Oregon man convicted in 1980 cold case beating death of teen student
03/19/2024 12:01 pm PDT
PORTLAND, Ore. (TCD) -- A judge recently convicted a 60-year-old man of killing a 19-year-old woman in 1980, who had been abducted, sexually abused, and beaten to death near her college campus.
The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office announced March 18 that Judge Amy Baggio delivered the guilty verdict following a bench trial, convicting Robert Plympton of one count of the first-degree murder and four counts of different theories of the second-degree murder of Barbara Tucker. Plympton is scheduled to be sentenced on June 21.
According to The Associated Press, a medical examiner determined Tucker had been sexually assaulted and beaten to death, but the judge did not convict Plympton of rape or sexual abuse because prosecutors could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the sexual assault occurred while Tucker was alive.
On the evening of Jan. 15, 1980, prosecutors argued Plympton kidnapped Tucker, a student at Mt. Hood Community College, sexually assaulted her, and beat her to death near a campus parking lot. Tucker was reportedly supposed to attend class that night. Witnesses saw her running out of a wooded area, and then a man allegedly steered her back to the college campus. Students found her body in a wooded area between Kane Road and a parking lot the next morning, the district attorney's office said.
Nearly two decades later, in 2000, investigators submitted vaginal swabs from Tucker's autopsy to the Oregon State Police Crime Lab to develop a DNA profile. In 2021, a Parabon Nanolabs genealogist identified Plympton as a "likely contributor to the unknown DNA profile." Gresham Police detectives began surveillance on Plympton in Troutdale, Oregon, where the defendant had been living.
Plympton reportedly spat out a piece of gum, which investigators collected and sent to the Oregon State Police Crime Lab for analysis. According to the district attorney's office, the lab determined the DNA from the chewing gum matched the DNA profile from the victim's vaginal swabs. Police arrested Plympton on June 8, 2021, and he was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center, where he remains in custody.
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