Police say they've 'cracked' the cold case of a 15-year-old girl murdered in a San Francisco park 43 years ago, and have arrested a 76-year-old man

• Marissa Rolf Harvey, 15, was found strangled to death in a San Francisco park in 1978.
• San Francisco police said Monday they had booked a 76-year-old man on homicide charges.

Police in San Francisco say they have charged a 76-year-old man in connection with the murder of a teen found strangled to death in a San Francisco park 43 years ago.

15-year-old Marissa Rolf Harvey was found dead in Sutro Heights Park in March 1978, the day after going missing in nearby Golden Gate Park, the San Francisco Police Department said Monday.

Harvey, who had travelled from New York to visit her biological family, was "badly beaten and strangled with a cord-like device," coroner Boyd Stephens said at the time, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Last Thursday, San Francisco police arrested a man identified as Mark Stanley Personette in the town of Conifer, Colorado, close to the city of Denver, the department said.

Personette was booked into Jefferson County Jail, south west of Denver, on one count of homicide, they said.

Police had closed the case after the trail went cold, but reopened it in October 2020.

"For more than four decades, Marissa Harvey's family members have been relentless advocates to bring her killer to justice, and we hope this development in the case begins to bring a measure of healing and closure they've been too long denied," San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said.

The police statement said they "cracked" the case thanks to work from their Forensic Sciences Division, which used "advanced investigative methods" to connect Personette to the murder.

Harvey was found to have been sexually assaulted when examined by the coroner after her death, SF Gate reported.

In their statement, San Francisco police asked law enforcement agencies across the US to search their records for other cases of violence against women in which Personette could be a suspect.

"The San Francisco Police Department is requesting that law enforcement agencies within the US thoroughly review their sexual-assault-related cold-case homicides involving young women to identify any other incidents in which Personette may be a suspect," the department said.

Personette was previously arrested three times in New Jersey in 1979, The New York Times reported. One of those arrests was linked to an assault case, the Times added.

Harvey, who had been adopted at the age of three, travelled to San Francisco to meet her previously-unknown biological mother, according to SF Gate.

A few months before her trip, a woman in her 30s had arrived at Harvey's home in Port Washington to tell her that she was her biological sister and that she had found their biological mother, the outlet said.