Yvonne’s Worst Nightmare
On the morning of April 1st, 1975, Montreal resident Yvonne Prior was up early, awaiting any news on the case of her missing 16-year-old daughter, Sharron. She was a single mom of four children, who absolutely loved and cherished her children. So as you can imagine, when her eldest daughter Sharron went missing three days prior, Yvonne was worried for her.
This morning, she noticed something a bit peculiar. Her neighbor Ronny, an acquaintance of hers, was knocking on her other neighbor's door with a newspaper under his arm. She could tell something about him was off.
Yvonne went outside and called to him, asking him why he was out so early this morning. Ronny neglected to give her a straight answer, and instead replied with “nothing.” But Yvonne could see there was a strange worried look in his eyes. As she began to walk over to him, he turned and met her halfway. Not a word was spoken between them, but something told Yvonne she needed to see that newspaper.
In a swift motion, she snatched it from him and ran back toward her home while unfolding the pages. Ronny called out to her and tried to tell her not to look at it, but it was too late. What Yvonne saw on the pages shook her entire world.
Police had found her daughter badly beaten, deceased, and laying half naked in a snowy field some 25 minutes away from home. And the press had printed a graphic photo of her right there on the page.
Discovery
Sharron’s body was discovered in a field in Longueuil, Montreal, which had been used as an apiary by a local beekeeper who lived not too far from the area. The beekeeper had become aware that the gate to his apiary had been left open. He swore that he had padlocked it shut the last time he was there, as he always does.
But around 9 o’clock that evening when he went to check, the lock was unlocked and seemingly untampered with, hanging on the gate just as if he had forgotten to lock it back up. It was when he went inside to survey the area that he, unfortunately, stumbled upon the teen’s body and immediately phoned the police.
Identifying the Body
Police arrived at the scene and began scoping out the area to gather evidence and any clues as to what could have happened to the girl. There were a ton of details about the body and the surrounding area that made it quite obvious to them that this was an assault and murder.
Her body had been badly beaten. Her chest had been crushed as if someone had knelt on it. She had bruises all over her face and head, some consistent with an object such as a ring. She had fractures on both sides of her jaw and a broken nose. There was even a hole in her cheek caused by one of her teeth coming loose in the midst of the attack.
She was nude from the waist down except for her socks and shoes, and she was wearing a blue sweater and suede jacket, which her mother had let her borrow the night she had gone missing. Her jeans were found nearby in the snow, and her underwear was hanging by a tree branch.
Investigators found partially chewed tape stuck in her tangled hair, likely used to gag her. There were also tree branches clutched in her hand, indicating to police that she had probably been clinging to life when her attacker left her in the snow. There were even signs that she had made an attempt to pick herself up, as her legs were bent in a way that seemed like she tried but failed.
The coroner reported that her time of death was about 20 hours before she was found, meaning she had been abandoned in the snow around midnight or 1 AM the night before and held captive before then.
Other evidence found at the scene included tire tracks approximately 15 feet away from her body and a blood trail from where the car was parked to her body. However, there were no drag marks in the snow and no mud on Sharron’s shoes, which meant she was carried from the car.
There was a men’s shirt size 17 collar with 34-inch sleeves, indicating the man who did this to her had to be around 6 feet tall. And due to the size and depth of the shoe prints nearby, he was a size 8 and a half shoe and probably weighed around 200 lbs.
Additionally, a ring with the word ‘love’ inscribed, a page out of an english magazine, a car seat cushion, and a receipt for a jacket with the name Sharron Prior were all found in the area.
The next morning after Yvonne learned of her daughter’s fate, she was asked to come down to identify and confirm that the body was indeed Sharron Prior. Except having been so heartbroken over the news, she could not bring herself to go. Instead, she sent her brother in her place, who then confirmed to the police and to Yvonne that it was in fact Sharron’s body.
Who Are the Priors?
Let’s go back in time a bit so that we can learn a little bit more about the Prior family. Sharron Prior was born on February 9th, 1959 in Montreal, Canada to parents Yvonne and George.
Her mother Yvonne had immigrated to Montreal from England. It was in Montreal that she met her future husband, George, who was a member of the Canadian military. The two fell in love, got married, and had their first child together - Sharron.
Later on, the couple welcomed twin girls Moreen and Doreen. These two girls were almost like a birthday present to little Sharron. She was so excited and happy to be a big sister.
In 1962, George was transferred to Manitoba, where the couple welcomed their fourth child, George Jr. By 1965, however, their marriage was failing. The two parted ways and Yvonne took all four kids with her and moved back to Montreal, in a neighborhood nicknamed ‘The Point.’ It was there that she would continue to raise her four children as a single mother.
