Nearly 50-year-old cold case in Canada solved with DNA link to West Virginia man

CNN
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A nearly 50-year-old cold case in Quebec has finally been solved after DNA linked the murder of a 16-year-old girl to a deceased man whose body was buried more than 800 miles away in Virginia -Western, according to a Tuesday press release from Canadian police.

Sharron Prior was abducted on March 29, 1975 in the Pointe St-Charles neighborhood of Montreal and her body was found four days later in a lot in Longueuil, police said. Longueuil is located in the province of Quebec across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal.

Officials from the Longueuil Police Major Crimes Division’s Unsolved Homicide Unit and other specialists used genetic genealogy to establish a DNA link between evidence recovered from the crime scene and a living American family. in West Virginia, according to the release.

Investigators found that a member of that family, Franklin Romine, was living in Montreal at the time of the murder and died in 1982. Romine’s remains were interred in a cemetery in Putman County, West Virginia, according to the communicated.

Longueuil police investigators obtained a warrant from local authorities and exhumed Romine’s body from the cemetery on May 2, police said.

“These same investigators were able to oversee the removal of DNA from the suspect’s remains and then compare it to DNA found at the crime scene 48 years earlier,” the statement said. “The results of these biological tests confirmed 100% that Franklin Romine, born April 2, 1946, was the killer that police had been trying to identify for nearly five decades.”

The results were immediately released to Prior’s family, including his mother, Yvonne, “in a private and emotional meeting”, police said.

Since Romine died, the case has been dismissed and no charges will be filed, the press release said.