A 71-year-old Florida man has been returned to Massachusetts to face two murder charges in the 1978 shooting deaths of two teenagers, prosecutors said.
Timothy Joley, 71, lives in Clearwater, Florida, and previously resided in Springfield, Massachusetts, at the time of the homicides, according to prosecutors.
On the morning of November 19, 1978, police discovered two teenagers shot dead near Route 5 in West Springfield, authorities said.
Officers identified the victims as Theresa Marcoux, 18, and Mark Harnish, 20, according to police.
Nearby, investigators located Harnish’s green 1967 Dodge pickup truck, police said.
The truck had sustained damage to its window, prosecutors said. Blood was discovered both inside and around the vehicle, according to investigators.
Both teenagers had been shot inside the truck’s passenger compartment, Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said.
Their bodies were moved after the shootings occurred, Gulluni said.
Marcoux “was described as someone who loved to laugh and always had a smile on her face,” Gulluni said.
Harnish “was known as a quiet, polite young man,” the district attorney said.
The sole piece of physical evidence recovered from the scene was a bloody fingerprint left on the truck’s window, according to investigators.
For decades, that print went nowhere, authorities said.
State technicians entered the mark into the Massachusetts Automated Fingerprint Identification System, according to prosecutors.
Investigators manually compared the mark against roughly 70,000 known fingerprint cards, Gulluni said. But the decades-long search yielded no identification, according to officials.
As recently as October 2024, there was still no identification made in the case, Gulluni said at a news conference.
Then, within the span of about a month, someone came forward with a name, prosecutors said.
The tip directed investigators to Joley, who had lived in Springfield when the crimes occurred, authorities said. But the suspect had no significant criminal record, according to prosecutors.
Detectives then pulled Joley’s fingerprint records from an unrelated source, police said.
Those records came from a taxi license application Joley had filed in 2000, according to investigators.
Specialists matched his left thumbprint to the bloody mark lifted from Harnish’s truck window in 1978, prosecutors said.
The case against the 71-year-old deepened as investigators reviewed his past firearms records, according to court documents.
Police discovered that Joley had been a licensed gun owner in 1978, prosecutors said. The suspect had purchased a Colt handgun about a month before the homicides, according to police.
Projectiles recovered from the scene came from a .38 caliber firearm, authorities said.
With the fingerprint match and firearm records established, authorities secured an arrest warrant, according to officials. On October 30, 2024, officers took Joley into custody at his home in Clearwater, police said.
The defendant waived extradition on November 5 and was returned to Massachusetts to face two counts of murder, prosecutors said.
Joley appeared in court on December 2, 2024, where a judge ordered him held without bail, according to court records.
Gulluni acknowledged that investigators have found no known motive in the killings, prosecutors said. Detectives have also identified no apparent connection between Joley and either victim, according to authorities.
Marcoux’s and Harnish’s own parents died without ever learning who killed their children, or why, the prosecutor said.
“I admire and respect you for your patience, resolve and the faith that I know you’ve maintained over these many years,” Gulluni told family members who attended the news conference.
The case has moved slowly and remains in pre-trial proceedings, with hearings covering discovery motions and evidence examination, court records show. No trial date has yet been set, according to officials.
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