GRESHAM 1980 Cold Case Solved After 44 Years — The DNA Was on the Gum He Spat Out

Gresham cold case solved after 44 years: Barbara Tucker was murdered near Mt Hood Community College in 1980, and chewing gum DNA finally named her killer. True crime, told for listening. ▶ EVERY CASE — one playlist, built for listening    • No More Cold Crime   On a January night in 1980, 19-year-old Barbara Tucker ran out of a strip of trees and into traffic on Kane Drive, at the edge of Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham, Oregon, with blood on her face. Several drivers saw her. One stopped. By then, a man had his arm over her shoulder, and neither of them answered. The next morning, students on their way to class found her body. For more than forty years, the case stayed unsolved. A DNA profile developed in 2000 matched no one. In 2021, genetic genealogy pointed to a man in Troutdale who had been sixteen in 1980 and lived half a mile from campus. Detectives followed him, and when he spat out a piece of chewing gum on a bike ride along the Sandy River, they collected it. It matched. In 2024 a judge found him guilty of murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 40 years. CHAPTERS 0:00 Someone else will stop 1:26 The baby of the family 3:44 Kane Drive 6:12 The grove 8:09 Twenty years in a box 9:53 Red hair 12:09 The gum 15:04 Forty-four years later 18:04 The baby book 19:44 Something of hers MORE CASES LIKE THIS LANCASTER 2013 Cold Case Solved After 12 Years — His DNA Was on the Wrong Brand Cigarette    • LANCASTER 2013 Cold Case Solved After 12 Y...   SAN FRANCISCO 1976 Cold Case Solved After 33 Years — The Killer Was the Deacon    • SAN FRANCISCO 1976 Cold Case Solved After ...   41-Year Cold Case Solved: DNA on a Soda Can Caught Him    • 41-Year Cold Case Solved: DNA on a Soda Ca...   SOURCES & ON-SCREEN RECORDS Multnomah County District Attorney's Office — "Court Finds Robert Plympton Guilty in 1980 Cold Case Murder" (March 18 2024) and "UPDATE: Robert Plympton Sentenced to Life in Prison" (October 4 2024). Excerpts are shown on screen. https://www.mcda.us/index.php/news/up... Gresham Police Department — June 2021 arrest release and March 2024 statement. The photo of Barbara Tucker was released by Gresham police; the booking photo of Robert Plympton was released by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office. Reporting: The Oregonian/OregonLive (Savannah Eadens, Zane Sparling), OPB, KOIN, KATU, KPTV, Gresham Outlook / Portland Tribune (Christopher Keizur), CNN, NBC News, ABC News, AP, The New York Times. Campus and Sandy River photos: Wikimedia Commons — "Gresham, Oregon (2021) - 242/243" by Another Believer (CC BY-SA 4.0); Mt. Hood Community College, Oregon State Archives (CC BY 4.0); "Troutdale Sandy River Bridge, Oregon, 2022" (CC BY-SA 4.0). This episode names only people who have been convicted, and people who spoke on the record. Nobody else is identified. Subscribe — one cold case, told properly, every Monday and Friday. — No More Cold Crime #truecrime #coldcase #gresham #oregon #dnaevidence