Amazing news this morning as we've just discovered that Rob Schmidt's feature film, The Alphabet Killer, has inspired police in Rochester, NY to check out old evidence - from the real case - with new technology. The result? Three decades later a new suspect, James Pressler, has been charged with the 1976 murder of 7-year-old Michelle McMurray, who was raped and strangled in Rochester after her mom left her home alone at 2 a.m. to go buy a pack of smokes. Read on for this incredible story.
Cigarettes helped get a little girl killed 31 years ago.
Now cigarettes - or one saliva-flecked butt, at any rate - may have nabbed her murderer, who may be the notorious "Alphabet Killer."
A Florida man was arrested Tuesday and charged with the 1976 murder of 7-year-old Michelle McMurray, who was raped and strangled in Rochester after her mom left her home alone at 2 a.m. to go buy a pack of smokes.
Three decades later, James Pressler, 64, was allegedly tied to the cold case by a cigarette butt he casually flicked into the gutter. He had no idea cops were waiting to pick it up to compare his DNA to evidence left on Michelle's body.
In 1976, Pressler was the caretaker in Michelle's building and cops considered him "a person of interest." But they could never tie him to the crime.
"Basically the technology just didn't exist," said Monroe County (N.Y.) District Attorney Michael Green.
It does now.
Rochester Police Investigator Joseph Dominick, whose father investigated Michelle's murder in the 1970s, reopened the case in 2001.
In recent weeks, he enlisted the Monroe County (Fla.) Sheriff's Department to tail Pressler and look for any chance to get his DNA.
The cigarette butt was enough, cops said.
Michelle's murder was the fourth and last of the "Alphabet murders" of little girls in Rochester whose first and last names started with the same letter.
All four were raped and strangled, and all but Michelle were dumped in towns whose names also started with the same letter.
Michelle was found next to her Rochester apartment building.
Back in the 1970s, cops said the first three slayings were connected but they had nothing solid to link Michelle to the others.
Yesterday, they said they will look for any connection Pressler might have to the unsolved killings. But "there's no information right now that ties him directly to any other crime," Green said.
Pressler has lived in Florida for more than 20 years, most recently on Big Pine Key.
That's cool and I'm tired of waiting for this film.
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Cigarettes helped get a little girl killed 31 years ago.
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