A man was sentenced in Oregon to 20 years in prison for the death of his then-girlfriend, Teresa Peroni, in a cold case that was reopened years after Peroni disappeared, authorities said Tuesday.
Prosecutors said Marcus Sanfratello, 73, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to 20 years in prison with a minimum of 10 years to be served. The Oregon Attorney General’s office said the case centered on Peroni’s disappearance in 1983 and subsequent identification of her remains through DNA testing.
According to authorities, Peroni disappeared after attending a party in a rural area near Selma in southern Oregon. Investigators said she was last seen walking into the woods with Sanfratello, her boyfriend at the time, and that the case had previously been investigated without enough evidence to bring charges.
The investigation resurfaced decades later, when a human skull was found on a nearby property in 1997 and was sent to the University of North Texas for examination, the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office said last year. The sheriff’s office later reopened the case in 2024, collecting new DNA evidence and using modern forensic testing.
Authorities said that with the additional DNA, experts at the university confirmed that the skull was Peroni’s. Sanfratello was taken into custody last year in Chico, California, before being extradited to Oregon, where he was first indicted on a higher charge of second-degree murder.
Sanfratello’s defense attorney, Elizabeth Baker, said in a text message that her client had “strong motivation to resolve the matter” because of the diagnosis of a complex health issue. Baker said the resolution would “give the family closure” while allowing Sanfratello to receive the treatment he needed while serving his sentence.
Oregon Attorney General Rayfield said the sentence ended what he described as a long wait for answers for Peroni’s family. In a statement, Rayfield said, “For Teresa Peroni’s family, this has been a 43-year wait for an answer they never should have had to wait for,” adding that the case illustrated why authorities “don’t give up.”