Mark Personette
Introduction
Mark Stanley Personette is an 80-year-old Colorado man convicted of the 1978 murder of Marissa Rolf Harvey, a 15-year-old New York City girl who was sexually assaulted and strangled in San Francisco. The killing went unsolved for more than four decades until San Francisco police reopened the cold case in October 2020 using advanced DNA testing and investigative genealogy. A male DNA profile — recovered from the victim’s clothing and from a piece of dried gum stuck to her back — led the FBI to Personette. He was convicted in late 2025, and on 30 September 2026 he was sentenced to life in prison.
Background Information
Marissa Rolf Harvey was from New York City and was visiting her sister in the Bay Area for Easter. On 27 March 1978 she went to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for an afternoon of horseback riding and never returned home. Instead, her body was found nearby in Sutro Heights Park by surfers walking by; police said she had been sexually assaulted and strangled. For the next four decades the case remained open, with no suspect publicly identified.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Adjudicated vs. alleged. The core of this case is adjudicated: a jury convicted Personette of Harvey’s murder in late 2025 and the court sentenced him to life in prison on 30 September 2026 — both matters of court record. One claim was not adjudicated: a witness’s trial testimony that Personette raped her in New Jersey in 1979 is reported here as testimony, not as a separate conviction. Personette, for his part, denied ever having been in San Francisco.
The break in the case came in October 2020, when San Francisco police reopened the investigation using advanced DNA testing and investigative genealogy. Testing revealed a male DNA profile on Harvey’s sweater and jeans, as well as on a piece of dried gum stuck to her back — evidence that had been recovered from the scene in 1978 and preserved. FBI investigators then located Personette in Denver, where he was found discarding trash in a Walmart parking lot more than 15 miles from his house; the trash revealed DNA matching the profile from the Harvey evidence.
According to District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, warrants revealed that Personette was separating his personal hygiene items from his other trash. A search of his home also turned up a map of San Francisco and a set of California license plates, though he denied he had ever been in the West Coast city. Harvey, the trial heard, was not his only alleged victim: another woman testified that in 1979, when she was 16 years old, Personette raped her in a wooded area of New Jersey.
The jury convicted Personette of murder in late 2025. On Wednesday, 30 September 2026 — almost fifty years after Harvey’s body was found — he was sentenced to life in prison, closing a prosecution that rested on techniques, advanced DNA testing and investigative genealogy, that did not exist when the crime was committed.
Public Reaction and Consequences
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a Wednesday statement: “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.” She added: “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.” Prosecutors in charge of the case praised the conclusion of the decades-long saga for justice, secured with evidence — the victim’s sweater and jeans and a piece of dried gum — collected in 1978. No statement from Personette or his defense is recorded in the coverage of the sentence.
Current Status
Personette, now 80, is serving the life sentence imposed on 30 September 2026 for the 1978 murder of Marissa Rolf Harvey. The case against him was built after San Francisco police reopened the investigation in October 2020, and it ended almost fifty years after Harvey’s body was found in Sutro Heights Park. No appeal is reported in the available record, and the coverage does not state where he will serve the sentence. What is settled is the outcome: a verdict from late 2025 and a term that will keep him in prison for the rest of his life.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The conviction closed off whatever remained of the life Personette had built far from California. The Colorado resident was in his seventies when the genealogical trail caught up with him, and the evidence that tied him to the killing was not a witness or a confession but biological material — DNA left on a teenager’s clothing and on a piece of dried gum in 1978. Barring a successful appeal, the sentence means he will spend the rest of his life in prison for a murder committed when he was in his early thirties.
Sources
- *NY Post, “1978 Bay Area cold case solved using DNA in gum stuck to teen victim” — source