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In March of 1975, Sharron Prior was only 16-years-old when she left her home in a Montreal suburb for what should have been a quick walk to the local pizza parlor. Sadly, Sharron never made it & days later her brutalized body was discovered & nearly fifty years passed before investigators learned who was responsible for her murder.
Sharron Kim Prior was born on February 9, 1959 to parents Yvonne & George Prior & she lived with her family in Montreal’s Pointe-Saint-Charles neighborhood. It was Easter weekend, Saturday, March 29, 1975 when Sharron got up & ready for the day while her mom Yvonne went out for last minute supplies for the holiday. Sharron had an 11-year-old brother, Jo-Jo as well as a 4-year-old foster brother Steven & twin sisters, 14-year-old Doreen & Moreen.
Sharron was described as someone that was just wonderful to be around. She was sweet, pure & kind. She was a cautious girl who stayed out of trouble & she loved playing hockey at the local club & hoped to one day become a veterinarian
Later that afternoon, Sharron painted Easter eggs with her family & at about 3:45 pm, she told her mom that she was heading over to the Boys & Girls Club to pick up a jacket that she’d ordered & she brought 4-year-old Steven along with her. The club didn’t have the correct size for Sharron, but while there, she grabbed her friend’s jacket & dropped it off at her house. By 4:15 pm, she was back home & continued to paint the other half of the Easter eggs.
After dinner, Sharron’s friend, who lived on the same street, came over between 6-7 pm & Sharron told her that she was getting ready to meet some friends at Marina’s Pizzeria at the corner of Wellington Street & Ash Avenue. The pizzeria sat about five blocks from Sharron’s house & served as the local gathering place for teens. Sharron tried on multiple outfits that evening until she finally settled on one of her mom’s tops. As she got ready to head out the door, Sharron worried that her suede coat would get ruined in the rain & her mom assured her that since it was only a light drizzle, it would be just fine. She called out a goodbye to her mom & as she always did, Yvonne reminded her daughter to be careful.
Sharron & her neighbor friend had separate social circles so her friend wasn’t planning on joining her that night. However, as they left the house at 445 Congregation Street, she asked Sharron if she wanted her to walk with her to Marina’s, but Sharron said she was fine to walk alone & she set off on her own at 7:15 pm for the walk that should have taken no more than five minutes.
Sharron planned to meet some friends from school as well as her boyfriend, John McAleer, but as her friends waited at the pizzeria, glancing at the door in anticipation of her arrival, Sharron never walked through that door, but her friends assumed that she must have changed her mind & decided to say home that night.
Because it was a Saturday night, Sharron’s curfew had been extended until 1 am & when this time came & went, Yvonne started calling around to her friends. This was when she learned the alarming fact that her daughter had never made it to Marina’s. Immediately, Yvonne knew in her heart that something terrible must have happened.
Yvonne contacted the local police to report her daughter missing. Sharron was an incredibly reliable teen & if ever she was going to be late, she would call home to let her family know. Not only was Sharron not the type of person to run away from home, but the fact that Yvonne found her daughter’s bus pass & money at home, further solidified that Sharron had not voluntarily left home. Her friends confirmed that Sharron had never spoken about leaving home, so this idea was quickly dismissed.
A search began for the 16-year-old blond hair, blue-eyed girl who stood at 5’3” & weighed 105#..
The officer assured Yvonne that they would do everything they could to find Sharron & the frantic mother could only wait by the phone with her heart in her throat, hoping & praying that when it rang, the news would be good. But sadly, good news never came.
At about 9 pm on Tuesday, April 1, three days after Sharron went missing, a beekeeper noticed that the gate to their hives was standing wide open, despite the fact that this was not how they left it. The property was fifteen miles away from Sharron’s home. As the person went to further investigate, they came upon a horrific scene. There, lying in the snow, was the body of a young female who wore a sweater, a suede jacket, shoes & socks. Her pants & underwear were on the ground about six feet away, tangled in a tree limb & a man’s work shirt was tied tightly around her neck.
