On July 29, 1982, 11-year-old Michelle Steele disappeared after a dental appointment in St. Joseph, Missouri. A large search involved police and sixty-five volunteers; her uncle found her body the next day on a bank of the Missouri River. She was nude and battered, and an autopsy determined she had been beaten and strangled to death.

Police arrested Charles Ray Hatcher the day after the body was found when he attempted to check himself into the St. Joseph State Hospital. Eyewitnesses placed a man matching his description near the river. Hatcher, who had a prior record for sexual assault, became the primary suspect and later confessed to Michelle’s murder during the investigation.

Hatcher also confessed to multiple other killings dating back to 1969 and admitted the 1978 murder of 4-year-old Eric Christgen, a case that had led to the wrongful conviction of Melvin Reynolds. In December 1984 Hatcher was convicted of Michelle Steele’s murder and given life with no possibility of parole for fifty years; four days later he was found dead in his cell, having taken his own life by hanging.

Did anyone in St. Joseph at the time have memories or photographs of Michelle that could help preserve her story?