Ten-year-old Carmen Colón left her Rochester neighborhood on the afternoon of November 16, 1971, to pick up a prescription on West Main Street. The prescription wasn’t ready, witnesses saw her hurry outside and get into a waiting car. Later that day motorists on Interstate 490 reported seeing a child running along the highway shoulder, naked from the waist down, waving for help; witnesses described a dark compact car, often likened to a Ford Pinto hatchback, backing toward her and one witness said she appeared to be led back into a vehicle.

Her body was found in a gully near Churchville in the Town of Riga on November 18. The autopsy documented sexual assault, severe injuries including a skull fracture and a fractured vertebra, extensive fingernail scratches, and death by manual strangulation. Investigators recovered her coat in a culvert and, on November 30, her trousers near a service road linked to the highway sightings. Police questioned multiple people over time, including a relative identified publicly as a principal suspect, Miguel Colón, who was questioned but never charged; no arrest was ever made in Carmen’s murder. The case has often been mentioned alongside later regional child murders called the Alphabet Murders, though authorities say they have not been officially connected.