Sharron Prior
From a very young age, Sharron could be described as having so many good qualities. She was well-liked, caring, and responsible. She had a love for animals and would even take wounded ones in, nursing them back to health. She dreamed of one day becoming a veterinarian.
Sharron was a shy girl but had a warm presence about her, got along well with others, and had a great friend group.
She was a member of the Boys and Girls Club, and played floor hockey and participated in arts and crafts classes. She was generally a well-behaved girl and stayed out of trouble.
When she was 16, Sharron was dating a young man named John. She loved music, especially Elton John, and loved spending time with friends. She was always home at a decent time every night and even had a good relationship with her mother and siblings.
Sharron’s Last Day
March 29th, 1975 seemed like a normal day. Yvonne had gone out earlier in the morning to get some last-minute things for their Easter celebration, including extra eggs for the family to decorate.
Sharron had her own errand to attend to. She needed to pick up her Leo’s boys jacket at the Boys and Girls Club. In order to get the jacket, Sharron had to have sold a certain amount of raffle ticket books, and she had reached her goal. She asked her mother if it would be okay to bring her four-year-old foster brother, Steven, to which she agreed.
The two set off to the club, and upon their arrival, Sharron found out that they did not have her size available. They gave her a receipt and told her to come back another time when hopefully they will get it in. So the two of them headed back home.
That afternoon, the Priors welcomed the Reverend for a surprise visit. He stayed for a little while to celebrate Easter with the family and even gifted them chocolate turtles.
After he left, the family sat down for dinner and shared stew that Yvonne had made. She said the children weren’t fond of the meal, but they would eat it anyway. During dinner, Sharron asked her mother if she could go to Marina’s Pizzeria later to meet her friends and her boyfriend. Yvonne said it would be fine, so Sharron went to get ready.
Sometime before 7:00 o’clock, Sharron’s neighborhood friend came by to hang out for a bit while Sharron got ready. She at first couldn’t decide what to wear. So she settled for one of her mom’s sweaters and her favorite suede jacket.
When she was ready, she said bye to her mother, who told her to be careful not to get the suede jacket wet in the rain. The girls then left the house around 7:10 pm. The two had been friends since they were five, but went to different schools and did not share the same friend circles. So when Sharron was heading to the pizzeria, her friend went back home instead.
Her friend reportedly had offered to walk with Sharron to the pizzeria, to which Sharron said no and that she would be fine to go by herself because she knew the route well. She had been to the pizzeria many times before because it had become a teen hangout spot. And with that, Sharron began to walk by herself.
Somewhere along her route, though, something went wrong. Her friends at Marina’s pizzeria waited for her to arrive, but she never did. At first, they assumed she probably went to the hockey game with her boyfriend and some other guys in the friend group, but when they arrived at the pizzeria, Sharron was not with them.
Later, at home, Yvonne waited for Sharron to arrive home. Her curfew came and went, and there was no sign of her. Yvonne thought it a bit strange since Sharron would always either come home on time or at least call to let her mother know she would be late. She stayed up until 1:30 AM waiting for her daughter to come home, but she never did and Yvonne grew very worried.
Cheryl’s Attack
The following morning was when she decided to call some of Sharron’s friends. One of them, named Mary, alerted Yvonne of an unfortunate event that took place the night before.
Mary said, “I don’t mean to worry you, Mrs. Prior, but a woman was attacked on Ash Avenue sometime after 7:00 PM.” The victim was a 23-year-old woman named Cheryl Roy, who had been threatened and grabbed by a man with a knife. Thankfully, a passerby saw the whole thing and scared the man off before he could hurt Cheryl.
He was described as having blue eyes, a mustache, and a calm voice. He wore blue jeans, a dark blue ski jacket, and black shoes with pointed toes. What worried Yvonne was that the man supposedly fled in the direction of Sharron’s path to the pizzeria, and it was the same time frame.
Cheryl was brought into the station to try to identify her attacker, but she was so unsure of the appearance that she couldn’t single anyone out. No one was charged for the attack.
The Search for Sharron
A search began for Sharron. In the days after her disappearance, so many members of the community aided in the search, including her friends and classmates as well as law enforcement.
Yvonne even went on TV to beg the community for help in finding her daughter, but there was still no sign of her.
Unlikely Theory
People at first believed Sharron must have run away from home. Her mother and family knew this was improbable, though, because Sharron had absolutely no reason to leave. She hadn’t spoken to anyone about wanting to run away. Her mother stated, “I didn’t think she was planning on running away from home because she left her school bus pass and money behind in her room. And all of her friends say they never heard her talk about running away.”
But the Prior family would never get the answers they wanted. And on that fateful day of April 1st when news hit that her body had been found, their lives would never be the same.
