American Suspect Announced in 1975 Canadian Cold Case Murder
Detectives believe Franklin Maywood Romine was behind the brutal murder of Sharron Prior.
Authorities in Canada have announced the name of a suspect they believe was responsible for the unsolved 1975 rape and murder of a teenage girl — and he originated from West Virginia in the US.
Although Longueil Police are awaiting official confirmation from the forensic results of an exhumation, they say they are confident Sharron Prior was killed by Franklin Maywood Romine of Putnam County, who would have been 28 at the time.
A devastating murder
Sharron Prior, 16, left her home in the Pointe-St-Charles part of Montreal on March 29th 1975 to meet friends at a pizzeria. The restaurant was a popular hangout for local kids and just a five-minute walk from the Prior family home.
However, she never arrived. Three days later, her body was discovered in the woods in Longueuil by a local beekeeper who kept hives in the adjacent field. According to contemporary reports in local paper The Gazette, he had been alerted to the fact that his gate was open and went to investigate, whereupon he found Sharron dead.
