Investigators believe they may have cracked the nearly
50-year-old double murder cold case of a young couple in Massachusetts.
Police arrested Timothy Joley, 71, on October 30 at
his home in Clearwater, Florida for
the 1978 double murder of 18-year-old Theresa Marcoux and 20-year-old Mark
Harnish in Massachusetts, Fox 13 reports.
On November 19, 1978, a police officer in Springfield,
Massachusetts was conducting a patrol when he saw a green Dodge pickup parked
in a rest area near Route 5, according to the Hampden District Attorney Anthony
Gulluni.
The officer stopped to inspect the vehicle and saw
that the driver’s side window had been damaged, and spotted blood around the
vehicle.
He continued to search the area and eventually found
the bodies of Marcoux and Harnish dumped over a nearby guardrail. Both had been
shot, according to his report.
Police combed the crime scene but never found the
murder weapon. Crime scene investigators collected biological and physical
evidence from the scene at the time.
Theresa Marcoux, 18, was found dead by the side of a
vehicle in Springfield, Massachusetts on November 19 1978 (Hampden
District Attorney)
Investigators determined that the couple had been shot
while they were in the passenger portion of the pickup’s cab, and that their
bodies were later moved to the spot where the patrol officer found them.
A witness told police at the time that they had heard
multiple gunshots around 4am on the morning that the couple were killed.
Gulluni said that bullet casings had been recovered
from the scene, including from the passenger cab of the pickup truck. Following
a ballistics analysis, investigators found that all of the bullets had been
fired from the same gun.
They also located a latent fingerprint on the
passenger window of the truck. The print did not belong to either of the
victims.
Despite the evidence collected at the time, police
were never able to link the crime to anyone. No fingerprint matches were ever
found, according to Gulluni.
A potential break in the case came last month when a
tipster advised investigators to look into Timothy Scott Joley. The tipster
reportedly gave the police information about Joley’s involvement in the deaths
of the young couple.
Investigators followed the lead and found that Joley
had been living in the Springfield area at the time of the murders. They
recovered a fingerprint ID card for Joley from the Springfield Police
Department dating back to 2000 when he applied for a taxi license.
Officers with backgrounds in fingerprint analysis
compared Joley’s prints to those found at the crime scene and determined they
matched.
They also determined that Joley had bought and
registered a handgun about a month before the double murder.
Police arrested Joley on October 30 in Clearwater. He
is currently being held without bond in the Pinellas County Jail. His first
court appearance was on November 5, where it was determined he will be returned
to Massachusetts to face charges.
Gulluni said police do not currently know why Joley
allegedly killed the couple.
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