Authorities investigating a 1978 double murder in Massachusetts have arrested a suspect in Florida after matching his fingerprint from a taxi application to evidence on the truck of one of the victims.
The arrest of Timothy Joley, 71, in the shooting deaths of Mark Harnish, 20, and Theresa Marcoux, 18, not only demonstrated the power of forensic fingerprint analysis – but it brought a measure of justice to families who had shown “patience, resolve and … faith” for nearly 46 years, Hampden county, Massachusetts, district attorney Anthony Gulluni said at a news briefing on Wednesday.
Harnish and Marcoux were found dead just behind a roadside guardrail in the Hampden community of West Springfield on 19 November 1978 after they were seen leaving their friends’ party together, Gulluni said in a statement. Harnish’s truck was nearby, with blood on it and a window damaged.
Detectives later determined Marcoux and Harnish had been fatally shot while in the truck before their remains were moved to the spot where they were discovered. Investigators secured a key piece of evidence in a bloody fingerprint left on one of the truck’s windows, but they did not immediately identify a suspect.
Eventually, officials entered the evidence into the state’s automated fingerprint identification system. And authorities also compared it manually with about 70,000 known fingerprint cards. Yet it had not matched anyone’s fingerprints on file as of October, Gulluni said.
That changed when someone recently came forward and alleged “Joley’s purported involvement with the deaths of Theresa Marcoux and Mark Harnish”, Gulluni said.
Joley lived in the area at the time of the killings – and, in fact, had bought a Colt handgun the month before Marcoux and Harnish were slain, Gulluni said. In 2000, he applied for a local taxi cab license, a process that involved him supplying fingerprints.
Police ultimately managed to match Joley’s left thumbprint to the print lifted from Harnish’s truck, according to Gulluni.
Investigators cited the new evidence in obtaining a warrant to arrest Joley on two counts of murder. Police arrested him on 30 October at his home in Clearwater, Florida, Gulluni said.
Joley appeared in court on 5 November and opted against fighting his being transferred to Massachusetts to face the charges against him there.
Gulluni said investigators had not determined a motive for the murders of Marcoux and Harnish. There was no obvious connection between them and Joley, who did not have a significant criminal record, Gulluni added.
According to Gulluni, people who knew Marcoux recalled her “as someone who loved to laugh and always had a smile on her”. Harnish, meanwhile, was regarded as a “quiet, polite” man.
“Sadly, the parents of Theresa and Mark are deceased and never knew either answers or justice for the brutality that was inflicted on their children,” Gulluni said.
Joley could receive life imprisonment if convicted of murder.
