A man was sentenced to up to 20 years in prison on Tuesday in connection to the killing of a 27-year-old Oregon woman he had been dating when she vanished more than 42 years ago, prosecutors said.
The man, Marcus Sanfratello, 72, also known as Mark, was arrested last year after DNA evidence helped identify her partial remains. He had been dating Teresa Peroni when she was last seen at a party in Selma, Ore., on July 4, 1983. She had been walking into a wooded area with Mr. Sanfratello, according to the Oregon Department of Justice.
Her family had reported Ms. Peroni missing, but no trace of her had been found for more than a decade, until a landowner found a human skull in 1997 near the woods where she was last seen, according to the sheriff’s office in Josephine County, Ore.
Mr. Sanfratello was arrested on June 28 last year in Chico, Calif., and charged with murder. He was then extradited to Oregon, where he pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in Josephine County Circuit Court, the prosecutors said. He will serve at least 10 years before being eligible for parole, said Jenny Hansson, a spokeswoman for the state attorney general’s office in Oregon.
The authorities had deemed her disappearance suspicious but did not have enough evidence to charge anyone, the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office said.
The skull, found in 1997, was eventually sent to the University of North Texas for DNA testing, according to the Sheriff’s Office. The authorities did not specify when that evidence was examined for genetic clues.
The sheriff’s office said it reopened the investigation into Ms. Peroni’s disappearance last year. Investigators were able to obtain DNA from people connected to Ms. Peroni to help determine that the skull was a match for her, Sheriff Dave Daniel said.
When the sheriff’s office reopened the case, investigators reviewed the evidence collected in 1983 and re-interviewed several people, he said. The result was enough information to make an arrest, he said.
Shortly before she vanished, Ms. Peroni and Mr. Sanfratello had argued about whether she was seeing someone else, according to an entry on the case in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System database.
Ms. Peroni’s family also said they had other arguments, specifically because she had joined a church, her brother Russell Neill said.
Becoming involved with a church was part of Ms. Peroni’s effort to turn her life around after a divorce and her return to Oregon, where she met Mr. Sanfratello, Mr. Neill said.
Mr. Sanfratello has had other issues with the law. In 1985, he was charged with two counts of attempted murder, one count of rape and one count of burglary in the stabbing of his ex-wife and her 14-year-old daughter in their home in Yreka, Calif., The Record Searchlight of Redding, Calif., reported at the time. He was later sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for two counts of attempted murder.
He was later convicted on one count of theft or embezzlement of U.S. property in federal court in the Eastern District of California in 1999, according to court records. He was sentenced to two years of probation and was ordered to pay about $4,000 in restitution.
Mr. Neill said after the arrest that he was still mourning the sister he lost, describing her as “a loving person.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Rylee Kirk reports on breaking news, trending topics and major developing stories for The Times.
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