The beekeeper immediately turned & ran back to his house to call the police to report what he found. As investigators arrived, they noticed distinct footprints in the snow near the gate, likely when the killer stood, manipulating the lock. The size 8.5 shoe prints were also in the mud around the victim’s body & based on the depth of the print, it was theorized that the man weighed about 200#. Investigators quickly made plaster casts of the prints, realizing that it could begin snowing again at any moment.
Investigators were fully puzzled by the lock on the beekeeper’s gate that led to the field because only two people had the key for it & there were no visible signs of force on the lock to indicate that someone had tampered with it.
Authorities immediately believed that the victim was Sharron Prior based on the clothing that Yvonne reported her to be wearing when she left home Saturday night. Later that afternoon, this proved to be true when the remains were positively identified as Sharron.
The autopsy determined that Sharron’s jaw had been fractured on both sides which indicated a horrific beating. Several of her teeth had been knocked out & a puncture wound on her face was determined to be from the jagged edge of a tooth that tore through her cheek as she was viciously beaten. The medical examiner estimated that Sharron had been murdered at least twenty hours before her body was discovered. Investigators theorize that Sharron may have been held captive somewhere before her body was dumped in the field. She was taken from the street between her home & the pizzeria at approximately 7:30 pm on Saturday night & the autopsy report indicated that she likely died on Tuesday afternoon`.
The medical examiner noticed a sticky residue on both Sharron’s hair as well as her wrists & deduced that she had been bound by tape which the murderer removed before fleeing the scene. One newspaper article indicated that at the time Sharron’s body was found, partially chewed tape was found tangled in her hair. Other articles indicated that the killer took the tape with them as no trace was found at the scene.
The medical examiner determined that Sharron had been sexually assaulted & strangled to death & her manner of death was clearly homicide. She had been savagely beaten & suffered numerous facial fractures, including a broken nose. Blood was found in her lungs & she likely hemorrhaged internally when her assailant crushed her chest with his knee.
Being only 1975, forensic DNA profiling had yet to emerge so blood & tissue samples were placed in cold storage as well as Sharron’s underwear & the men’s shirt that was found wrapped around Sharron’s neck. Investigators believed that the majority of the attack likely happened inside a vehicle since traces of blood were found where the tire marks ended. Based on the cleanliness of the bottoms of her shoes, investigators determined that Sharron had not walked through the snow or mucky ground. It’s likely that she was unconscious when she was carried to the location where her body was found. She was not yet deceased at this point as Sharron’s fist was clenched around a nearby tree branch. Heartbreakingly, it’s possible that she came to as she lay bloodied & beaten in the snow when she reached out & clutched the nearest thing to her in her struggle to survive.
Investigators also wondered if more than one person was involved in the murder & suspected she could have been carried to where she was found by two people. As the car backed out, the driver threw Sharron’s clothing out into the bushes.
It’s likely that the murderer was familiar with the area & chose that particular field to dispose of Sharron’s body, believing that the beekeeper wouldn’t be checking on the nearby hives until late spring.
When the roads in the vicinity of Sharron’s body were investigated, tire tracks were located about fifteen feet from her body in the frozen mud. When they were analyzed, it was determined that they could belong to 37 different models that were on the road at that time, one being a Jeep Wrangler. At the time, this did not prove to be a useful fact, but later helped identify the killer.
Because it was only 1975, there were no cell phone towers to ping from, no DNA testing, no surveillance video & no witnesses that had seen the abduction. Police realized that finding Sharron’s killer would be difficult if not impossible & one year later, all that local police had to go on was a tire mark, a foot print & an unlocked padlock.
Law enforcement agencies investigated over 100 suspects, but no arrests were made & eventually, Sharron’s case grew cold & nearly fifty years went by before the investigation found her killer.
