Authorities have identified a New Jersey man as the suspect in the separate, decades-old cold case murders of a teenage girl and a 24-year-old woman.
DNA evidence has revealed Francis T. Schooley murdered Marebeth Welsh in 1993 before killing 16-year-old Jennifer Persia several months later, in 1994, the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office announced in a Thursday, April 9, news release.
“Thanks to remarkable advances in DNA technology and diligent detective work, we have finally been able to bring answers to two families who have waited decades for justice,” Camden County Prosecutor Grace C. MacAulay said in a statement.
Schooley, who was from Mantua Township, died in 2000, when he was 39, according to the prosecutor’s office. His death was listed as a suicide, CBS News reported.
Schooley is accused of first killing Welsh in November 1993.
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The early morning of November 14, 1993, police found Welsh’s body on a sidewalk in Camden, prosecutors said. They noticed her nose had been bleeding.
She had no shoes on and only one sock on her right foot, according to prosecutors.
“The back of her clothing was dry despite rain as late as approximately 3:30 a.m. that morning,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Investigators suspected Welsh was killed elsewhere before her body was left along the sidewalk, according to authorities.
The Camden County Medical Examiner’s Office found that Welsh was strangled to death, as well as evidence that she had been sexually assaulted.
At her home in Woodlynne, investigators found blood on her bedroom comforter, authorities said.
Months later, not far from Camden on April 4, 1994, police were called about an “unconscious female” at a home in Magnolia, and found Persia on the living room floor, according to the prosecutor’s office.
She had been repeatedly stabbed and had a “cloth ligature around her neck,” prosecutors said.
Persia was ultimately declared dead at the Camden County Medical Examiner’s Office, which determined she died of several cuts on her neck and chest, in addition to strangulation and “multiple sharp and blunt injuries,” according to the prosecutor’s office.
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Over the course of the investigation, authorities discovered Schooley had ties to both Welsh and Persia, based on interviews, the prosecutor’s office said.
Schooley’s sibling told authorities that they had seen Schooley and Welsh “together in the past,” after they viewed a photo of Welsh, according to prosecutors.
Schooley also allegedly worked at an auto shop owned by Persia’s stepfather and did construction work at her stepfather’s home, prosecutors said.
In 2025, the New Jersey State Police Office of Forensic Sciences reexamined DNA evidence for further analysis and discovered a man was linked to traces of sperm that were found on Welsh’s shirt and underwear when she died, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Investigators found that the man’s DNA profile was the same DNA connected to blood located at the scene of Persia’s death, prosecutors said.
Schooley was identified as the suspect in Welsh and Persia’s deaths after Schooley’s parents and one of his siblings provided detectives samples of their DNA in January, according to the prosecutor’s office.
“Schooley would be charged in both of these cases, were he still alive,” the prosecutor’s office noted in the news release.
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