New Search in 1961 Missing Girl Case

The victim, Ramona Price, has been missing for 50 years. But police decide this is a good time to update their case.

Because of a "rare opportunity," Santa Barbara Police used cadaver dogs on Wednesday to search for human remains of a child who went missing almost 50 years ago.

In an e-mail released Tuesday by Santa Barbara Police, Chief Cam Sanchez said the search was focused on Ramona Price, who went missing in 1961. Ramona was a 7-year-old student at Adams School when she disappeared from the area of Modoc Road.

"The case remains unsolved, and her whereabouts or the location of her body was never determined," the chief said in the statement. "About four years ago, information surfaced that led investigators to believe that her body may be buried beneath the Winchester Overcrossing, which was built the same time period as Ramona's disappearance.

"The tearing down of the Winchester Overcrossing for new construction allows a rare opportunity to search the area with so-called cadaver dogs trained to detect human bodies, even after being buried for many years."

Police said they believe serial killer Mack Ray Edwards, who worked on the overpass as a heavy machine operator, dumped the little girl's body there.
 
The Highway 101 southbound on-ramp at Winchester was scheduled for closure by Caltrans between 8 a.m. and the conclusion of the search, estimated to be about 1 p.m.

The search concluded for the day without any definitive leads. But investigators said they could be back with cadaver dogs within several days.

Ramona Price Vanished 50 Years Ago

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On Sept. 2, 1961, Price watched as her father packed the family's belongings into a truck to move to a house in Santa Barbara.

Excited, the schoolgirl decided to go on ahead to the new home, a couple miles away.

She was never seen again. Despite an extensive investigation, the little girl's abductor was never found.

The case went cold, but throughout the years detectives got periodic leads, said police Lt. D. Paul McCaffrey. About four years ago, detectives received information that Ramona was buried under the overpass and Edwards may have been responsible for her death.

They waited until now, as the overpass is being demolished, to announce their suspicions. The so-called Winchester Overcrossing lies to the west of Santa Barbara, an affluent seaside city about 100 miles west of Los Angeles.

The city of about 88,000 usually has about three homicides annually, and McCaffrey said Ramona's disappearance reverberated in the community for years.

At the time, two brothers who were sex offenders were questioned in the case. They admitted to talking to a girl as she passed them but denied ever touching her. No charges were filed.

In a separate case, authorities in 2008 excavated a stretch of earth alongside a freeway in the arid hills northwest of Los Angeles. They were looking for the body of Roger Dale Madison, a 16-year-old boy who disappeared in 1968 at the hands of Edwards.

Edwards, who hung himself in 1971 while on death row at San Quentin prison, confessed in 1970 that Madison was one of his victims.

It's not clear why detectives did not look into his confession earlier. No remains were uncovered.

That case was revived when a writer looking into a 1957 missing child case noticed similarities with the Madison case.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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