In 2004, after more than 29 years had passed, based on a tip, Montreal police began searching a garage only a few streets from where Sharron lived, hoping to find DNA evidence that could lead to her killer. Police believed she could have been held in this location between the time she was kidnapped on Saturday & when she was discovered on Tuesday. Despite the passage of nearly three decades, Sharron’s family felt like she had only been taken from them yesterday. Sharron’s family each carried a small glass angel with them to remind them of how much of an angel she was & to continue to give them hope that one day justice would be served. The building that was searched was known to the Priors as a casual acquaintance lived there at the time of Sharron’s murder & they never thought of that individual as a suspect. Three DNA samples were taken from the garage, but none were a match to Sharron.
In 2022, 47 years after Sharron’s murder, DNA from the blue shirt found tied around Sharron’s neck was run through a genealogical database. The samples were not matched to a specific person, but rather to the Romine family bloodline.
As investigators began to search the penal system archives, they came across a highly unsavory character named Franklin Maywood Romine who had passed away forty years earlier in 1982, seven years after Sharron’s murder, at age thirty-six in Verdun, Montreal.
The man was born on April 2, 1946 in Huntington, West Virginia. As police reviewed his criminal record, they saw that he had an extensive history of violence & sexual assault against women & had been in trouble with the law many times. Romine worked as a truck driver with a route between Canada & the U.S. Sometimes he did labor work & there were also stretches of time when he was unemployed.
Police learned that at the time of Sharron’s murder, not only was Romine living in the Montreal area close to where Sharron was abducted, but he was also aware of the location where her body was found. Of the 100 people who had been investigated by police in relation to Sharron’s murder, Romine had not been one of them.
Romine had a criminal record dating back to as young as 9-years-old & his crimes were mostly sexually motivated attacks on women. As he moved toward adulthood & began to ping-pong between Canada & West Virginia, investigators on both sides of the borders were sure that no woman was safe while he was around.
He spent much of his life in & out of juvenile detention centers & prisons & at age 18, in 1964 he was convicted of beating & raping a young girl. He managed to escape from prison & was captured again three years later on a similar offense where he yet again escaped.
In 1969, he packed up what little he owned & made his way north to Canada where he resumed his criminal, violent ways. It was very clear to investigators that he was an exceptionally dark, sick & violent individual.
Romine managed to fly under the radar for several years until 1974 when he headed back to West Virginia & was soon arrested for attacking a 23-year-old woman in Parkersburg, West Virginia. The woman was a single mom who worked as a waitress & as Romine pinned her to the bed, he told her that he’d wanted her from the moment he saw her & he was going to have her, even if he had to kill her.
When she testified against Romine, she told the jurors that she knew him from work since he would come by for coffee & had asked her out on a previous occasion. She politely turned down his offer & in response, he stormed off only to return a short time later where he stayed inside the restaurant, leering at her for the rest of her shift.
It was clear that Romine was not going to accept no for an answer. When the young woman finished her shift, he followed her back to her home at the Homecrest Manor Apartments & waited until the lights turned out inside & he was sure she was asleep when he broke a window & crawled into her apartment. He slinked into her bedroom as she slept & raped the young mother as her 4-year-old child was asleep down the hall. Her son initially woke up from the sound of the window breaking, but fearing his safety, she convinced him that everything was okay & to go back to bed, which he did. When Romine finished his attack, he tossed $20 in her direction & fled. As soon as he left her home, she immediately contacted the police.
In the 1970s, it was very difficult to get a rape conviction since there was no DNA proof of guilt & rape was a capital crime in West Virginia; if found guilty, Romine was facing life in prison. As he awaited trial, Romine posted his $2,500 bail & was released. It didn’t take long for him to flee West Virginia & make his way back to Canada. Two years later, he was extradited back to West Virginia, but sadly, it was too late. 16-year-old Sharron Prior had been assaulted & murdered six months earlier.
In February 1976, Romine went to trial & was convicted for raping the young waitress. In September 1976, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the rape & 1-15 years on a burglary charge. He was transferred to Moundsville State Prison, where he once escaped, to serve his sentence.
