Chris Potter. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
By Gus Saltonstall
A man was sentenced Thursday for a shocking double murder three decades ago that claimed the lives of a Morningside Heights woman and her special-needs daughter, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced on Thursday.
Larry Atkinson, 67, was sentenced to 40 years-to-life for strangling 57-year-old Sarah Roberts and her 26-year-old daughter Sharon in 1994 within the NYCHA Grant Houses at 550 West 125th Street in Morningside Heights, the DA said in its news release about the case.
In 2022, additional DNA testing was performed that led to Atkinson’s arrest in January 2023. He was convicted by the New York State Supreme Court in October of 2025 on two counts of murder in the second degree.
“We are resolute in our commitment to solving homicides and providing justice to victims and their families, no matter how long it takes,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in the release. “Thirty years after strangling Sarah Roberts and her daughter Sharon, Larry Atkinson stands convicted by a jury of two counts of murder and will serve decades in prison. Thanks to the skill of our prosecutors and the dogged work of our partners at OCME and the NYPD, there is finally closure for this horrific crime.”
On the night of February 20, 1994, a home health aide who took care of the daughter, and whom Atkinson was dating, discovered both women dead within the Morningside Heights apartment. Roberts’ daughter Sharon had been strangled with her mother’s oxygen tank tubing, according to the Manhattan DA’s Office.
The case went unsolved for decades, but in 2022, using technology unavailable at the time of the killings, the New York City Office of the Medical Examiner conducted additional testing on samples collected in 1994 and developed a DNA profile that matched Atkinson, the DA’s office said.
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