WMU students help solve 43-year-old cold case

The disappearance and murder of a 16-year-old girl was solved more than 40 years later with the help of college students. Our story begins in Flint, November 1983. Michael Jackson’s Thriller had just come out. A Christmas Story was about to hit theaters. And 16-year-old Sheri Jo Elliot was a part-time babysitter attending Carman High School — just trying to settle into a new life. Sheri had just moved to Flint to live with her mom after living with her dad in Charlotte. She was shy, smart and always careful around strangers. Then on Nov. 16, 1983, Sheri never came home from school. She was last seen waiting for the bus - and then she was gone. Four days later, her body was found along a rural road in Blumfield Township. She had been shot multiple times and sexually assaulted. After an extensive investigation, the case went cold. And it stayed cold for 40 years. Then, in 2023, MSP detectives reopened the case with something they had never had before. Modern DNA technology, using forensic-grade genome sequencing, they built a suspect profile. At the same time, students from Western Michigan University’s Cold Case Program joined the investigation. All of that work led to one man: Roni Collins. A 75-year-old from Grand Blanc who had lived in the same area as Sheri Jo and was a traveling musician at the time of her death. DNA from his autopsy was tested — and it was a conclusive match to evidence recovered from Sheri Jo in 1983. On April 13, 2026, Michigan State Police announced that the case had been solved, and the Western Michigan students were integral to making it happen. Dr. Ashlyn Kuersten, the director of the Cold Case Program at Western Michigan, and Halli Warner, a student who was part of the team that helped solve this case, joined Local 4 Live to discuss the investigation. We also spoke with the Michigan State Police liaison about how this case came together.