the essential
The bodies of Mark Harnish, 20, and Theresa Marcoux, 18, were discovered on November 19 by a police officer in Massachusetts. Despite a fingerprint found on site, the perpetrator of the double homicide had never been identified… until today. A possible resolution thanks to a match established with a print on a taxi driver's license dating from 2000.
Indicted almost 50 years later. Timothy Joley, a 71-year-old man from Florida, was arrested on October 30 at his home for a double murder committed on November 19, 1978, reports the American media People.
The bodies of Mark Harnish, 20, and Theresa Marcoux, 18, were discovered in West Springfield, Massachusetts. For 46 years, their homicide remained a mystery. “Tragically, their young lives were cut short by a horrific act of violence,” Hampden County District Attorney Anthony Gullini said in a Facebook post. The two victims had attended the same high school. It was a police officer who came across the two victims, lifeless, after spotting a van belonging to Mark Harnish parked at a rest area. Their bodies were lying “just above a security fence,” the Facebook post said.
The two victims, who were last seen around midnight that day as they left a party hosted by friends, “appeared to have suffered gunshot wounds.” Investigators then concluded that the two young people had been shot inside the van and then moved by the perpetrator, the prosecutor said. Gunshots were also heard around 4 a.m.
A fingerprint left on the van window
A print was then noted on the passenger side window of the vehicle. “As the investigation continued over the years, this latent print was entered into the Massachusetts Automated Fingerprint Identification System and was also manually compared to approximately 70,000 known fingerprint cards.” the press release. A match was finally established with Timothy Joley's left thumb thanks to the expertise of two investigators, specialized in fingerprint analysis.
Those of Timothy Joley were noted in 2000, when he obtained his taxi driver's license. “Investigators also learned that Joley had a gun permit in November 1978 and that he had purchased a Colt handgun about a month before the murders,” the prosecutor added on Facebook. The accused, arrested in Clearwater, Florida, will soon be transferred to Massachusetts to face these charges.
