COLD CASE CRACKED

76-Year-Old Suspect Arrested Four Decades After Teen Girl’s Murder: Cops

Mark Stanley Personette is suspected of killing a 15-year-old New York girl, who disappeared on a trip to visit family in San Francisco in 1978.

Authorities announced a break in a 43-year-old cold case on Sunday, saying that a man suspected of slaying a teenage girl in 1978 had been arrested earlier this week. Mark Stanley Personette, 76, was arrested on Thursday in suburban Denver after a joint operation by the FBI, the San Francisco police, and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office.

Personette was booked in connection with the murder of Marissa Rolf Harvey, a New York girl who disappeared on trip to visit family in San Francisco. Her body was found on March 28, 1978, a day after she vanished. Harvey’s case went cold after authorities exhausted the limits of technology at the time, the San Francisco Police Department said in a statement. Personette was identified as a suspect using “advanced investigative methods” after the case was reopened in Oct. 2020, the department said, without elaborating on the methods.

Detectives added Personette may be a suspect in other unsolved homicides.