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Mount Hood, Oregon (1977)
Photo: Bettmann / Getty Images
On the evening of January 15, 1980, 19-year-old student Barbara Tucker was kidnapped in the parking lot in front of her university, Mt. Hood Community College. The next day, fellow students found Tucker's body. She had been raped and beaten to death. The police did not find the perpetrator.
But 44 years later, Robert Plympton, now 60, was convicted of murdering Tucker. Among other things, he was convicted by spitting out chewing gum. This comes from a press release from the district attorney in Multnomah, Georgia.
According to the DNA profile, the perpetrator had red hair
After Tucker's death, police officers swabbed her body's private parts. In 2000, authorities were able to find the perpetrator's DNA from the swabs. But it took more than 21 years to catch the perpetrator before a breakthrough in the case occurred.
The DNA company Parabon Nanolabs examined the profile created and deduced what the perpetrator might have looked like. The company created family trees of people who had parts of the perpetrator's DNA.
The most important thing was that the perpetrator most likely had red hair, the genealogist in charge, CeCe Moore, told CNN. She followed the redheads in the family trees created and in March 2021 came across Robert Plympton, now 60, in Troutdale - the town where Tucker was murdered.
A piece of spit out chewing gum convicted him
Police officers tailed Plympton. When he spit out a piece of chewing gum, the police collected it and had the DNA in the saliva checked - it matched the perpetrator's DNA found on the dead woman. Plympton was arrested. On March 15, Plympton was convicted of murder. The sentence has not yet been announced.
At the trial, Plympton denied having committed the crime. "We will appeal the verdict and we are confident that the verdict will be overturned," his lawyers, Stephen and Jacob Houze, told CNN.
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