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at keeping a regular schedule today we have three more cold cases solved in 2021 let's get into it
number one barbara may tucker january 15 1980 was a cold dark winter's evening
barbara mae tucker was a business undergrad at the mount hood community college in gresham oregon
barb was the youngest of seven siblings she played on her high school basketball team where
her 5 foot 11 frame was an asset for the team the 19 year old was heading into campus to attend an
evening class she told her mother earlier that day she had hoped that class would be dismissed early
so that she could visit a friend and have ice cream however barbara never made it to class or to
that friend's house later that evening it was very odd as it was unlike barbara to miss a class no
one heard from her for the rest of the evening the following morning a student was cutting through
a wooded area on the way to campus and made a grisly discovery barbara's body was discovered
she had been rolled into a patch of bushes and she had been savagely beaten and sexually assaulted
the violent crime shocked the community but during the investigation it was discovered that there
had likely been several witnesses to the attack witnesses say she was running on to northeast kane
from the woods on the west side of the mount hood community college campus where she went to school
witnesses remember seeing her either waving at somebody or trying to get people's attention but
nobody stopped another witness saw a man come out of those same woods and lead barbara back
to campus several vehicles saw barbara run out of the wooded area and attempt to flag people down
but no one stopped others said that they saw a man follow her out of the bushes and grab her
but again no one intervened some were saying they thought it was a college prank or something like
that but it wasn't no one could identify the man that had been seen with barbara
it had been dark and there had been nothing that stood out to witnesses without a description
there was little hope of finding a suspect barbara's case went cold for four decades
deceased victims murder victims need a voice turnage says evidence from the crime scene
coupled with modern advances in dna technology and dna ancestry databases along with research and
analysis by parabon nanolabs led to a dna profile match in 2015 a detective was assigned to the cole
case and he promised to get justice for barbara a dna sample from the original investigation
was sent off to parabon nano labs and it took several years to narrow in on a suspect using
reverse family engineering technology but they were able to locate a suspect 58 year old robert
plimpton he would have been 16 at the time of the crime and he was arrested during a traffic stop
after his arrest it was discovered that plimpton had a history of violence towards women
in 1997 a woman had accused him of driving to a secluded area and attacking her but she managed
to escape alive though he had been arrested his charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence
plimpton was charged with first-degree murder and second-degree murder and sexual assault
he may have other victims out there and his dna is being tested in other cold cases in the area
he has pled not guilty and there will be a trial later this year number two joshua harmon on may 15
1988 eight-year-old joshua harmon was playing in the woods behind his apartment complex in
roswell georgia he was still exploring the area the family had only moved in three weeks ago
it was a warm evening and many children were playing in the area joshua loved nature and
his favorite place to play was in the woods joshua was expected to come home for supper
and when he failed to show up his mother looked for him calling out his name in the neighborhood
joshua had a learning disability and he was easily frightened and wasn't comfortable around strangers
he never stayed too far from home and certainly never out of earshot his mother called the roswell
police to report him missing and though they responded quickly it wasn't initially
thought to be concerning while canvassing they discovered joshua had last been seen around 7pm
he had gone to a neighbor's house and asked if a little boy could come play but the family was
having supper so the boy wasn't allowed out joshua told him that he would be playing out in the woods
if he wanted to join him after supper and that was the last encounter anyone had with the child
as night crept closer the search began to take a more concerned tone officers even searched the
area between his old house and the new apartment in case he might have gotten confused or lost
but there was no sign of the child the search continued for 48 hours officers combed the 60
60-acre forest in the surrounding area on may 17th an officer entering the scene tripped and
saw joshua's body under log with dirt and pine straw hiding him from view joshua had
been struck over the head and strangled to death despite an extensive investigation the case went
cold his mother sherry spent decades keeping joshua's investigation alive sherry passed
in october of 2020. in february 2021 cold case detectives had decided to reopen the investigation
and decided to start from scratch with the permission of the family joshua was exhumed and
forensic experts were able to recover dna evidence the sample was input into the national database
and they got a hit from a previously convicted felon and on july 21 2021 they made an arrest
known child predator 56 year old james coats was arrested while taking an uber the roswell
police department has made an arrest in the 1988 murder of eight-year-old joshua harmon
james michael coats age 56 of the city of woodstock was taken into custody july 21 and
booked into the fulton county jail on multiple charges including murder roswell detectives
arrested coats after dna evidence collected from the crime scene linked him to the murder
