SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A man has been arrested in Colorado on suspicion of killing a teenage girl in San Francisco more than four decades ago.
San Francisco police say 76-year-old Mark Personette was arrested this week in connection with the 1978 death of Marissa Harvey. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, he was arrested in Conifer.
The 15-year-old girl from New York was visiting the city when her body was found in a park.
Police said detectives used the best available technology at the time and exhausted every lead, but the probe went cold.
In October 2020, they reopened the case and determined Personette to be a suspect using “advanced investigative methods."
Members of the city’s homicide detail, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, the FBI, and the Sheriff’s Office in Jefferson County, Colo., collaborated in an operation Dec. 16 to make the arrest, according to the Chronicle.
Detectives say Personette may be a suspect in other unsolved homicides involving young women.
“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,” said San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott in a statement to the Chronicle.
