PORTLAND, Ore. — A judge on Monday found a 60-year-old man guilty for the 1980 murder of an Oregon college student after a piece of discarded chewing gum linked him to the murder.
Robert Arthur Plympton was found guilty of murdering 19-year-old Barbara Tucker on Jan. 15, 1980, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office announced in a news release. Students found her body in a wooded area near a parking lot at Mt. Hood Community College as they arrived for classes on the day after her death, officials said.
Tucker had been kidnapped, sexually assaulted and beaten to death, prosecutors said. She was a business student at the college and had been expected at a night class, according to KOIN and The Associated Press.
Witnesses said they saw Tucker running onto the road from a wooded area on the west edge of campus on Jan. 15, 1980, and thought that she was waving at someone, KOIN reported. Another witness said they saw a man come out from the shrubs and lead her back toward campus, according to the new station.
Her body was found the next day.
The investigation into Tucker’s death eventually became the oldest cold case in Gresham, KPTV reported. It broke open in 2021, when a genealogist with Parabon Nanolabs determined that a DNA profile developed from swabs taken during Tucker’s autopsy likely matched Plympton, prosecutors said.
Gresham police detectives began surveilling Plympton, who was living in Troutdale. They were able to retrieve a piece of chewing gum that he spit on the ground and sent it to the Oregon State Police Crime Lab, where authorities determined that his DNA profile matched the one from Tucker’s autopsy.
He was arrested on June 8, 2021. Afterward, Tucker’s sister, Susan Pater, told KATU that she was shocked by the arrest, although a detective had assured her years earlier that they would find the person responsible for Tucker’s death.
“He said I will not quit until I solve this. And last night he said, ‘I told you. I told you I’d solve it. So it was very cool,’” she said, according to the news station. “I was just totally taken a back. It was amazing. It was really good news. I’d given up. Although I think of her almost every night.”
Plympton was not convicted of rape or sexual assault because the judge said prosecutors failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that either crime happened while Tucker was still alive, the AP reported. He was 16 at the time of the killing, according to KATU.
Plympton is set to be sentenced on June 21.
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