She Walked Into the Woods in 1983. It Took 43 Years to Prove What Happened.

She walked into the woods with her boyfriend. Only he walked out.

In July 1983, 27-year-old Teresa Peroni went to a party off Illinois River Road in Selma, Oregon. She was last seen walking into the woods with her boyfriend, Marcus Sanfratello. She never came back.

Josephine County deputies treated the disappearance as suspicious from the start. But 1983 offered them very little to work with: no DNA profiling, no mobile phone records, no surveillance footage — and no body. Without physical evidence, there was nothing to charge anyone with. The case went cold.

1997: a single skull

Fourteen years later, a human skull was found on private property not far from where Teresa was last seen. It was sent to the University of North Texas for identification. No match was made. It sat unidentified for another 27 years.

2024: the case reopens

In 2024 the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office reopened the file. Investigators collected new reference DNA and had the remains re-tested using modern forensic methods. This time the science was equal to the question. The skull was confirmed to be Teresa Peroni.

With an identification in hand, detectives re-interviewed witnesses from 1983. A grand jury indicted Marcus Sanfratello on Murder in the Second Degree in June 2025, and police in Chico, California arrested him the following day. He was extradited to Oregon.

The outcome

On April 21, 2026, Sanfratello, 73, pleaded guilty in Josephine County Circuit Court to Manslaughter in the First Degree. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, with a minimum of 10 years served under the terms of the plea agreement.

That plea did more than change a label. Under Oregon’s 1994 Ballot Measure 11, Manslaughter in the First Degree carries a mandatory minimum of 120 months — exactly 10 years — while Murder in the Second Degree carries 300 months. The plea moved the sentencing floor, and the state took certainty over the risk of a trial built on 43-year-old testimony.

Watch the full case

Sources

• Oregon Department of Justice — “Oregon DOJ Secures 20-Year Sentence in 1983 Cold Case Homicide of Teresa Peroni,” April 21, 2026.
• Oregon Department of Justice — “Oregon Department of Justice Prosecuting 1983 Murder Case in Josephine County,” July 16, 2025.
• KPTV / FOX 12 Oregon — “Arrest made in 1983 Josephine County cold case,” July 1, 2025; “Man sentenced to 20 years in Oregon cold case murder after DNA breakthrough,” April 22, 2026.
• Josephine County Sheriff’s Office cold-case bulletins and arrest photograph releases.
• 1994 Oregon Ballot Measure 11 mandatory-minimum sentencing schedule.

Related reading

No well-researched book has been written about this case specifically, so rather than recommend something unrelated, here is an Amazon search scoped to the case itself: Teresa Peroni / Oregon cold case true crime on Amazon.

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