In 1980, an appeals court shockingly overturned Romine’s conviction on a technicality that involved improper jury instructions. He was granted a new trial, but this time, he chose to plead guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree sexual assault. Less than one year later, he was released, free to roam the streets yet again.
After serving his time, he went back to Canada & died shortly after his release on August 20, 1982. Officials were unable to find a death certificate so his cause of death is unknown, but some indicate that he had met a violent end. His body was returned to his mother in Putnam County, West Virginia & he was buried in the Pine Grove Cemetery.
When Montreal police informed officials in West Virginia, 900 miles away, about Sharron’s unsolved case & their belief that Romine was responsible, investigators from West Virginia were more than happy to help.
As detectives began to piece together Romine’s involvement with Sharron’s murder, they started to look into other sexually related crimes in the area around Montreal & learned that another woman had escaped her would-be abductor shortly before Sharron was snatched off the very same street.
23-year-old Cheryl Roy had been walking along Wellington Street near the pizzeria about an hour before Sharron left her house. She was heading toward the pharmacy to pick up diapers for her infant baby girl when a man with a mustache walked by her in the opposite direction. The man had his hands in his coat pockets & walked in a normal fashion, so she thought nothing of it. A few minutes later, as she continued on her way, Cheryl heard rushing footsteps behind her & as she turned around, she was met with the man who had passed her.
The man grabbed Cheryl around her waist with his left hand while he held a knife in his right hand. As she began to fight him, he sneered, Bitch, you’re coming with me. The area of Montreal was predominantly French-speaking & the woman noted that the man spoke to her in English which instantly made her realize that he was not a native to the area.
As he gripped her & pulled her head back, she begged him to just take her purse. It was clear he had no interest in the purse when he responded, I don’t want your purse.. I want you.. I love you. During their struggle the man dropped his switchblade knife & Cheryl moved quickly to kick it away. At one point during their interaction, he threatened, You’re dead. You’re not getting away from me. When I get through with you I’ll cut you to pieces. Throughout their interaction, the man only spoke in a low, calm voice.
A group of boys, which included a 12-year-old that Cheryl knew, suddenly came running down the street to her aide which caused the man to run off. Cheryl crawled into a nearby house & called the police. She later indicated that she’d lost her voice for about two days because of the extent of her screaming as the man tried to apprehend her in the attack that lasted about six minutes. She indicated that there was no odor of liquor on the man’s breath & her purse was later found about twenty feet away, under a car, the contents untouched.
Sadly, the man was not captured & less than one hour after investigators dispersed from the street, Sharron made her way to the pizzeria to meet her friends, unaware that a monster was lurking in the shadows.
Cheryl managed to get a good enough look at the man & was able to sit down with a forensic sketch artist & a sketch was quickly made & distributed to local media outlets. Cheryl stood at 5’8” & she indicated that her attacker was about four inches taller which would have put him at about 6’0”. She guessed that he weighed about 200#. He wore blue jeans with cuffs, a dark blue ski jacket & black shoes with pointed toes & appeared to be approximately 29 years old. He had brown hair, blue eyes & his mustache was squared at the corners of his mouth.
Despite an extensive manhunt of the area for Cheryl’s attacker, the man was never found. Police assumed that he likely fled the area after seeing the sketch of his face plastered around town. Now, nearly fifty years later, police could see the uncanny resemblance to the man in the sketch to that of Franklin Romine.
Authorities from both Canada & the U.S. were fairly sure that Romine was Sharron’s killer, but because he died before DNA testing had emerged, they did not have a sample from their suspect. Investigators decided to narrow down the field by comparing DNA from his family members to the profile stored in the database. When his brothers, Noah & Michael Romine, were contacted, they agreed to help however they could.
In December 2022, when police met with the Romine brothers in West Virginia, they readily provided their DNA samples. They were eager to uncover whether their own brother was capable of murder despite the fact that they were aware of what an unsavory human being Franklin was.
