RICHMOND, Va. — The family of a Richmond toddler murdered nearly 50 years ago is speaking out for the first time after the man convicted of the crime was exonerated last month.
“It’s hard. It’s really hard,” Sarah Martin said.
Just months before she was born in 1975, police found Martin’s 3-year-old brother Christopher Harper, dead on the banks of the James River fully clothed, arms folded across his chest, 9 miles from his home.
WTVRPolice say he was also sexually assaulted.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about it,” Martin said tearfully.
Now, nearly 50 years later, no one knows who killed her brother. Especially since the man who admitted to, and was convicted of, the murder was exonerated in June 2024.
The Virginia Court of Appeals found over four decades later that Marvin Grimm was not responsible.
Richmond Times-Dispatch “48 years of his life. He can’t get that back,” Martin said. “It’s taken a hard blow to us.”
Grimm’s exoneration comes after he claimed evidence brought against him and his confession were all coerced.