“I hope he rots in hell” – family of girl slain in notorious San Francisco cold case as Marine veteran killer gets seven years to life
The man guilty of the 1978 murder of a schoolgirl in one of San Francisco’s most notorious cold cases was sentenced to seven years to life imprisonment today – as defense attorneys laid the groundwork for the future ‘compassionate release’ of the wheelchair-bound 81-year-old convict.
Mark Personette raped and strangled to death Marissa Harvey before dumping her body in Sutro Heights Park. The Marine veteran kidnapped the girl, who was visiting San Francisco, after she left her sister’s house to go riding in Golden Gate Park on the morning of March 27 1978.
Her remains were found the next day in deep undergrowth.
In court this afternoon, members of Marissa’s family rebuked Personette for his “evil” crime.
“There is nothing that could be worse than raping and murdering a child,” Marissa’s cousin, Kerry McGuinn Jr, told Judge Michael Rhoads.
“He is pure evil,” he said of Personette sitting six feet away across the courtroom.
“She deserved to be with us all these years – these 48 years of Christmases, and having her own family and he took that away from Marissa and he took that away from all of us.”
“I do know he is evil, I do know he was proven to be evil, and I hope he rots in hell,” said relative Bruce Pfaff.
Pfaff paid tribute to the “brilliant work” of San Francisco prosecutors Heather Trevisan and Katy Wells and singled out SFPD Sgt. Alan Levy for praise for his role in bringing Personette to justice.
Rhoads also ordered Personette to register as a sex offender, citing the “overwhelming evidence that he violently sexually assaulted Marissa and killed her.”
Earlier in the hearing Rhoads dismissed Personette’s motion for a new trial.
He was found guilty of first-degree murder by a jury in November 2025 after scarcely four hours’ deliberation. A rape charge was barred by a three-year statute of limitations as the law stood in 1978.
Personette must be sentenced as the law stood at the time of the crime. Seven months after the murder, California voters approved Proposition 7, the Death Penalty Act, which raised the floor for first-degree murder to 25-to-life and greatly expanded the list of special circumstances that triggered either a death sentence or life without parole.
Personette was arrested in 2021 after police uploaded the suspect’s DNA profile, obtained from samples found at the crime scene, to a genealogy website. They developed a family tree of those related to that person and ultimately honed in on Personette. It took FBI agents six months of surveillance of his Colorado home to obtain a sample of his DNA. He was, it transpired, packaging personal items containing his DNA – including bottles of his own urine – and disposing of them in public trash cans across the region.
It emerged that Personette kept mementos of his crime in a battered suitcase in his home and that he remained ready to commit more murders by keeping in each of his cars ropes, knotted at each end, of an identical width and knot pattern to the ligature used to choke to death Marissa Harvey.
Personette was tried and acquitted of raping a 16-year-old girl in New Jersey. That victim, who was attacked a year and a half after Marissa’s death, testified during Personette’s murder trial that he picked her up as she hitchhiked but, instead of driving her home, took her to a remote wooded area where he beat and raped her.
“I just want to reiterate that Mr Personette did serve this country in the Marines,” said defense attorney Sam O’Keefe in brief remarks. “He served in combat in Vietnam where he was wounded.”
In his sentencing memorandum he asked the court to make findings as to his client’s “extraordinary medical circumstances” including cancer and severely limited mobility.
“Creating a detailed record of his medical condition may assist in any future petition under Penal Code §1172.2” – California’s compassionate release law – “should his health condition continue to deteriorate,” the memorandum said.
Judge Rhoads said he wasn’t inclined to do so, and that it was for state prison officials to decide how to classify, house and treat Personette.
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