1983 Flint Cold Case Solved After More Than 40 Years

For more than 40 years, the 1983 killing of a Flint teenager sat unsolved, leaving the girl's family and investigators with nothing but questions. Now, Michigan State Police say a breakthrough has finally cracked the case, bringing long-awaited closure to a decades-old mystery that many feared would never be solved.

Sheri Jo Elliott’s 1983 Disappearance

Sheri Jo Elliott went missing on November 16, 1983. Four days after her disappearance, her partially clothed body was found along a rural road in Saginaw County.

Police determined Elliott had been shot four times and sexually assaulted. However, the identity of the person responsible eluded investigators for more than four decades.

Using DNA analysis and forensic genetic genealogy, Michigan State Police say they were eventually able to identify a suspect in Elliott’s murder.

For Elliott’s mother, Joyce Schultz, the pain of losing her daughter never went away — but one detail made an unbearable situation slightly easier to endure.

She told ABC-12 that having Sheri Jo’s body recovered back in 1983 meant she was never left wondering where her daughter was or what she might have been going through.

“I am just grateful that they found her, because if they hadn't found her, I wouldn't have been able to survive not knowing where she was, if she was being harmed,” Schultz said. “I wouldn't have been able to survive that.”

Schultz also said her husband, Robert Schultz — Sheri Jo’s stepfather — was at one point considered a suspect in the case. She maintained he had nothing to do with the killing, but he died last year without ever learning who was responsible.

Who Killed Sheri Jo Elliott?

Michigan State Police say forensic genetic genealogy ultimately led investigators to 75-year-old Roni Collins of Grand Blanc as a potential suspect in the 1983 killing of Sheri Jo Elliott.

Collins never voluntarily provided a DNA sample. However, according to authorities, DNA collected following his death in January was later matched to evidence recovered from Elliott’s body, confirming investigators’ findings.

1983 Flint Cold Case Finally Solved

With the match in place, detectives say the evidence now conclusively links Collins to the decades-old homicide.

Collins died by suicide earlier this year, before investigators were able to speak with him about the case or obtain a DNA sample directly.

For Schultz, finally learning who killed her daughter brings a sense of closure — but she says it also comes with an emotional weight that’s hard to fully process more than four decades later. Still, she hopes the breakthrough offers encouragement to other families still waiting for answers in their own homicide cases.

“There is still hope,” Schultz said. “It's not going to change anything in my life. I still miss her every day, and I will for the rest of my life. It's something you never ever get over — no parent ever does.”