A San Francisco jury has convicted Colorado man of first-degree murder in the death of a teenage girl nearly 50 years after she was killed.
Mark Stanley Personette, 80, was convicted this month of murdering Marissa Harvey in 1978, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced.
“At long last, justice has been delivered, and Mr. Personette is being held accountable for this horrific crime,” Jenkins said in a statement. “I would like to thank the survivor and the victim’s family for never losing hope and remaining steadfast in their commitment to seeing justice done.”
Personette is facing seven years to life in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 17.
Authorities arrested Personette in Colorado in 2021 in relation to Harvey’s death during a joint operation by San Francisco Police, the FBI and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office.
Harvey, who was 15, was visiting her sister in San Francisco when she was killed. The teenager went to Golden Gate Park to ride a horse on March 27, 1978, and never returned, according to the news release.
Surfers founder Harvey’s body the next day in the underbrush at the city’s Sutro Heights Park. The teenager was strangled with a ligature, causing her death, and an autopsy showed Harvey had been sexually assaulted, according to the district attorney’s office.
The case went cold, until San Francisco police reopened the investigation in 2020.
Authorities discovered male DNA on Harvey’s sweater, jeans and a piece of dried gum stuck to her back in the early 2000s, but it wasn’t until 2021 that investigators used genealogy to identify Personette as a potential suspect, according to the news release.
Authorities were able to match Personette’s DNA to that found on Harvey by using trash — personal hygiene items — that he dumped in a Walmart parking lot in Denver more than 15 miles from his house, the district attorney’s office said, adding that Personette separated personal hygiene items from his other trash.
Investigators also found Personette had maps of San Francisco from the 1970s and a set of California license plates with a 1979 registration sticker, despite his assertions that he had not been in the city, according to the news release.
“After nearly half a century, this verdict brought long-overdue justice for 15-year-old Marissa Harvey,” said Assistant District Attorney Katherine Wells in a statement.
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