The murder of Montreal teenager Sharron Prior has been solved, 48 years later.
At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Chief Inspector of the Major Crimes Division Pierre Duquette of the Longueuil police service revealed a scientific breakthrough in the field of genetic genealogy led them to identifying the perpetrator of the 1975 cold case.
Biological tests have 100 per cent confirmed that Franklin Maywood Romine, born on April 2, 1946, was the killer that police had been trying to identify for nearly five decades, he said.
“The solving of Sharron’s case will never bring Sharron back. But knowing that her killer is no longer on this Earth and won’t kill anymore, brings us to somewhat of a closure,” Prior’s sister Doreen said Tuesday.
The major breakthrough in one of Quebec’s most high-profile cold cases follows the exhumation of Romine’s body earlier this month in West Virginia.
Romine, who died in 1982, was identified as the primary suspect after a new analysis technique uncovered his DNA on Prior’s clothing.
Prior, 16, disappeared in Montreal’s Pointe-Saint-Charles neighbourhood in 1975 while on her way to meet friends at a pizzeria.
Four days later, her beaten, naked body was found at a field in Longueuil, on Montreal’s South Shore.
