How a College Cold Case Program Used DNA to Solve a 1983 Murder

On November 16, 1983, 16-year-old Sheri Jo Elliott stepped out of her home in Flint, Mich., at 6:30 a.m. to catch a bus to school. She was last seen walking toward the bus stop. Her family and the community passed out flyers and posted them on the windows of local businesses. The police canvassed the neighborhood without success.

Four days later, a muskrat trapper a few counties away was completing his daily rounds of checking his lines when he stumbled upon Elliott’s body in a ditch. Autopsy records indicate she was still alive as late as the day before, suggesting she was kept hostage. The autopsy also found that she was sexually assaulted and shot four times.

Early in the investigation, there were no solid leads. Members of Elliott’s family came under suspicion, including her stepfather, Robert Schultz. “It seems that she could not just vanish without being seen,” Elliott’s mother, Joyce Schultz, told The Flint Journal. “Someone, somewhere, had to see her when she was abducted or when she was kept somewhere for three days.” 

The case turned cold within a year. Over the decades, detectives reopened it multiple times but didn’t come any closer to catching the culprit. 

In 2023, the Michigan State Police (MSP) reopened Elliott’s case. The lead detective enlisted the help of Western Michigan University’s Cold Case Program. Ashlyn Keursten, founder and director of the program, put together a team of students to organize and digitize the entire file with decades worth of documents. "They opened the case and gave it to my students, to look at whether it made sense to test the DNA," Kuesten tells A&E Crime + Investigation. "They didn’t know what was in the case file." 

Because of the program’s assistance, detectives found biological evidence that had not been tested. Fortunately, the evidence had not deteriorated. Cold Case Consultants of America founder Alex Baber tells A&E Crime + Investigation that storage of DNA evidence is not uniform. In cases that are older than four decades, detectives did not always store DNA properly. Blood and other material was simply stored in a filing cabinet in many instances, Baber says.

It was only after the use of DNA in criminal convictions became the norm during the late 1980s that investigators learned to preserve evidence for testing. Forensic-grade genome sequencing was used to create a profile of an unidentified suspect. Detectives eventually focused their attention on Roni Collins from nearby Grand Blanc. 

Collins was a bassist who went by the moniker Hendrix. “The person that abducted her was in a band that played almost exclusively to teenagers in this area of Michigan: school dances, parties, that kind of thing,” Keursten says. Hendrix regularly performed at Scooters Bar & Grill in Flint. The bar’s owner, Lisa Baker, told ABC12 that Collins was “one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met.”

As detectives closed in on Collins, he died by suicide in January 2026. DNA taken during his autopsy matched the DNA found on Elliott’s body.  “I’m glad he’s dead,” Schultz told ABC12. Speaking of her daughter, she said, “I still miss her everyday. I will for the rest of my life.”

MSP detectives now believe Collins may have been responsible for the disappearance of Oscoda, Mich., teenagers Pamela Hobley and Patricia Spencer, who went missing on Halloween in 1969. They were last seen talking to a man with a van. Collins was frequently seen in Oscoda at that time and known to drive a van. Authorities considered him a person of interest then and questioned him. He denied any involvement. 

As of May 2026, detectives throughout the Midwest are reviewing cold cases to check whether Collins’ DNA matches evidence collected. 

The Cold Case Program has already helped close six cases. “Even the cases that don’t get solved, it’s still beneficial,” Keursten insists. “Law enforcement can sit down with the family and say, ‘These students turned over every stone. There’s nothing here. There’s no testable evidence. The person that we think is probably the prime suspect has passed on.’ I think even that is helpful for the family members. It makes them feel that at least everything was done that could have been done even if the news wasn’t great.”

Although Elliott’s family didn’t see legal justice prevail against Collins, they did find a small amount of comfort from the DNA match. “We were able to meet with the family members and hear from them how much this meant to them,” Keursten says. “They finally knew what happened to their beloved daughter.”

The family wrote the students a letter to thank them for their hard work. Keursten read it out loud at an end-of-semester party that students and detectives attended. “I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house,” she says. “It was really powerful.”