Gresham police identified a Troutdale man this week as the suspect in the city’s oldest cold case homicide.
Using DNA technology, police identified Robert Plympton, 58, as a suspect in the killing of 19-year-old Barbara Mae Tucker in 1980. Gresham police on Tuesday arrested Plympton.
Tucker was a sophomore studying business at Mt. Hood Community College when she was walking to a night class on Jan. 15, 1980. She was seen running onto Northeast Kane Drive from the wooded area on the west edge of campus. At the time, Gresham police said in a news release, multiple witnesses driving by recalled thinking the young woman was waving at someone and trying to get people’s attention. But no one stopped to help her.
A witness saw a man emerge from the shrubs and led her back toward campus. A student found Tucker’s lifeless body in some nearby bushes the next morning. The medical examiner determined Tucker had been sexually assaulted and beaten to death.
According to a story by The Oregonian in 1980, Tucker’s “partially clad” body was found on a shrub-covered slope near a campus parking lot. She had multiple head injuries, and police said evidence at the scene suggested she had “struggled with her assailant.” Police found her purse and books nearby. The instructor of the class Tucker was walking to the night she was killed told an Oregonian reporter she was a “dedicated student who rarely missed class.” The teacher said she was outgoing, intelligent and had many friends on campus.
For more than four decades, police were unable to clearly identify a suspect or make an arrest.
Based on physical evidence from the crime scene, modern advances in DNA technology, DNA ancestry databases and research and analysis by Parabon NanoLabs LLC, police said they recently made a DNA profile match that furthered the case and led to Plympton’s arrest.
Court records show Plympton has been convicted three times for fourth-degree assault, twice for kidnapping and also has multiple convictions for driving under the influence of intoxicants as well as traffic violations.
“These ‘cold cases’ are not lost or forgotten for our department,” said Gresham Police Chief Claudio Grandjean. “Each one represents a person to our officers, and their tragic stories are passed down through the generations in hopes of one day bringing honor to their names and a sense of justice and closure to their cases.
“I’m proud of our detectives, especially Detective Aaron Turnage and criminalist Deanna Grossi, who have worked this case for so many years. And I’m hopeful this development will help Barbara’s family and our community heal,” Grandjean added.
Plympton is in custody at Multnomah County Detention Center. His bail was set at $500,000.
Anyone who has additional information about this case or other unsolved homicides is asked to call Turnage at 503-618-3136.
--Oregonian/OregonLive
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