A man who evaded capture for more than 40 years has finally been sentenced to prison for the vicious murder of a teenage girl in 1978.
Mark Stanley Personette, 80, was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday for murdering 15-year-old Marissa Harvey nearly 50 years ago.
Harvey, who was from New York, was visiting her older sister in San Francisco when she failed to return from a day trip to Golden Gate Park, where she had planned to go horseback riding.
Her body was found the next day by surfers in nearby Sutro Heights Park. She had been sexually assaulted, brutally beaten and strangled to death with a ligature, prosecutors said.
Personette was arrested for the heinous crime in Denver, Colorado, 43 years later in December 2021.
After his arrest, the San Francisco Police Department said that detectives during the initial investigation had used the best technology available at the time and exhausted every lead, but the case went cold.
In 2021, police reopened the case after determining Personette was a suspect by using advanced DNA testing and investigative genealogy, prosecutors said.
Initial DNA testing in the early 2000s revealed a male DNA profile on Harvey’s sweater and jeans, as well as a piece of dried gum that was stuck to her back, but it did not reveal a specific identity.
Mark Stanley Personette, 80, was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday for the sexual assault and murder of a 15-year-old girl in 1978
Personette’s victim was Marissa Harvey. Investigators used DNA evidence from her clothing and a piece of gum stuck to her back to arrest and convict her killer
Nearly 20 years later, police used investigative genealogy, a relatively new forensic method of checking DNA test results against public genetic databases.
The method enables investigators to build a detailed genetic profile of a suspect, allowing them to track down the individual directly or through relatives. It was first used successfully to capture the Golden State Killer in 2018.
Police used the technique to identify Personette as a potential suspect in Harvey’s sexual assault and murder.
In 2021, FBI investigators observed Personette throwing away trash at a Walmart parking lot more than 15 miles away from his home.
After recovering the discarded items, they discovered that the garbage only included personal hygiene items that possessed Personette’s DNA. Investigators later determined that he had been separating the hygiene trash from his other garbage.
Equipped with the new samples of Personette’s DNA, police were able to match it to the results of the tests on Harvey’s clothing and the gum that was stuck to her.
The evidence was enough to secure a warrant for Personette’s arrest and eventual conviction.
Other evidence found by investigators included a 1970s map of San Francisco and a set of California license plates with a 1979 registration sticker in the murderer’s home, though he denied ever visiting the city.
Personette was arrested in 2021. He is pictured in a booking photo from 1979
During Personette’s trial, another woman testified that he raped her in a wooded area of New Jersey when she was 16 years old in 1979.
At the time of Personette’s arrest, police said they believed he may have had more victims and urged law enforcement agencies across the country to review any unsolved sexual assault-related homicides involving young women.
The murderer’s sentencing was hailed by prosecutors in a statement released by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.
‘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,’ said District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.
‘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.’
