11-year-old Michelle Maenza was reported missing by her mother, Carolyn, after she failed to return home from school. Subsequent investigations would determine Maenza was last seen by her classmates at approximately 3:20 p.m. walking alone en route to a shopping plaza located close to her school with the intention of retrieving a purse her mother had left inside a store within the plaza earlier that day. Approximately ten minutes later, a witness observed Maenza sitting in the passenger seat of a beige or tan vehicle traveling at high speed on Ackerman Street before turning onto Webster Avenue. According to this witness, the child had been weeping. At 5:30 p.m on November 26, a motorist observed a man standing by a large beige or tan vehicle with a flat tire, parked alongside Route 350 in the town of Walworth, holding a girl he strongly believed to be Michelle Maenza by the wrist. When this motorist had stopped to offer assistance, the individual had deliberately "grabbed the girl and pushed her behind his back", also obscuring his license plate from the motorist's view as he stared in his direction with such a menacing expression on his face that the motorist had felt compelled to drive away. Maenza's fully clothed body was discovered at 10:30 a.m. on November 28, lying face down in a ditch alongside a rural road in Macedon, approximately from Rochester. Her autopsy revealed that in addition to receiving extensive blunt force trauma to her body, Maenza had been raped, then strangled to death from behind with a ligature, possibly a thin rope. Numerous strands of white cat fur were discovered upon her clothing, and leaf samples matching the foliage where her body was discovered were recovered from within one of her clenched hands, indicating she had likely been strangled to death at or near the location where she was found. Investigators were able to retrieve a partial palm print from her neck and traces of semen upon her body and underwear. A forensic analysis of the semen samples determined she had been raped by one individual. An analysis of the contents of Maenza's stomach revealed traces of a hamburger and onions which had been consumed approximately one hour before her murder, giving credence to earlier reports of a girl matching Maenza's description having been seen in the company of a Caucasian man with dark hair, aged between 25 and