ROCHESTER - A 64-year-old Florida Keys man whose DNA was obtained from a discarded cigarette has been charged with strangling a 7-year-old girl in Rochester 31 years ago, authorities said Wednesday.
Michelle McMurray, who was raped before being killed, vanished in the middle of an April night in 1976 from an apartment building where James Pressler worked as a caretaker.
Her mother said she left her alone at around 2 a.m. to buy cigarettes at a bar and called police an hour later when she returned home to find the girl's bed empty.
Pressler, who lives in Big Pine Key near the southern tip of Florida, was arrested and charged Tuesday with second-degree murder and is expected to be returned here for trial, prosecutor Mike Green said.
At a court appearance Wednesday, he refused to waive extradition, so Green will ask Gov. Eliot Spitzer to file a warrant with Florida Gov. Charlie Crist compelling his return.
That process usually takes several weeks.
The girl's partially clothed body was found in a grassy area near the apartment building soon after police were alerted and Pressler “was at the scene when investigators arrived,” Green said.
“He lived in the same building as the victim and was talked to by the police, but basically the technology just didn't exist to get the link that we ultimately got to tie him to this crime.”
Investigators here recently developed undisclosed evidence about Pressler and sheriff's deputies in Florida recently trailed him and collected DNA from a cigarette he discarded that matched evidence gathered in 1976, authorities said.
Pressler has lived in Florida for more than 20 years. Authorities searched his home and confiscated some unspecified items, said Paige Patterson-Hughes of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
The agency also issued an appeal for “anyone who has had contact with him throughout the years or thinks they may have information on him or this case” to call its office in Key West.
As a matter of course, Pressler will be scrutinized in relation to other unsolved killings in Rochester “that fit his profile,” Green said, even though “there's no information right now that ties him directly to any other crime.”
In the early 1970s, three girls in the Rochester area who had first and last names with the same initial were abducted not far from their homes while running late-afternoon errands to the store for their mothers.
They were later found raped and strangled.
Wanda Walkowicz and Michelle Maenza, both 11, were killed in 1973 and 10-year-old Carmen Colon in 1971.
Police questioned more than 800 suspects in the “double-initial slayings,” but no one was ever arrested.
Currently, Green cautioned, “there is no allegation” that Pressler “is in any way linked to those crimes.”
Her mother said she left her alone at around 2 a.m. to buy cigarettes at a bar and called police an hour later when she returned home to find the girl's bed empty.
Pressler, who lives in Big Pine Key near the southern tip of Florida, was arrested and charged Tuesday with second-degree murder and is expected to be returned here for trial, prosecutor Mike Green said.
At a court appearance Wednesday, he refused to waive extradition, so Green will ask Gov. Eliot Spitzer to file a warrant with Florida Gov. Charlie Crist compelling his return.
That process usually takes several weeks.
The girl's partially clothed body was found in a grassy area near the apartment building soon after police were alerted and Pressler “was at the scene when investigators arrived,” Green said.
“He lived in the same building as the victim and was talked to by the police, but basically the technology just didn't exist to get the link that we ultimately got to tie him to this crime.”
Investigators here recently developed undisclosed evidence about Pressler and sheriff's deputies in Florida recently trailed him and collected DNA from a cigarette he discarded that matched evidence gathered in 1976, authorities said.
Pressler has lived in Florida for more than 20 years. Authorities searched his home and confiscated some unspecified items, said Paige Patterson-Hughes of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
The agency also issued an appeal for “anyone who has had contact with him throughout the years or thinks they may have information on him or this case” to call its office in Key West.
As a matter of course, Pressler will be scrutinized in relation to other unsolved killings in Rochester “that fit his profile,” Green said, even though “there's no information right now that ties him directly to any other crime.”
In the early 1970s, three girls in the Rochester area who had first and last names with the same initial were abducted not far from their homes while running late-afternoon errands to the store for their mothers.
They were later found raped and strangled.
Wanda Walkowicz and Michelle Maenza, both 11, were killed in 1973 and 10-year-old Carmen Colon in 1971.
Police questioned more than 800 suspects in the “double-initial slayings,” but no one was ever arrested.
Currently, Green cautioned, “there is no allegation” that Pressler “is in any way linked to those crimes.”
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