Investigation
In the aftermath of discovering the body, authorities interviewed 38 people who were suspects in the case, but only 6 were actually detained and then later released due to lack of evidence. Among these 6 people were the pizzeria manager, the beekeeper who discovered her body, and the co-owner of the apiary.
As time went on, leads quickly dried up and there was no new information that was helpful to the investigation. Sharron’s case soon went cold, but her family did not give up.
On April 4th, 1975, Sharron was laid to rest. Thirteen months would go by without any new leads on the case.
Yvonne’s Theory
Yvonne believes Sharron likely didn’t make it far from the house before being captured. This is because she had been told by a neighbor that they had been driving down the street Sharron would have been walking on to go to the pizzeria, but they didn’t see her anywhere. Sharron was not physically tough, either. So she most likely would have frozen up in the face of an attack.
Former FBI Profiler’s Theory
A former FBI profiler, Greg McCreary had his own thoughts on Sharron’s murder. He believes that the attacker was most likely younger, maybe in his 20s, and probably lives in the area due to his obvious knowledge of the streets.
He had to have known the area well since he knew where to go and dump a body. In fact, the dump site was probably chosen because the field wouldn’t be used by the beekeeper until late spring. The killer probably thought her body wouldn’t be found for weeks.
McCreary also believes that this probably was not his first time doing this. The man who attacked Cheryl Roy could very well be the same man who killed Sharron.
Moreover, McCreary stated that when killers get into their “hunting mindset,” they are much more likely to attempt a second abduction because they are so willing in that state to risk more. So the likelihood that it was unrelated to Cheryl’s attack is improbable.
The attacker was probably a sadist, as he held Sharron captive for days and probably inflicted pain on her for his own pleasure.
McCreary advised that the police should look for people who have minor domestic arrests or solicitation. He probably wouldn’t be a smooth talker if it were the same man who tried to attack Cheryl since he felt the need to threaten her with a knife.
He also theorizes that the killer could be serial, as there were many other unsolved cases in the same area with similar outcomes - one of which was the case of Tammy Leaky.
Tammy Leaky
There are many similarities between Sharron’s case and Tammy’s case.
On March 20th, 1981, Tammy had been visiting her grandmother in The Point - the same neighborhood where the Priors lived and where Sharron disappeared. She was sent to the store to get milk but never returned.
Tammy’s mother, upon searching for Tammy, found her glasses on the sidewalk, which indicated that she may have been abducted. Her mother immediately called the police. Later that same evening, a man discovered Tammy’s body in a similar state to Sharron’s body when it was found. Her case remains unsolved.
Other cases in the area are similar as well, which points to the possibility of a serial killer in the area.
Evidence Lost
In the year 2000, Yvonne requested that the police once again review the evidence collected in Sharron’s case. Technology had advanced a bit, so she thought that maybe they could get some answers.
A week after she made the request, the police responded by telling her that they had discarded the majority of the evidence from the case in 1995, so they could not review it.
This devastated Yvonne, but she pressed on. She requested that they at least try to find the clothing items that were found at the scene of the murder. Luckily, they still had them.
The clothing was tested and foreign DNA was found, but nothing else could be done at that time.
Garage Tip
In 2004, police got a tip from someone saying they might know where Sharron was being held captive. They said they thought it was in a garage unit. Police swarmed the area and they ran tests to gather 3 DNA samples, but none of them were a match to Sharron’s or the murderer’s. So the tip was disregarded.
Anonymous Donor
In 2010, an anonymous donor increased the reward for information that would solve Sharron’s case to $10,000 and opened a dedicated phone line for tips.
An Attempt to Help the Investigation
The passerby who saved Cheryl’s life even hopped on board to try to help solve the murder by going to a hypnotist in hopes that it would coax new information about that day to come out. A few days after her session, police sent over photos of suspects in the case, and only one stood out to her.
It was a man by the name of William Patrick Fyfe, who was a Canadian serial killer guilty of 5 murders and who claimed to kill at least 9. Fyfe had told authorities, however, his first murder didn’t happen until 1979. There was also no evidence to connect him to Sharron or her case, so again, the lead dried up.
Leads Slow Down
Throughout the years there have been many other suspects, but there hasn’t been any definitive proof connecting any of them to the case. Many of them were speculation by amateur investigators.
Boys and Girls Club
The Boys and Girls Club even pitched in to do their part in remembering Sharron by setting up a scholarship in her name and a website that would keep her memory alive.
Yvonne Doesn’t Give Up
Throughout all this time, though, Yvonne never gave up on solving her daughter’s case. She continued to press law enforcement so that they would never forget Sharron’s name. Whenever there was a possibility to try something else, she pushed for them to get involved in the case again.
