More than four decades after the murder of a 15-year-old girl in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, a Colorado man has been arrested in her strangulation death.
Mark Stanley Personette, 76, was taken into custody last week in connection with the death of Marissa Rolf Harvey.
Harvey, a New York City native, was in San Francisco visiting her half-sister when she was killed.
“For more than four decades, Marissa Harvey’s family members have been relentless advocates to bring her killer to justice, and we hope this development in the case begins to bring a measure of healing and closure they’ve been too long denied,” San Francisco Chief of Police Bill Scott said in a statement.
On the day of her disappearance, March 27, 1978, Harvey had plans to go horseback riding and was dropped off at a horse stable in Golden Gate Park,The New York Timesreported. Her body was found the next day in Sutro Heights Park, near Golden Gate Park, police said.
A coroner told theSan Francisco Chronicleat the time that she had been “badly beaten and strangled with a cord-like device.”
San Francisco Police
The San Francisco Police Department said detectives “led an investigation that employed the best available technology at the time and exhausted every lead.”
“Despite their best efforts,” the department said, “the investigation went cold.”
It is unclear what methods were used to solve the case. The police department and the district attorney’s office declined to comment.
Personette’s attorney could not be reached for comment.
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Personette is currently in Jefferson County Jail in Colorado where he awaits extradition back to California.
The police department asked law enforcement across the country to “review their sexual assault–related cold-case homicides involving young women to identify any other incidents in which Personette may be a suspect.”
source: people.com
