According to authorities, a man who is suspected of shooting two people dead and abandoning their remains on a Massachusetts road in 1978 was apprehended based on a fingerprint found on a taxi application that dates back decades.
According to a Facebook post on Wednesday by Hampden County District Attorney Anthony Gulluni, Timothy Scott Joley, 71, was taken into custody at his Clearwater, Florida, residence last month in relation to the killings of Theresa Marcoux, 18, and Mark Harnish, 20.
On November 19, 1978, their bodies were discovered in West Springfield, off a road.
Joley faces extradition to Massachusetts after being arrested on a two-count murder complaint and an arrest warrant. It’s unclear if he has legal representation.
Joley was only connected to the long-running cold case during the past month. According to Gulluni, investigators received Joley’s identity and details regarding his suspected role in the killings from an unnamed source.
At a press conference, Gulluni stated that investigators discovered Joley had a fingerprint identification card on file with Springfield police and was residing in Springfield at the time of the killings. When he applied for a taxi license in 2000, his fingerprints were on file.
A print on Harnish’s green Dodge pickup truck, which was parked at a rest stop along the road close to where the victims were found, was compared to Joley’s fingerprint identification card. According to the district attorney, investigators identified Joley’s left thumb as the source of the print found on the vehicle.
Additionally, investigators discovered that he purchased a Colt handgun around a month prior to the killings and that he had obtained a firearms license in November 1978.
Joley’s criminal past, according to Gulluni, revealed “nothing of real significance.” He added it was vital that someone came forward to give detectives Joley’s name.
“We were able to take that name and turn it into something very significant,” he stated. “It is really so critical. One piece of information or one name that someone provides can really change the course of a case.”
The last two people seen alive on the morning of the killings were Harnish, who worked at a vehicle repair shop, and Marcoux, who was a clerk at a hardware store when she was killed. According to Gulluni, they had left a friend’s party.
Their bodies were found by a patrolling officer who noticed Harnish’s truck parked at the intersection of Route 5 and Riverdale Street. There was blood “in and around the vehicle,” Gulluni posted on Facebook, and the truck’s driver’s side window was broken.
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The victims were shot in the truck’s passenger compartment, according to investigators, and their bodies were transported to the location where their remains were subsequently found.
They each had several gunshot wounds, according to an autopsy, he added. A motive is yet unknown.
Harnish and Marcoux’s relatives attended the press briefing but remained silent. Marcoux was characterized as “a person who always had a smile on her face and loved to laugh.”According to Gulluni, Harnish was “known as a quiet, polite young man.”