2003 DNA Profile
That opportunity came in 2003, when the men’s shirt, Sharron’s pants, and her underwear were all tested once again for DNA. This time they were able to lift a partial profile from the shirt, but it was insufficient to make a comparison to the DNA profiles on Sharron’s items of clothing.
2015 DNA Profile
It wasn’t until 2015 that they were able to lift a complete DNA profile from the shirt, which ultimately was a match to the profile left on Sharron’s jeans and underwear.
At that time, they ran the DNA through the Canadian database, but they did not get a hit. Two years later, a private lab in the United States ran the DNA through their system, and still no result was found.
2022 DNA Profile and Hit
It wasn’t until 2022 that they tried again. Sgt. Roscoe, who was working on Sharron's case at the time, sent the clothing items as direct samples to the lab to once again be tested. This time, they got a hit.
It turns out, the suspect's family had submitted their DNA to a genealogy website, which helped make the match. The last name they got was Romine.
No one with that last name was on the suspect list in the case. So Roscoe began the search for a Romine in Montreal around the time of Sharron’s murder and found a potential suspect - Franklin Maywood Romine.
Franklin Maywood Romine
Franklin was born in 1946 and had a vast criminal record. He was originally from West Virginia, where he spent a lot of his time in and out of jail. He even escaped jail twice.
In February of 1974, a little over a year before Sharron’s death, he broke into the home of a woman in Parkersburg. He assaulted the woman and then fled the scene. He was arrested shortly after but released on a $2500 bond.
He then moved to Montreal, Canada to continue his crime spree. Canadian officials captured him in October of 1975, though, and handed him over to the FBI on his robbery and assault charges. He was then sent back to West Virginia where he pled guilty to a second-degree assault charge in exchange for dropping the robbery charge.
He was sentenced to 5-10 years in prison but got out early on credit for time served. Once he was released, he moved back to Montreal where he died of natural causes in 1982. His body was returned to West Virginia and buried at Pine Grove Cemetery.
Franklin’s Brothers Help the Investigation
Franklin’s brothers did everything they could to help the investigation upon finding out about the DNA match. They willingly provided samples of their own DNA to be compared to the profile from the men’s shirt found at the crime scene. It was concluded that it was 140 times more likely that it was Franklin’s DNA on the shirt than any random person in the caucasian population.
One of his brothers even remarked that it was most likely Franklin who killed Sharron. He stated that Franklin had once tried to assault his brother’s wife, resulting in the family not being too close with Franklin.
Request to Exhume the Body
Sgt. Roscoe submitted a request for Franklin’s body to be exhumed, and Putnam County complied and pushed the request through. The Romine brothers were opposed to this, however, because it went against their Pentecostal faith to exhume people from graves.
Not only was it sacrilegious to them, but they also had dug their family’s graves themselves, and in doing so made a spatial error that would make it extremely difficult to exhume Franklin without exhuming their mother, too.
Roscoe went on to explain to the judge why it was so important that they needed to test the DNA and compare it to Franklin's.
Reasons to Believe in Franklin’s Guilt
Franklin lived 5 miles from where the Priors resided. Both the shoe print and the tire marks could be traced back to Franklin. He was a size 8 and a half shoe and the tires that made the tracks were only used on 37 car models in 1975, one of which was a Wrangler which Franklin drove at the time.
A 22-year-old woman who was almost abducted around the same time and place as Sharron was actually given a description of her attacker that was strikingly similar to Franklin. She said he spoke English, not French like most people in Montreal. He was in his late 20s, white, 6’2”, and 200 lbs with brown hair, a mustache, and a blue ski coat.
This was also extremely similar to the description Cheryl gave of her attacker.
Smoking Gun
The most important piece of the puzzle was the DNA. The comparison between the Romine brothers’ DNA and that of the profile from the men’s shirt had many similarities.
Ruling and Exhumation
The final decision was that Franklin could be exhumed.
On May 2, 2023, Longueuil police, the FBI, West Virginia State Police, and the Putnam sheriff’s department met at the Pine Grove Cemetery to exhume Franklin with the help of the local funeral home.
DNA Comparison
Franklin’s bones were transported back to Canada, where they were able to lift a full DNA profile for him. They then used this profile to compare it to the profile from the men’s shirt, and it was then confirmed to be an exact match.
Conclusion
After 48 years, Sharron’s case was solved. And it was all due to the Prior family’s active role in keeping the case alive and investigated. They never gave up throughout all those years.
Moreen and Doreen thanked the many people who helped them find the killer and solve their sister’s murder. They stated, “You never came back to our house on Congregation Street that weekend, but you have never left our hearts. And you never will.”
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