The police in Canada have identified the man they say raped a 16-year old girl and killed her in 1975.
Sharron Prior was on her way to a nearby pizza restaurant where she lived in Montreal when she vanished.
Three days later, her body was discovered in a wooded area in Longueuil, on Montreal’s South Shore. Despite investigating over 100 suspects in the past, the police have never made an arrest.
The same week, however they claimed that they were 100% sure that Franklin Maywood Romine was the murderer of Sharron.
Romine lived in Montreal when Sharron died and had an extensive criminal record. This included a 1974 rape conviction.
The car’s tyre prints matched those found near Sharron’s body.
Doreen, Sharron’s younger sister, said: “The solving of Sharron’s case will not bring Sharron Back but knowing that Sharron’s killer is no more on this Earth and cannot kill any longer brings us to a certain closure.”
In 1975, DNA was discovered at the crime scene but not enough to test or use in court.
The hope was that better technology one day would allow it to be used in the search for Sharron’s killer.
The samples were sent in 2019 to a laboratory in West Virginia and were matched with Romine’s family members using genealogical sites.
Romine died in 1982 under mysterious circumstances. However, DNA samples from his brothers were a good match with the samples found next to Sharron’s corpse.
In the first week of this month, police exhumed Romine’s body in a West Virginia graveyard and discovered that it was a match.
Mother receives the news “with many emotions”
Yvonne Prior is Sharron Prior’s 80-year-old mother. She has spent the last 40 years trying to bring the murder of her daughter into the spotlight in hopes that the killer will be caught.
The police said that she and her family were informed of the tragedy in a private, “emotional” meeting.
Hope for families searching for answers
The technology used in Sharron’s case will “undoubtedly give hope” to the dozens and even hundreds of families who are still searching for answers.
The police have pledged to not ignore any leads or to not use the available tools to help the victims’ families get the answers they require.
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