DNA from discarded gum leads to conviction in 1980 murder
says Bucci, who lives near Reno. “But at the same time, I don’t want to be punished for trying to do it right.”
In the end, it was a discarded piece of chewing gum, casually spit on the ground in 2021, that was the key to solving the coldcase murder of a college student that had confounded authorities in Oregon for more than four decades.
Robert Arthur Plympton had been under police surveillance since authorities determined that year that he was a “likely contributor” to a DNA profile developed from swabs taken from the body of Barbara Mae Tucker, who was 19 when she was murdered on the Mount Hood Community College campus in 1980.
On Friday, Plympton, 60, was found guilty of murdering Tucker after a threeweek bench trial in Portland, Ore. According to The Oregonian, which reported on the investigation and Plympton’s conviction, it was the oldest cold-case homicide in Gresham, Ore., east of Portland.
On the night of Jan. 15, 1980, Tucker was expected at a class at the college, where she was studying business.
Students on their way to class the next morning found her “partially clad” body on a shrub-covered slope near a campus parking lot, The Oregonian reported at the time. There were signs that Tucker had been sexually assaulted, and that she had struggled with her assailant.
For decades, authorities were unable to identify a suspect or make an arrest.
The first step toward a breakthrough in the case came in 2000, when vaginal swabs that had been taken during Tucker’s autopsy were sent to the Oregon State Police Crime Lab for analysis. Lab technicians were then able to develop a DNA profile from the swabs.
In 2021, Parabon Nanolabs, a Virginia company whose services include Dna-based forensics, identified Plympton as “a likely contributor to the unknown DNA profile developed in 2000,” the Multnomah County district attorney’s office said in a statement. It was not clear how the DNA connection was made; the district attorney’s office did
She never arrived. not immediately responded to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Detectives with the Gresham Police Department found that Plympton was living in Troutdale, Ore., east of Portland and northeast of Gresham, and began surreptitiously watching him, prosecutors said.
When investigators saw Plympton spit a piece of chewing gum onto the ground, they collected it and submitted it to a state police crime lab, prosecutors said.
“The lab determined the DNA profile developed from the chewing gum matched the DNA profile developed from Ms. Tucker’s vaginal swabs,” the district attorney’s office said.
Plympton was arrested on June 8, 2021, as he was driving away from the Troutdale home he shared with his wife and son, The Oregonian reported.
He had a criminal record, including a conviction for second-degree kidnapping in Multnomah County in 1985, according to the Oregon Department of Corrections.
Plympton was 16 when
Tucker was murdered. Witnesses reported seeing her with a man the night she was killed, and several people reported seeing her run into the street waving her arms, perhaps trying to flag someone down for help, The Oregonian reported.
Kirsten Snowden, the Multnomah County chief deputy district attorney, said at the trial that there was no evidence that Tucker and Plympton had known each other, according to The Oregonian.
Plympton’s lawyer, Stephen Houze, said at the trial that there was “unmistakable, unavoidable reasonable doubt” about who killed Tucker, according to The Oregonian. He said that witnesses had described the man who was seen with Tucker — who was nearly 6 feet tall — as being about her height or taller, but Plympton was closer to 5-foot-8. He also said investigators never tested Tucker’s clothing for DNA evidence.
“We will appeal, and we are confident that his convictions will be overturned,” Houze and his law partner Jacob Houze said in a statement on Tuesday.