As police spoke with one of the Romine brothers who was a former Marine, he told investigators that while he was away, on active duty, his own brother, Franklin, had attempted to assault his wife. After this horrific incident, the brothers remained estranged from Franklin for the rest of his life.
It was during this conversation that police realized that Romine had driven a Jeep Wrangler at the time of Sharron’s murder which was a match to the tracks found at the scene & he wore a size 8.5 shoe which matched the prints that surrounded her body. This information only solidified their belief that Franklin Romine was Sharron’s killer.
When the DNA results came back from the samples taken from Noah & Michael, they revealed that samples found on the shirt & underwear had come from someone closely related to them, but it still wasn’t the 100% proof that investigators were looking for. It was their goal to bring the Prior family the closure they were looking for. By this time Yvonne was in her 80s & spent her life in search of her daughter’s killer.
In March 2022 detectives in Canada petitioned a judge in West Virginia to exhume the body of Franklin Romine in order to extract DNA from his bones. They were aware that even if the body was exhumed, it was possible that technicians would be unable to find the markers they needed after so many years had gone by.
When the Romine family learned of the investigator’s intentions, they wrote a letter of opposition, stating that their religion forbade such a thing & added since their sainted mother had been laid to rest beside her son, any disturbance at his gravesite would also affect hers.
The judge gave the matter consideration, but believed that solving a murder took precedence over the Romine family’s beliefs. They assured the Romine family that every precaution would be taken to ensure that their mother’s resting place would not be desecrated & the judge signed the documents that would allow Franklin Romine’s body to be exhumed.
On April 20, 2023, 41 years after Romine died, the exhumation was allowed to move forward. Because DNA testing on this level is so complex & intricate, the process took several weeks to complete. On May 2, 2023, the exhumation began & cold case detectives from Canada removed parts of Romine’s skeleton which were then sent to Canada for testing.
When the results came back on May 23, 2023, the DNA extracted from Franklin Romine’s bones were an exact match. Without a shred of doubt, investigators were finally able to say that he had been the person who killed the 16-year-old girl back in 1975 when he would have been about 29-years-old.
It took 48 years of not knowing who was responsible for her daughter’s murder, but at 85-years-old, Yvonne was finally able to breathe a little easier. She’d lived close to a half-century without answers & was now able to place a name & a face to the monster responsible for removing her precious little girl from this world.
Sharron’s case had been one of the highest profile cold cases in Quebec history & despite the fact that so much time had passed, a sigh of relief was breathed when investigators got their clear-cut answer. Despite the fact that the conclusion of this case would never bring Sharron back & her killer never faced justice for her murder, knowing that this evil human is no longer on this Earth to hurt anyone else, brought everyone closure.
The DNA extracted from Romine’s exhumed remains has been entered into the Combined DNA Index System, which is known as CODIS, which is an FBI computer software program that operates on local, state & national databases of DNA profiles from convicted offenders, unsolved crime scene evidence & missing persons. This will allow police to know if he’s responsible for any other unsolved cold cases. Agencies have been urged to test any evidence they may still have from unsolved cases with similar circumstances during the time period that Romine was wreaking havoc.
After Sharron’s murder was solved, a press conference was held & her twin sisters, Doreen & Moreen spoke & said:
You may never have come back to our house on Congregation Street that weekend, but you have never left our hearts & never will. We love you, Sharron, & may you truly rest in peace.
References:
- WION: 48-yr-old case solved: Canadian police identify killer in murder of teen using DNA
- Medium: The long road to justice: How the brutal murder of sixteen-year-old Sharron Prior was solved after nearly fifty years
- CBS News: Police identify killer in 1975 murder of teen Sharron Prior after suspect’s body exhumed nearly 1,000 miles away
- Global News: A Montreal teen was killed almost 50 years ago. Now her suspected killer’s body is being exhumed
- Sharronprior.com
- ABC 13 News: W.Va man who killed teen in Canada in ‘75 being investigated in unsolved cold cases
- YouTube: It’s About Damn Crime! Murderer Franklin Romine: Caught After Death
