Sentencing postponed in 1978 rape/murder case after child killer hires new lawyers
The man found guilty of murdering a 15-year-old girl visiting San Francisco in 1978 dodged sentencing, set for today, after ditching his trial attorney, hiring a new legal team and asking for more time.
Mark Personette raped and strangled to death Marissa Harvey, whose body was found in Sutro Heights Park. He was arrested in 2021 after cold case investigators used forensic geneaology and commercial DNA databases to hone in on him as a suspect, triggering a six-month FBI surveillance operation at his Colorado home.
A jury convicted him last month after scarcely four hours’ deliberation.
Personette dispensed with his lawyer, Adam Gasner, last Friday, just days after the attorney filed a sentencing memorandum asking Judge Michael Rhoads to impose a 7 years to life term and to recommend that his client be housed at a medical facility at Vacaville State Prison.
Rhoads agreed to postpone sentencing, over prosecutors’ objections, while new attorneys Douglas Horngrad and Sam O’Keefe acquaint themselves with the case.
Personette must be sentenced as the law stood at the time of the crime in March 1978 which, in essence, for first-degree murder, is a mandatory term of 7 years to life imprisonment. Later in 1978 Californians voted to reintroduce capital punishment and life without parole for first-degree murder with special circumstances, and 25 years to life otherwise.
“Here, there is absolutely no doubt that Defendant murdered Marissa in the course of his egregious, violent rape of her. No real is argument is needed, nor can there be any contention with the certainty that Defendant acted in this case for purposes of sexual compulsion and/or gratification.”
Prosecutor Heather Trevisan
Ahead of the scheduled hearing prosecutors, concerned that Personette’s age and medical circumstances created “a definite possibility” he might be released on parole, hammered home the details of the case in support of their bid to have him register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
“There are simply no mitigating factors in this case,” wrote assistance district attorney Heather Trevisan in a sentencing memorandum filed last week. “Defendant avoided detection by fleeing the state and his action to hide evidence from the license plates in 1978 to his DNA in 2021.”
“Defendant went to great lengths to avoid capture,” she added. “He fled the state, he took and hid his California license plates, and once DNA became publicly known he tried to hide his DNA by separating it from his regular trash and disposing of it in different locations 20 miles from his home.”
Trevisan insisted that he be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
“Here, there is absolutely no doubt that Defendant murdered Marissa in the course of his egregious, violent rape of her. No real argument is needed, nor can there be any contention with the certainty that Defendant acted in this case for purposes of sexual compulsion and/or gratification,” Trevisan wrote.
Prosecutors filed photographs of ropes found in each of Personette’s cars which they were not allowed to show the jury but which they maintain showed that he was ready to murder if the circumstances presented themselves. The court was earlier told that the ropes were of the same width as the ligature Personette used to strangle Marissa to death.
During the search of Personette’s Colorado home, investigators also found a variety of fake law enforcement badges.
Personette will next appear in court on January 30 2026 for a status hearing.
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