Spokane Washington’s Camp Fire Girls Troop eagerly set out to sell their appetizing mint cookies on the evening of March 6, 1959. Each girl left with a bundle of boxes and most came home with none as Spokane’s citizens were generous in buying the tasty treats.
Nine-year-old Candy Rogers did not return with any of her cookies. Candy herself also did not return.

Twelve hours after Candy was last seen, six boxes of the Camp Fire mints were found scattered along a nearby bridge; two weeks later, her body was found in the woods. A demented man’s eye candy was the Camp Fire Girl herself, Candy Rogers.

In November 2021, after over sixty-two-years, the killer of Candy Rogers was finally identified.

Candy Rogers

Nothing of significance was found in the search for Candy until just over two weeks after her disappearance. What was found was what searchers and investigators were dreading.

On the evening of March 21, while hunting woodchucks in a remote wooded area seven miles northwest of Spokane, Richard Bergan and Howard Lawrence, two enlisted men from nearby Fairchild Air Force Base, found a small pair of blue suede shoes.

The shoes were identified as those worn by Candy on the evening of her disappearance.

Shoes Found

At dawn the following day, a patrolman spotted a knee protruding from a pile of pine needles. As he sifted through the debris, he was hoping against hope, but he knew what he was about to find; the body of Candy Rogers lay beneath.

Police determined Candy had been raped and strangled to death with a piece of her own slip. She had probably been killed on March 6, the evening she disappeared.

Candy Found Slain

After clearing Candy’s parents, Carl and Elaine, as well as their neighbors and acquaintances as the child’s killer, authorities turned their focus to more nefarious characters such as drifters, vagrants, mental patients, and paroled prisoners.

Three strong suspects soon emerged.

Family And Friends Cleared

Fifty-year-old Alfred Graves went to his grave the day after Candy’s body was found, as he suffocated himself with carbon monoxide in his car. Several area women said he had recently touched them inappropriately. At his home, police found newspaper clippings about molested women and children; in the trunk of his car, they found bobby pins and some sections of rope. Although no rope had been found near Candy’s body, marks on her waist indicated such material had recently been around her midsection.

Graves left a suicide note in the vehicle, but current investigators say the text of the note was not recorded. Had he made any reference to Candy Rogers in the letter, they say it certainly would have been noted.

Another suspect, forty-nine-year-old James Barnett, was arrested on suspicion of a sex crime against another young girl on February 3, 1960, eleven months after Candy’s murder. Four days later, he hanged himself in the Spokane County Jail.

I could not a picture of either James Barnett or Alfred Graves.

Suspects Emerge

Although Graves and Barnett were viewed by investigators both past and present as persons of interest, the prime suspect in the murder of Candy Rogers was twenty-nine-year-old Hugh Morse, a member of the Spokane Motorcycle Club who lived only a few blocks from the Rogers family. He had a history of sex offenses before coming to Spokane and had served time in prison before being released and declared “cured” in 1957.

Shortly after Candy’s murder, Morse went on a cross-country killing spree which landed him on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. He began by murdering a Spokane women later in 1959 and another in 1960. That same year, he also attempted to rape a third woman.

Fleeing the area, Morse went east, where he molested two teenage girls in Atlanta, stabbed a woman in Dayton, Ohio, and murdered two more women, one in Birmingham, Alabama, and the other in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Morse was finally apprehended on August 29, 1961. He was convicted on the multiple counts of murder and rape and was sentenced to multiple life terms in prison.

Hugh Morse

Nothing directly connected Hugh Morse to Candy Rogers’ murder but circumstantial evidence made him a suspect. Among such evidence was the grape-smelling gum which was smeared on Candy’s clothing. Morse was fond of grape gum, which was found at the scene of several of his crimes.

Tests conducted on the chewing gum on Candy’s clothing were inconclusive.

Morse Is Suspected . . .

In 2001, advances in DNA technology enabled the development of a genetic profile of Candy Rogers’ killer. Cautiously confident they would finally be able to identify the culprit one of their most infamous cases, Spokane police submitted Morse’s clothing for DNA testing. To their surprise and disappointment, the genetic code did not match their prime suspect’s.

Hugh Morse died behind bars in 2003. He denied murdering Candy Rogers, and it proved one of the few instances in his life in which the serial killer was telling the truth.

 . . . But He Is Not Candy’s Killer

In November 2021, over sixty-two years after the murder of Candy Rogers, her rapist and killer was identified as John Hoff.

A new DNA testing method was matched to a bodily fluid found on Candy’s clothing. Further testing, including a DNA sample voluntarily submitted by Hoff’s daughter Cathie, led them to believe he was the killer. The remains of Hoff, dead for over half-a-century, were exhumed, tested, and confirmed a match.

Hoff was twenty-years-old at the time of Candy’s murder. The following year, he enlisted in the Army and was stationed at missile sites surrounding Fairchild Air Force Base until he was declared a deserter and ultimately dishonorably discharged in 1961 after being convicted of the second-degree assault of a woman. He served six months in jail. Following his release, he worked as a door-to-door salesman and in a lumber yard.

Although Hoff lived only one mile from Candy Rogers at the time of her murder and his ten-year-old stepsister was Candy’s “big sister” in the Spokane Campfire Girls chapter, it is not clear if they had ever met.

Hoff committed suicide in 1970. For many years, he was buried in Riverside Memorial Park, the same resting locale of Candy Rogers. After he was identified as Candy’s killer, his remains were moved to an unknown location.

John Hoff

After over sixty-two-years, the killer of Candy Rogers was unmasked, bringing a conclusion to the murder of the Campfire Girl.

At Long Last,

Candy’s Case Is Closed

The picture is of the boxes of campfire cookies Candy Rogers was carrying and which were found scattered along the bridge on the evening she was last seen.

Candy’s Candy

In the days following Candy Rogers’ disappearance, thousands of volunteers combed the canyons and the banks along the Spokane River, looking for any clues. These efforts resulted in a second tragedy.

Three Fairfield Air Force base volunteers conducting an aerial search were killed when their helicopter struck a power line. The casualties were thirty-five-year-old airman Marlice Ray, twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant Kenneth Fauteck, and twenty-eight-year-old Sergeant William McDonnell.

I could not find a picture of William McConnell.

                                             Marlice               Kenneth

                                                Ray                   Fauteck

 

 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/227844319/candice-elaine-rogers#

 

SOURCES:

• Associated Press
• The Spokesman-Review
• Seattle Times
• United Press International