Mark Stanley Personette, aged 80, has been convicted of the 1978 sexual assault and murder of 15-year-old Marissa Harvey in San Francisco, nearly 50 years after the crime. Harvey, who had traveled to the city to visit her sister and go horseback riding in Golden Gate Park, was found strangled and sexually assaulted in a nearby park. Despite extensive investigations at the time, the case went cold until San Francisco’s cold-case unit reopened it in 2020, using advanced forensic techniques and investigative genealogy to identify Personette through DNA evidence.

Personette was arrested in 2021 in Colorado after DNA from the crime scene was matched with genetic material linked to him. While Personette denied being in San Francisco and his lawyer argued there was reasonable doubt due to multiple DNA profiles at the scene, the jury found him guilty of first-degree murder. He is scheduled to be sentenced in December and faces life imprisonment. The conviction brings long-awaited justice for Harvey’s family and law enforcement.