40 years after his crime, an American murderer convicted because of his chewing gum

The crime had never been elucidated until now, yet it is chilling: in 1980 in Oregon a 19-year-old young woman, Barbara Tucker, was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and then beaten to death near the Mount Hood Community College. His body was found the next day but the criminal had not been identified. This affair has just found its probable outcome more than forty years later, as revealed by CNN.

Indeed, technical progress allowed a first step forward in the investigation, twenty years after the murder of the young woman: the vaginal samples which had been taken from her remains were sent again to the laboratory for a more in-depth analysis. From the genetic data thus collected, and undoubtedly belonging to the author of the crime who left his DNA imprint on the student's privacy, the laboratory was able to establish the main physical characteristics of the assassin: the police knew then that she was looking for a man with red hair in particular.

The information was still incomplete... but despite everything, a genealogist, CeCe Moore, took hold of it and crossed family trees to try to establish the profile of the suspect more precisely. In 2021, he alerted the police about a sixty-year-old, Robert Plympton, who seemed to him most likely to correspond to the phenotype “predicted” by the DNA found on the victim.

The investigators then began discreet surveillance of the suspect, and during surveillance took a piece of chewing gum which he threw on the ground. The DNA found on the chewing gum turned out to be the same as that present on the corpse of Barbara Tucker.

Placed in police custody in 2021 after this discovery, the man always denied the facts and pleaded not guilty during his trial. On March 15, he was found guilty of the crime, and the court is preparing to rule on the length of his sentence. His lawyer has already announced that he will appeal the judgment.