It's always been this way:
When 9-year-old Mae Barrett disappeared one dark and stormy night in January 1945, no one could imagine where the blue-eyed blonde haired girl had gone. But when Mae's beaten and mutilated corpse was found the next day in an abandoned house, her throat slashed and her face battered beyond recognition, the small town of Vandling was thrust into one of the most intensive police investigations in the history of Pennsylvania.
http://www.amazon.com/Little-Girl-Lost-Vandling-Murder/dp/1479749818
Although it was more of a myth than reality, a "new" type of criminal emerged: the sexual psychopath. Of course, this type of offender had always existed throughout history. In the late 1940s, William Heirens, 17, kidnapped a six-year old girl in Chicago. Suzanne was abducted from her home on the first day of school after Christmas vacation by an intruder who used a ladder to climb into her bedroom. The girl was strangled then taken to the basement of a nearby building and dismembered. Pieces of her body were found in sewers and catch basins near her home on the city's North Side.
He sexually assaulted the victim, cut her up and dumped the parts into city sewers.
Read more:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/lip...year-old-girl-article-1.1034076#ixzz39qxTXj6O
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/child_abduction/8.html
One day the Judge's little daughter, Lucy failed to return home from school. Since the school was only two blocks from her house, a search was immediately ordered and MPs at Camp Swift were notified of the missing girl.
Pvt. Knapp showed up at the Camp Swift gate behind the wheel of the stolen car and was immediately placed under arrest. The car had been reported stolen earlier that day by the car's owner, a Camp Swift Captain.
Knapp, was confined, but slept warm and comfortable, while Lucy Maynard lay unconscious and exposed to the October chill with a crushed larynx. On the afternoon of the next day, her body was found in a pasture three miles from town. Despite the efforts of Dr. Gordon Bryson, the family physician who delivered Lucy into the world nine years before. she died at 4 a.m. the next day.
Knapp was questioned about any involvement with the girl. He admitted that he saw her walking home from school and offered her a ride. "Come on, little sister, and I'll ride you home," he reportedly said. His story expanded and he told how he drove around Bastrop for some time. When the little girl became frightened and started screaming, he strangled her with his hands and then threw her into the pasture where she was found.
http://www.texasescapes.com/FallingBehind/Murder-at-Camp-Swift-1942-Texas.htm
On the sunny afternoon of March 24, 1944, Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and her friend , Mary Emma Thames, age 8, had just left their homes to pick flowers. They were alternately walking and riding Betty’s bicycle along the railroad tracks that ran through Alcolu. The girls often played in this area on the opposite side of the town. By any measure, it was a beautiful spring day: the trees just beginning to bud, the first flowers of the season blooming among the tall grass along the tracks. As they ran and skipped their way through the grass, they saw a young black man along the same path. He also lived in this small lumber-producing town and both girls knew him. Everyone knew everyone else in Alcolu, it was that kind of place. However, within minutes, both girls lay dead on the ground, their skulls brutally bashed in by a huge railroad spike. Their bodies were dragged through the grass and dumped into a small ravine. Immediately after the murders, the killer hid the bloody weapon in the bushes and began the leisurely walk home. He seemed unconcerned and it is doubtful that he truly understood the repercussions of what he had done.http://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/stinney-george.htm
After spending nearly three years analysing the decomposing DNA of the man who bludgeoned, raped and shot 12-year-old Muriel in the Welsh village of Penllergaer in June 1946, Dr Dark this week announced that his team have produced a ground-breaking 'Y-STR' profile which, for the first time ever, could help police identify the killer via a living male relative.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...rival-TV-thriller-identified-killers-DNA.html
June Anne Devaney was recovering from pneumonia in ward CH3 at Queen's Park Hospital, Blackburn. Shortly after midnight on 15 May 1948, nurse Gwendolyn Humphreys (who was in the ward's kitchen) heard a cry coming from the ward. She checked the ward and found nothing wrong, and returned to her duties. At 1:20 am she felt a draught and noticed an open door at the end of the ward. She closed it, and saw that June Anne's cot was empty. Nurse Humphreys made a quick search of the ward and, finding no trace of June Anne, contacted the local police. They arrived at 1:55 am and fully searched the hospital and its grounds, finding the body at approximately 3:15 am next to a boundary wall some 300 feet (91 m) from the ward. As the body had injuries consistent with a beating, the hospital became a crime scene, and the ward was secured and searched. A subsequent post mortem showed that June Anne had been raped and had multiple fractures to the skull, probably from being swung into the wall whilst held by the legs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_June_Anne_Devaney
Born 1938
Died 17 or 18 December 1948
Age at the time: 10 years old
Sex: Female
Race: White
Hair: Blonde
Clothing: Blue Jumper Dress (school uniform)
Circumstances:
Roberta was last seen alive when she left her home in Suburban Brookfield, IL at 6PM, Friday night, 17 December 1948. She was walking alone and was to attend a movie at the nearby suburb of La Grange.
Her body was found the next morning eight miles from her home in a ditch near a cemetery. She had been beaten, gagged, strangled and had been sexually assulted.
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...a-Rinearson-10-murdered-near-Chicago-Dec-1948
As hard as it is to believe in this era of concern about protecting children, until 1950 molesting a child was a misdemeanor in California. The molestation and murder of 6-year-old Linda Joyce Glucoft changed all that.
Nearly half a century before the abductions and murders of Polly Klaas and Megan Kanka launched such familiar statutes as the three-strikes law and Megan's Law, Linda's 1949 murder was the catalyst for new laws pioneering stricter punishment for crimes against children.
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/aug/29/local/me-then29
That's just based on a nominal search of murders of little girls in the 1940's. Not an extensive search, just a cursory one. And look how many I found, pretty quickly.
It's always been like this. Even when I was a kid in the 70's and was allowed to run around for hours unattended by a parent from ages 4 up, even during the 60's, 50's, 30's, 20's - it's always been like this.
Nevertheless, the rate of little children killed by unrelated persons for sexual or other thrill-type reasons remains incredibly low.