Killing of Mary Theresa Simpson

Mary Theresa Simpson was born in 1951 or 1952 in Elmira, New York, to Ellsworth and Rose Simpson. She had an older brother, an older sister, and an older half-brother. After her parents separated in May 1963, she lived with her father. The two moved to nearby Hammondsport in late 1963, limiting her mother to monthly visits, before returning to Elmira in early March 1964 after her father found new work there.

On March 15, 1964, Simpson left her father's apartment around 3 p.m., telling him she was visiting her cousin. Instead, she first spent about an hour at her mother's house, unbeknownst to her father, before heading to her cousin's home. She left her cousin's around 6:30 p.m. and was last seen by a friend in front of a store at 7 p.m., telling the friend she was heading home. When she failed to return, her father reported her missing to police around 11 p.m.

Police were not initially alarmed, but searched several empty homes the next day and contacted friends without success. The district attorney was notified the same day that the circumstances appeared abnormal. By March 18, police suspected foul play and expanded searches to vacant buildings, abandoned homes, and junkyards, while notifying departments across New York and Pennsylvania.

On March 19, 1964, a man hiking with his two sons found Simpson's body in a wooded area southwest of Elmira. She was fully clothed but covered in dirt, stones, and tree branches, with her throat stuffed with dirt and twigs. An autopsy found she had been sexually assaulted and strangled, and that she was likely killed at or near the site where her body was found.

By October 1964, police had questioned 300 suspects. Local radio station WELM and the Star-Gazette newspaper raised a $1,000 reward for information, later increased to $5,000 by 1972. No arrest resulted from these efforts for decades.

In 2003, New York State Police forensic investigators determined that fluid on Simpson's skirt was semen, and extracted DNA that was entered into CODIS without a match. The profile was resubmitted in 2014 with no match. In 2022, the Elmira Police Department, working with the FBI, received a grant from the non-profit Season of Justice. In 2023, investigators partnered with forensic genealogy company Othram and students from Russell Sage College to pursue genetic genealogy analysis. By 2025, this work identified Alfred Murray Jr., who had died in 2004 and had never previously been considered a suspect, as a person of interest. A DNA sample from his son indicated a familial match, and in November 2025 investigators exhumed Murray's remains for direct comparison; the resulting DNA match indicated odds of less than 1 in 320 billion that the DNA belonged to someone other than Murray. On February 10, 2026, the Elmira Police Department held a press conference announcing their conclusion that Murray killed Simpson, marking the 18th New York case solved with Othram's assistance.