In the spring of 1959, in the quiet West Central neighborhood of Spokane, Washington, a nine-year-old girl named Candice ‘Candy’ Elaine Rogers set out on a simple errand: selling boxes of Camp Fire mints for her youth organization. It should have been a routine afternoon-into-evening. Instead, it became one of the city’s most haunting mysteries. When darkness fell and Candy didn’t return home, what followed was a heart-wrenching search, a brutal discovery, and a cold case that would remain unsolved for more than six decades.

Now, thanks to advances in forensic genealogy and the dogged efforts of investigators spanning generations, the killer has finally been identified—though long dead, his name is now known, his secret revealed.

The day she disappeared
On March 6, 1959, Candy came home from school, played briefly with the family dog and ate a cookie, then grabbed seven boxes of Camp Fire mints. She had permission from her mother but was reminded to come home before dark—something Candy always abided by. (spokesman.com) The sale of these mints was part of her membership in the Blue Birds (a younger division of the Camp Fire Girls). (inlander.com) Around 4 p.m., she left home. Shortly before 6 p.m., when she still hadn’t returned, alarm bells rang. By 6:30 p.m., her grandfather and neighbors were searching the streets; by 8 p.m., police had been alerted and the search expanded. (spokesman.com)

Searchers found six of the seven boxes of her mints scattered along North Pettet Drive, foreshadowing the dark turn ahead. (CBS News)

The massive search & tragic crash
The community plunged in. Volunteers, police officers, sheriff’s deputies, even an Air Force helicopter from nearby Fairchild Air Force Base joined the effort. Tragedy struck when the helicopter on a search mission hit high-tension power lines and crashed into the Spokane River, killing three crew members. (CBS News)

On March 21, two airmen out hunting woodchucks found a small girl’s pair of suede shoes in a secluded wooded area about seven miles from Candy’s home. The next morning, searchers uncovered her body—buried under pine needles and tree-boughs, with her feet bound by a strip of her own clothing, another used to strangle her. The autopsy confirmed sexual assault and strangulation. (spokesman.com)

What followed were decades of dead ends—thousands of tips, suspects that fizzled, and evidence that sat cold while investigators renewed hope year after year. (The Independent)

Evidence preserved, but technology lagged

In an era when DNA testing was nonexistent, the committed detectives stored evidence anyway: Candy’s clothing, the strip used in the murder, and other items. By 2001, DNA could be isolated from the evidence—but despite uploading genetic profiles, no match surfaced in the databases. (my.spokanecity.org)

Over time, the case was handed from retiring investigators to new generations—Sgt. Zac Storment of the Spokane Police Major Crimes Unit later called it “the Mount Everest of our cold cases—one we could never seem to overcome.” (The Daily Beast)

The breakthrough came with forensic genetic genealogy. In 2021, a Texas-lab named Othram Inc. took on the degraded DNA specimen and, using family-tree analysis, narrowed the suspects to three brothers. (CBS News) One of those was John Reigh Hoff, who lived about a mile from Candy’s home in 1959 and had a documented history of violent assault. In 1961, Hoff had assaulted a woman, tied her up using her clothes and tried to strangle her; he served only six months. (The Independent)

A DNA match came when Hoff’s daughter submitted a sample of her own DNA. Investigators exhumed Hoff’s body and confirmed the DNA on Candy’s clothing was his — with a probability “25 quintillion times” more likely than a random person. (my.spokanecity.org)

Though Hoff died by suicide in 1970 at age 31, the identification brought closure to survivors and vindication to the investigators whose careers spanned decades. (NonStop Local KHQ)

What does resolving a 62-year old murder accomplish when the killer is buried and long gone? For the family of Candy Rogers, it means the nightmare ends not with a trial—but with a reckoning. Her cousins expressed both relief and sorrow: relief at the truth revealed; sorrow that Candy’s parents never lived to see this day. (NonStop Local KHQ)

For the city of Spokane, it marks a turning point: a demonstration of how evolving technology, deep persistence and generational continuity in investigation can unlock even the most frozen of cases. But it also forces a reckoning: how many other children remain victims, hidden by time?

Investigator Storment noted: “There’s strange dynamic going on… the Hoff family is absorbing it too.” On one hand, justice for Candy; on the other, a father revealed as a monster, a family’s belief shattered. (NonStop Local KHQ)

And yet the questions linger: Did Hoff plan this killing? Was Candy randomly targeted or known to him? Investigators still cannot definitively answer how the opportunity was taken. The case may be closed—but the wounds remain open.

Share this story. Talk about it. Remember Candy. Because sometimes justice doesn’t just mean locking up the guilty—it means never forgetting the innocent.