A 9 yr old is abducted while walking to her grandparents; her body is found 2 months later In the autumn of 1975, a chill settled over Springfield, Missouri, that had little to do with the changing seasons. Nine-year-old Shirley Jane Rose, a fourth-grade student at Portland Elementary School, vanished on the evening of Friday, October 17th. She was a young girl with a life full of promise, a daughter and a sister cherished by her family.
That day, having spent the afternoon playing with her cousins at her grandparents' home, she began her familiar eight-block walk home around 6:30 p.m. It was a journey she had made countless times, but on this night, she would not complete it.
As dusk settled, concern grew at the Rose household. Shirley, who was known to be afraid of the dark, had not arrived. Her mother, Joyce Rose, frantic with worry, contacted the Springfield Police Department at 7:43 p.m. to report her youngest daughter missing. An intensive search was immediately launched, with police, family, and community members combing the neighborhood. Witnesses came forward, reporting they had seen Shirley speaking to a man in a blue Chevrolet car on Scenic Avenue, not far from her own home. Despite these early leads, the search proved fruitless, and the days turned into weeks with no sign of the little girl. The community held its breath, hoping for her safe return, but a sense of foreboding grew with each passing day.
The heartbreaking discovery was made nearly two months later, on December 13, 1975. Two men searching for beaver dams near McDaniel Lake stumbled upon a shallow grave. Inside were the remains of a young girl, her blouse knotted around her neck. The body was soon identified as that of Shirley Jane Rose. Due to the advanced state of decomposition, the medical examiner was unable to determine a precise cause of death, but the evidence strongly suggested she had been strangled shortly after her abduction.
The investigation into Shirley's murder was fraught with frustration and false leads. Early in the investigation, a woman contacted police, claiming a male acquaintance had confessed to the crime. This led to the arrest of the man and his brother, but it was soon determined that the woman had fabricated the story out of personal animosity, and the men were released. Over the years, several persons of interest were identified and interviewed, but no charges were ever filed in connection with Shirley's death.
A startling development emerged in 1982 when a Greene County Circuit Judge, Don Clough, publicly revealed information he had received from a former client. The client, who was reportedly near death, had confessed to kidnapping Shirley as leverage in a drug-related dispute. According to the judge, the intense and immediate search for the girl caused his client and others involved to panic, leading them to murder her. The client described forcing Shirley to watch as they dug her grave before strangling her. Despite this dramatic revelation, the identity of the confessor and any accomplices remained protected by attorney-client privilege, and the case grew cold. To this day, the murder of Shirley Jane Rose remains an unsolved crime, a lingering shadow in the history of Springfield.
