W.Va. man who killed teen in Canada in '75 being investigated in unsolved cold cases
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS) — A man originally from Huntington has officially been connected to one of the most high profile murder cases in Canadian history.
Franklin Maywood Romine's criminal record started in West Virginia when he was a child and continued until his death in Canada in 1982.
Police say he jumped back and forth between West Virginia and Canada for years committing numerous crimes, from thefts to forgery to rape and murder.
Last Tuesday, Longueuil police in Canada announced DNA taken from Romine's remains, that were exhumed from a cemetery in Putnam County, were a 100% match to DNA evidence left at the scene of the murder of Sharron Prior in 1975.
Prior, who was 16-years-old when she was found partially nude in a field in Longueuil, was violently sexually assaulted and beaten to death following her abduction from her family's neighborhood in Point Saint Charles on March 29, 1975.
When Romine killed Prior, he had just fled West Virginia after posting bond for the rape of a waitress in Parkersburg in 1974. It was that crime that helped detectives in Canada zero in on Romine as a suspect in their infamous cold case.
Former Parkersburg Police Chief Bob Newell was a young patrolman in Feb. 1974. He remembers responding to a call about a break-in and sexual assault at the now Homecrest Manor Apartments on the city's southside.
"She was upset. I believed her, I can tell you that. When she told me what happened, and I saw the circumstances, I believed it happened," Newell said.
The victim was a 23-year-old single mother who worked as a waitress. She told police that Romine had broken out a window in her apartment, came in while she was sleeping, and raped her. She said he threw a $20 bill down before he left.
Her 4-year-old son was in the next room during the attack.
"The child actually woke up because he heard the glass break, and the commotion and the talking and so forth, and she convinced him that everything was OK, go back to bed, which he did," Newell recalled. "Again, just conceded to the fact that this was going to happen probably for her safety and for the safety of her child."
"He pinned me, had me pinned down on the bed and sitting on my legs and holding my arms down," the woman told the jury during the trial according to transcripts obtained by Eyewitness News. "He said, he said he had wanted me from the first time he ever saw me and that he was going to have me if he had to kill me."
The victim went on to tell the jury that she knew Romine through work and said he'd come in and get coffee.
She said he had asked her out before.
Newell remembers how extremely difficult it was to get a rape conviction in the 70s. There was no DNA to prove guilty. In 1974, when the crime happened, rape was a capital crime in West Virginia that was punishable by life in prison.
"Juries were very cognizant of that fact, and they would question how the woman got in that situation to begin with, unfortunately. That's just the way it was. When you tack on the fact that when you find this man guilty, he's eligible to go to prison for the rest of his life without parole, they really balked at convicting," Newell said. "In many, many cases back then, the prosecutor would take a plea of malicious assault or felony assault, which is like one to 10 years in prison. Things like that to get them to plead guilty and avoid a trial because it was just difficult."
A jury, however, did find Romine guilty. He would be the first rape conviction in nearly a decade in Wood County and the last capital rape conviction before state law changed to allow different degrees of sexual assault, such as first-degree and second-degree.
A jury recommended Romine receive mercy for the crimes but by the time the trial and conviction came it was 1976, two years after the crime.
It took police more than a year to track Romine down after he fled to Canada after posting a $2,500 bond on the charges.
While he was on the run, police now know he kidnapped Prior while she was on her way to meet friends at a pizzeria.
It was three days before she was found dead. Six months later, Romine was captured in Montreal and extradited back to West Virginia for the rape trial that started in Feb. 1976.
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"Knowing what we know now about Romine, he was probably obviously a sociopath all along. It wasn't anything he learned. You don't learn that. He's a typical example of that," Newell said.
Longueuil Police Det. Sgt. Eric Racicot, the lead cold case investigator on Sharron's case, described Romine's movements as a game of "catch me if you can" to the convict.
"We know for sure that he was always playing hide and seek with law enforcement. He was always going back and forth from Canada to the U.S. He was trying to avoid an arrest," Racicot said in an interview with Eyewitness News following last week's announcement. "He was always playing with us."
When Longueuil police got enough for a DNA profile of Sharron's killer from her clothing at the scene, they were able to zero in on a last name through genealogy sites.
Franklin Romine stood out during the search. He had a criminal history in Canada and, police noticed, a rape conviction in West Virginia. That information led them to West Virginia State Police Sgt. Eric McClung.
"One of the fingerprint cards that we produced here from criminal records actually had an address that was two blocks away from where she was abducted. Where he lived at in Montreal," McClung said.
McClung said he was stunned and fascinated with the technology and investigative work that led police to Romine.
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"I'm thinking it could be the guy, with his history, and also the fact that he is in Canada. We can put him in Canada at the time that it happened," McClung said.
In Sept. 1976, Romine was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the rape and one to 15 years on the burglary charge out of Parkersburg.
He'd go to Moundsville, the state's penitentiary, one of the prisons he was known to have escaped in the past before his conviction was overturned by the West Virginia Supreme Court in 1980.
The supreme court awarded him a new trial because of an inaccurate instruction that was given to the jury before their deliberations. However, instead of going before a new jury, Romine decided to plead guilty to second-degree sexual assault. By this time, he had already served enough time under the new sentencing guidelines to get out of prison and was released in 1981. He returned to Canada and died there in 1982.
"My understanding is that, by trade, he was a truck driver and he run a route between Canada and somewhere in the United States," McClung said.
Racicot said Romine was also known to do labor work and was unemployed for extended periods.
Now, police want to know if he's responsible for unsolved cases. His DNA taken during the exhumation in May is now going into the Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS. CODIS is an FBI computer software program that operates local, state, and national databases of DNA profiles from convicted offenders, unsolved crime scene evidence and missing persons.
"If the DNA is already in CODIS and there is a hit that gives them grounds to open the investigation up and work it further," McClung said.
He also urged agencies to test any evidence they may still have from unsolved cases with similar circumstances during the time period to see if its a match to Romine's.
McClung said he's had people ask him why police are doing so much work for such an old case that will see no trial.
"Well, her mother is still alive, and you can give her closure. There will be no prosecution. After the news story airs, it's a done deal. But it at least gives the mother and her sisters closure that they know who killed their sister and daughter," he said.
A certainty that Sharron's killer isn't still out there is a closure that her family didn't know if they'd ever experience.
Her sisters, Doreen and Moreen Prior, spoke to dozens of Canadian press that turned out for the news conference last week to announce that the case was solved.
Their mother, Yvonne, who is now 85-years-old, also sat in the audience and listened as police made the announcement she didn't know if she'd ever hear in her lifetime.
"Well always be your mom, your little brother and sisters who sat looking out that window that Easter weekend hoping to see you walking on home" one of the sisters said. "You may never have come back to our house on Congregation Street that weekend but you have never left our hearts and never will. We love you, Sharron, and may you truly rest in peace."