coats had previously already served a 20-year sentence for a separate incident in 1993. in 1988
coates was living in the same housing complex in roswell but was never considered a suspect
until now coates will remain in custody until his trial roswell pd is working to determine if there
are any additional victims joshua's family said the arrest is bittersweet but thanked officers
for the dedication to solve joshua's murder i am sheri harmon's sister and joshua's aunt
i want to speak on behalf of our family and thank these amazing people who have worked
diligently and very hard and always took anything and everything we had to say
to heart and ran with it and these bulldogs that got through everything and worked for 33 years
to solve this for our family we are forever indebted to all of you
you're amazing people it's bittersweet for us um we wish sherry could be here
but we also feel that she and josh high-fived and said we're going to help and we're going to
get everybody through this and helped these ladies and gentlemen come to this conclusion
number three stephanie isaacson on june 1st 1989 in las vegas nevada 14 year old stephanie isaacson
was getting ready for school it was almost summer break and the teen was excited about summer
she said goodbye to her dad and left the house at 6 30 am stephanie used the same route every
day cutting through a sand lot shortcut to get to el dorado high school all seemed normal throughout
the day until her father came home from work and noticed stephanie wasn't home it wasn't that late
yet so he decided to call the school and see if stephanie had been held up or been asked to
stay late it was then that the school informed him that stephanie hadn't arrived for classes that day
he then called several stephanie's friends all of them said that they hadn't seen her that day and
didn't know where she was police were called and an aggressive investigation began right away at
that point the father contacted all of her friends and none of them had seen her in school that day
shortly afterwards he called the lvmpd to file a missing person's report at that time
metro police began an exhaustive air and ground search attempting to locate stephanie
a search party went out retracing stephanie's walk to school her books and backpack were found first
it was discovered that stephanie hadn't made it far from home while searching the empty sand lot
near her house stephanie's body was discovered she had been sexually assaulted bludgeoned
and strangled it was a devastating loss in the community and despite best efforts from officers
a suspect was never identified it had been the early morning when she was walking to school
an officer suspected that her attacker had studied her routine and waited for her in the
secluded sand lot no one saw anything or anyone suspicious despite beth's efforts from detectives
the case went cold over the years the case would be reopened and evaluated there was a dna sample
recovered from the crime scene and over the years it had been checked and rechecked with no match
over time there was only one more opportunity for dna testing a local man came forward he wanted to
pay for one case to be sent off to ortham labs he had seen the success for reverse genetic
genealogy family trees being created to solve crimes and he wanted to help any cold case at
the las vegas metropolitan police department he would fund the lab costs the first case that came
to mind for the lvmpd was stephanie's cold case they sent orthum 15 cells for genome sequencing
and as we have seen in so many cases they were able to match with distant relatives sourced from
public databases and from there they were able to piece together a family tree they were able to
find a distant cousin to their suspect and after 32 years they were able to make an identification
las vegas resident darren roy marchand martin had lived nearby at the time of stephanie's murder and
detectives believes it was likely a random attack he had previously been arrested in connection to
the 1986 murder of 24 year old nanette vanderburgh she had been murdered in her home and though they
had an eyewitness placing merchant near the area there was no evidence to connect him as
dna testing wasn't available at the time and he was released and the case was dismissed
with the positive identification of marchand and stephanie's case they were able to test samples
from both cases and were able to determine martin had killed both stephanie and annette
margin committed suicide in 1995 at age 29 he would have been 20 when he killed the net and 23
when he killed stephanie stephanie's mother said in a statement that she was glad to finally know
who had killed her daughter but was disappointed that there would be no justice in her murder
she said that she never believed that the case would be solved the lmvpd said in a
statement that anyone interested in making a similar donation to help solve a cold case
is welcome to at www.lvmpdfoundation.org and designate the donation to homicide cold case
i'm glad they found who murdered my daughter i never believed the case would be solved
it's good to have some closure but there is no justice for stephanie at all
we will never have complete closure because nothing will ever bring my daughter back to us
this 32 year old homicide was solved because of the french forensic work and genealogy work due to
the limited amount of dna that was available that was just spoken about the chances of this case
ever being solved without this new technology was very very slim the lvmpd would like to thank
other laboratory for their hard work on this very difficult case but the biggest thank you
goes to the generous donor who is justin wu wo who made all of this possible not only
stephanie's family and friends but our community finally has closure for this horrible crime
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