BLUMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. \u2013 Police have confirmed that a Michigan man was responsible for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a teenage girl 43 years ago.<\/p>\n
Disappearance of Sheri Jo Elliott<\/p>\n
Sheri Jo Elliott, 16, was reported missing on Nov. 16, 1983, when she didn\u2019t return home from school in Flint.<\/p>\n
Elliott was last seen waiting for the bus. Police and residents spent days searching the area.<\/p>\n
Four days after her disappearance, Elliott\u2019s body was found along a rural road in Blumfield Township, Michigan.<\/p>\n
Police said Elliott had been shot multiple times and sexually assaulted.<\/p>\n
The case went cold because of the limited forensic technology available at the time, police said.<\/p>\n
Investigation reopened, suspect identified<\/p>\n
In 2023, Michigan State Police detectives reopened the case and took another look at the evidence.<\/p>\n
Alongside the MSP Forensic Science Division and Othram Labs, investigators used forensic-grade genome sequencing to develop a profile of an unidentified person they believed to be responsible for Elliott\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
That ultimately led them to focus on Roni Collins, 75, of Grand Blanc.<\/p>\n
Roni Collins dies by suicide<\/p>\n
Before investigators could get a voluntary DNA sample from Collins, he died by suicide in January 2026, they said.<\/p>\n
DNA collected during his autopsy was analyzed. It matched the evidence recovered from Elliott in 1983, identifying him as the person responsible, according to authorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough Collins will not face prosecution, detectives believe the identification provides long-awaited answers to Elliott\u2019s family and the community,\u201d Michigan State Police Third District said in a social media post.<\/p>\n
Western Michigan University Cold Case Program students helped with the case by reorganizing and digitizing decades of investigative material, police said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BLUMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. \u2013 Police have confirmed that a Michigan man was responsible for the kidnapping, rape, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11081,11079,11080,8,11077,11078,9,11082,7],"class_list":{"0":"post-18074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-blumfield-township","9":"tag-flint","10":"tag-genesee-county","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-michigan-cold-cases","13":"tag-missing-in-michigan","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-saginaw-county","16":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116432181764879527","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}