No one was ever arrested, as detectives were not able to trace Shelton’s last steps and associates.

Dayton Cold Case Detective Patricia Tackett said she first heard of Shelton last December when a potential witness contacted the department.

“Somebody has lived with this for a very long time and felt that they needed to come forward,” said Tackett, who did not identify the witness or the suspect.

Tackett contacted Chief Deputy Steve Lord at the Miami County Sheriff’s Office, which originally investigated the case and maintains a trove of black and white pictures as potential evidence. Both departments have recently interviewed “persons of interest,” Tackett said.

Shelton’s two children, Bellisario and Rodney Shelton, are overjoyed about a possible break in the case.

Whoever did it should have to pay for it, Bellisario says simply.

Rodney Shelton, 77, joined the Navy after graduating from Kiser High School and hadn’t seen his mother for years when her remains were recovered. He knew she’d been laid off from her job at Delco and that his parents had split.

“They had a problem with alcohol, both of ‘em,” he said. Still, he remembers his mom as “a very nice person to me, and we loved her.”

Tackett recently took Rodney to Eastwood Park in Dayton, now believed to be one of the last places Daisy went before she was killed. The park inside the Springfield Street entrance looks much different now that it did when Rodney last saw it in the late 1950s. He remembers a swimming pool with “hundreds of people. It was a big hangout.”

The new witness information revealed that Daisy lived across the street from Eastwood Park and frequented the nearby Lido bar. She became involved with a group that trafficked teenage girls for sex and lured them with cookies and treats from the park to a house that stood in the 1500 block of Springfield Street, the witness told police.

It’s those girls, now women in their late 60s, to whom Tackett is appealing to in hopes of solving the mystery. She wants anyone who was a victim of sex trafficking in 1963 or ‘64, or who has knowledge of Daisy being involved, to come forward.

Rodney Shelton is hopeful his mother’s killer will finally be charged. Either way, he said, there will be justice.

“He still has to face his maker,” Shelton said, “and you can’t lie to him.”

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To help

Dayton Cold Case Detective Patricia Tackett is asking anyone with information about this case to contact her at 333-7109, or CrimeStoppers at 222-STOP. Callers can leave an anonymous message, Tackett said, but she asks that they leave a phone number where she can call them back if she has additional questions.