Member-only story
After Sixty Years of Mystery, “Little Miss Nobody” is Finally Somebody
An Abducted Four-Year-Old Will Finally Go Home
Thursday, July 21, 1960, started just like any other day for four-year-old Sharon Lee Gallegos. The temperature in Alamogordo, New Mexico began as a pleasant 68.4 degrees but, by midday, would peak at a sweat-staining 90.3. Not that that kept Sharon from doing what four-year-olds do; play outside with her cousins at her grandma’s house. Ten days later, she would be dead.
We don’t know precisely what Grandma was doing in the house while her grandchildren were outside. Maybe she was cleaning or cooking or sewing. Perhaps she was humming along to Ray Orbison’s or Hollywood Argyle’s Alley-Oop. She certainly wouldn’t have been concerned about the safety of her within-earshot grandchildren. It was a different time.
Tarzan the Magnificent was swinging at the box office; Sharon was a few years away to be excited about hunky Gordon Scott hanging from the tree branches, but her older male cousins would have eaten it up.
It was a relatively slow news day. Francis Chichester crossed the Atlantic aboard his boat, the Gypsy Moth II, setting a new solo record of forty days. Sirimavo Bandaranaike was elected Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, making her the world’s first woman prime minister…