had brown hair and was found wearing a checkered blouse and white shorts. She was also wearing a pair of adult sized flip-flops that were cut down to fit her. Her fingernails and toenails were also painted.

Sheriff David Rhodes of the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office said at a news conference he hoped to "never hear that name again."

At the time, investigators determined her remains were burned up to two weeks before she was found. There was no further evidence of trauma, making a cause of death difficult to determine. Her death was deemed a homicide due to the suspicious nature of the case, authorities said.

"Despite multiple leads at the time, the case has remained unsolved," the sheriff's office wrote in an Instagram post in January. "The case gained wide local and national news coverage, but her identity remained undiscovered, leading her to be called '"Little Miss Nobody.'"

The community raised money to give the girl a proper funeral service in 1960. The case remained stagnant until 2018 when authorities exhumed her body to obtain DNA.

Last year, investigators with the sheriff's office partnered with a private laboratory to determine if advanced DNA testing and forensic-grade genome sequencing could help identify her.