Credit: HCPD
Police in one of the most affluent counties in Maryland have not only solved the department’s oldest cold case homicide, but also reunited the victim’s surviving adult children who were unaware of what had happened to their mother and each other. The victim was born and lived most of her life in Pennsylvania as Sadie Belle Murray, but went by Sarah Belle Sharkey at the time of her death in Maryland.
Case background
In July 1971, two young boys riding bicycles found an unconscious woman in a field suffering from an apparent assault. She was transported to the hospital and died two months later, never regaining consciousness from the assault.
With no witnesses and no leads, the case quickly went cold on two fronts: the victim’s name and who killed her.
Recent efforts
In 2024, the Department of Justice helped the Howard County Police Department (HCPD) create and release a composite sketch based on skeletal remains, but it still did not lead to an ID.
Then, while the cold case team was re-examining the evidence, they found biological slides taken during the autopsy in 1971—still refrigerated and adequately preserved. In October 2024, HCPD submitted the histology slides to Othram for analysis. This resulted in a DNA profile that HCPD investigators were able to leverage to build out a family tree.
The name Charles Sharkey kept appearing. Originally thought to be a distant cousin, his DNA turned out to be a direct familial match—Charles is the victim’s son. As the pieces fell into place, HCPD identified the victim as Sarah Belle Sharkey, and even located another relative—Mildred Marie Cantwell (Sharkey), Sarah’s daughter and Charles’ older sister.
Charles and Mildred were placed in orphanages at young ages. Now 79 and 81, respectively, the siblings have reunited and speak nearly every day.
“It’s actually great and it’s something that I thought would have never happened,” Charles Sharkey said. “I thought I’d never connect again with my family. I tried there for a while, even traveling to Pennsylvania where we were born and Cleveland where we were adopted. I got nowhere. There was nothing.”
“Learning about my mother was closure for me,” Mildred Cantwell said. “I always wondered…and I am glad to have that closure. Being reunited with my brother is awesome. He’s the only thing in that family that I remember. The closure is worth everything because I always wondered what happened to her.”
Sherry Llewellyn, spokesperson with the Howard County Police Department, says the investigation remains open and HCPD encourages anyone who knows something, even minor, to come forward. The police know very little about Sarah Belle Sharkey and her life. She was primarily a resident of Pennsylvania, and it is unknown why she was in Howard County, Maryland at the time of her death. She also had at least one other adult child who died in 2020, and police believe there may have been other who did in early childhood.
“This was a case where the genetic genealogy was critical,” said Llewellyn. “For all these years, we had no way to link this Jane Doe to anyone. Once we were able to utilize those resources and build out a family tree, it was then we were able to piece together who she was and who she was related to.”