Kathleen Ann Shea was six years old when she walked from her Tyrone home to Adams Elementary School on Thursday afternoon, March 18, 1965. She had been home for lunch and, despite her father offering a ride, chose to walk the four blocks to afternoon kindergarten. A crossing guard saw her across 15th Street and a neighbor later recalled she seemed in good spirits; those are the last confirmed sightings. She was walking north between 15th and 16th streets and never arrived at school.

A delay in realizing she was missing meant the alarm was raised later that afternoon. Hundreds of volunteers, local police and the Pennsylvania State Police searched the area; bloodhounds tracked her scent to Garfield Street, one block from the school, then the trail went cold. No trace of Kathleen or her belongings was ever found. Reports from the investigation included an unidentified man asking a classmate to point Kathleen out months earlier, a man in his forties or fifties seen nearby the day before, and an unfamiliar car driving slowly through the neighborhood on the day she disappeared. The case is classified as a non-family abduction.

Kathleen’s parents later had another daughter and never stopped hoping for answers; both parents have since died. Does anyone in Tyrone from that era remember the neighborhood or the unfamiliar car seen that day?