Killers DNA was hiding in a piece of gum stuck to his teenage victim for years
The murderer of a 15-year-old girl in a 1978 cold case has finally been sentenced to life in prison — thanks to a piece of gum stuck to the victim’s back for more than 22 years.Mark Stanley Personette, 80, of Colorado was convicted late last year for murdering Marissa Rolf Harvey, who disappeared on March 27, 1978, after going to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for an afternoon of horseback riding.“After almost 50 years, Mr.Personette is finally being held accountable for his heinous crimes against Marissa and will spend the rest of his life in prison,” District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a Wednesday statement.
“While nothing can bring Marissa back to her family, today’s sentence hopefully leaves her family with a sense that justice was done for all that they have endured,” Jenkins said. Harvey, who was from New York City, was visiting her sister in the Bay Area for Easter.But she never returned home from her trip to Golden Gate Park.Instead, her body was found nearby in Sutro Heights Park by surfers walking by.
She was sexually assaulted and strangled, police said.Personette was busted after investigators reopened the cold case in October 2020, according to San Francisco police, using advanced DNA testing and investigative genealogy.Testing revealed a male DNA profile on Harvey’s sweater and jeans, plus a piece of dried gum stuck to her back.FBI investigators then found Personette in Denver discarding trash in a Walmart parking lot over 15 miles from his house. The trash revealed matching DNA.Warrants revealed he was separating his personal hygiene items from his other trash, Jenkins said.There were also a map of San Francisco in the house plus a set of California license plates, though the suspect denied he had been in the West Coast city.Harvey was not the only victim.
During the trial, another victim testified that in 1979, Personette raped her in a wooded area of New Jersey when she was 16 years old.Prosecutors in charge of the ...