Michelle Maenza, 11, was abducted on her way home from school number 33 on Webster Avenue on November 26, 1973. Michelle’s mother stated that this was the first time she was allowed to travel alone, but she, like the other girls, did not return home that night.
Instead of returning home, Michelle was said to have stopped at a nearby shopping center to look for a purse that her mother had previously left there. According to her father, there was no indication of anything wrong at first, but when hours passed with no sign of Michelle, her mother reported her missing to the police.
According to the police, numerous witnesses reported seeing Michelle with an unknown man. The first sighting occurred around 3:30 p.m. near the North Goodman St. Shopping Plaza. Her classmates told police they saw her in a car with a “stranger.”
Witnesses said they saw a young girl who looked like Michelle in a car outside of a local burger joint in Penfield around 4:30 p.m. These witnesses claimed to have seen a man return to his car with a bag of food and drive away. Officers said an hour later that a witness saw a man holding Michelle by the wrist along Route 350 in Walworth.
Every witness described the man as white, about six feet tall, with brown hair, and weighing about 165 pounds, according to the police. Witnesses also stated that he was driving a tan or beige vehicle.
On November 28, 1973, two days later, it was reported that Michelle’s body had been discovered in a ditch on Eddy Road in Macedon. According to police, she was discovered on Route 350 in Walworth less than a mile from where she was last seen.
Her autopsy revealed rape and strangulation evidence, like that of the other girls, according to Detective Sergeant Kevin Kuntz of the Wayne County Sheriffs Department, who spoke to News 10 NBC. He claimed that an autopsy revealed that she had recently eaten because there was undigested food in her stomach.
“They were able to identify strangulation by ligature. According to the autopsy, Michelle had a hamburger and onions in her stomach, according to Sgt. Kuntz’s interview.
Sgt. Kuntz told News 10 NBC that while they were able to gather semen from her body and undergarments at the time, it was insufficient to build a DNA profile. According to him, this information has convinced him and other investigators that the man seen on November 26, 1973, was Michelle’s ki*ller and was probably also responsible for the deaths of the other two girls.
Michelle Maenza’s Case is still unsolved.
