Cold-case murder of Sheri Jo Elliot solved 40 years later in Flint area

A preserved DNA sample and a reopened file finally gave Sheri Jo Elliot’s family an answer after four decades of uncertainty. Michigan State Police tied the 1983 killing of the 16-year-old Flint-area teenager to Roni Collins of Grand Blanc by using forensic-grade genome sequencing and evidence that had sat untouched for years.

Elliot had recently moved to Flint to live with her mother after living with her father in Charlotte. She attended Carman High School and worked part time as a babysitter. On the morning of Nov. 16, 1983, she was last seen around 6:30 a.m. walking to a bus stop near W. Dartmouth and Clio roads.

Four days later, police found her body in a drainage ditch along Muller Road in Blumfield Township, Saginaw County. Investigators said she had been shot four times, sexually assaulted, and suffered multiple fractures and other injuries. The autopsy concluded she likely remained alive until about Nov. 19 and died of exsanguination.

The case went cold for years until Michigan State Police reopened it in 2023 and worked with the MSP Forensic Science Division and Othram Labs to build a suspect profile from evidence recovered in the case. That work pointed to Collins, who was 75 when investigators identified him and had been about 33 at the time of the murder. Police said Collins, who had lived in the same town as Elliot and was traveling as a musician in the area then, died by suicide in January 2026 before detectives could obtain a voluntary DNA sample. DNA taken during his autopsy later matched the evidence from Elliot’s case.

Western Michigan University’s Cold Case Program also helped push the case forward after partnering with Michigan State Police in 2023. Students helped reorganize and digitize investigative material, create documents for detectives, and do open-source research on people of interest. The program says it has worked on 79 cold-case homicide and missing-person cases and has contributed to six student-assisted solves.

Michigan State Police formally announced the case as solved on April 13, 2026. For Elliot’s mother, Joyce Schultz, the breakthrough brought long-awaited closure; aunt Judy Sika said the years without answers were agonizing. After nearly 42 years, the mystery that started at a bus stop in Flint ended with a DNA match and a name.