Skeletal remains of a Swedish student missing 33 years and unearthed in 2010 in California’s foothills have at last been positively identified, solving a disappearance that investigators believe was a homicide.
In January of 1982, foreign exchange student and nanny Elisabeth Martinsson had been staying with a host family in the San Francisco Bay area when she vanished without a trace while on a shopping trip in Larkspur.
Nearly two weeks later a sex offender was arrested in Oklahoma after it was determined the vehicle he was driving belonged to the missing 21-year-old Swede.
Convicted rapist Henry Lee Coleman, 31, ultimately pleaded guilty to only grand theft auto, for which he served just five years in prison.
In exchange for that plea, murder charges Coleman faced in Martinnson’s suspected assault and killing were dropped, leaving questions about the young woman’s fate unanswered and her missing persons case to grow cold -- until seven of her bones were finally discovered.
Foul play is therefore strongly suspected in the disappearance and death of Elisabeth Martinsson over three decades ago.
The Swedish student’s remains are being returned to her loved ones abroad for burial now, while the investigation into her cold case and the whereabouts of Henry Coleman -- her presumed killer -- continues in haste.
