On November 19, 1978, the bodies of Theresa Marcoux, 18, and Mark Harnish, 20, were found near the young man’s van in West Springfield, Massachusetts. The couple was shot several times visibly fired while both were in the vehicle, returning from a party at a friend’s house. The driver’s side window was broken and there was blood inside the 1967 Dodge. Whoever fired the gun, with a .38 caliber, then removed the bodies.
Both young people had previously attended East Longmeadow High School, Theresa working in the pet department of a local hardware store while Mark had a job at an auto repair shop in town.
Investigators found a bloody fingerprint on the passenger side window that did not belong to any of the victims. But they never found a match to another in police files. However, they compared it manually with 70,000 fingerprints over the years and had it analyzed by the Massachusetts Automated Fingerprint Identification System, without result.
It was only last month that a twist occurred. Someone contacted the DA’s office, explaining that one of their friends, who had since died and had heard about the case again, had given them the name of the killer: Timothy Scott Joley.
The police department had this man’s fingerprints on file because he had them taken to apply for a taxi driver’s license in 2000. An expert compared them with the print found on the car: it matched the Joley’s left thumb.
A check of the firearms registry showed that the individual had purchased a Colt a month before the double murder. On October 30, Tim Joley, 71, was arrested at his home in Clearwater, Florida, the Hampden County prosecutor announced on November 13, reports WWLP-22News. The man, who was 25 at the time of the crime, will be sent to Massachusetts in the coming weeks to answer the double murder charges brought against him.
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