WEST SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — An unexpected tip and a fingerprint led to a recent arrest in connection with decades-old cold-case murders in Massachusetts, investigators announced Wednesday.
Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said at a news conference that 71-year-old Timothy Joly, of Clearwater, Florida, was arrested in the double murder of 18-year-old Theresa Marcoux and 20-year-old Mark Harnish.
An officer on patrol in the area of Riverdale Street along Route 5 in the town of West Springfield on the morning of Nov. 19, 1978, discovered Harnish’s green Dodge pickup truck with a damaged window parked in a roadway rest area, according to Gulluni.
Blood in and around the truck led the officer to a nearby guardrail, where Marcoux and Harnish’s bullet-riddled bodies were found.
“The forthcoming investigation saw painstaking efforts to document and photograph the scene with physical and biological evidence collected by investigators,” Gulluni said. “The rest area was thoroughly searched for evidence, but no firearms were ever recovered.”
Gulluni described Marcoux, a student at East Longmeadow High School, as someone who “loved to laugh and always had a smile on her face.” He also noted that she was working as a clerk at a local hardware store at the time of her death.
Harnish attended the same school as Marcoux and was known as a “quiet, polite young man” who had been working at a car repair shop in town.
“Tragically, their lives were cut far too short by a horrendous act of violence,” Gulluni said.
Investigators later concluded that Marcoux and Harnish had been shot while in the passenger compartment of the pickup truck and their bodies were moved to the area where their remains were later discovered, according to Gulluni.
“A witness who lived in the area reported hearing multiple gunshots,” Gulluni said. “Spent projectiles were recovered from the victims’ remains and the passenger area of the pickup truck.”
When the truck was processed, investigators located a latent print and blood, but Gulluni said Marcoux and Harnish were eliminated as possible sources of the print.
“That print was later entered into the Massachusetts Automated Fingerprint Identification System and manually compared to about 70,000 known fingerprint cards,” Gulluni explained. “As of October 2024, there was no identification made. Despite the continual efforts of investigators over the past few decades, and the concerted efforts of the Hampden District Attorney’s Office in the last several years, the case was not any closer to any conclusions.”
However, in the last month, Gulluni’s office unexpectedly received information from an individual who alleged Joly was involved in the double murder. A subsequent investigation into Joly revealed that he was living in West Springfield at the time of Marcoux and Harnish’s deaths.
Gulluni said his office then learned that Joly’s fingerprint was on file at the West Springfield Police Department from a taxicab license application dating back to 2000.
Investigators with “extensive experience in fingerprint analysis” then concluded that the latent print lifted from Harnish’s truck matched Joly’s left thumb. They also learned Joly was a licensed gun owner in 1978 and that he purchased a Colt handgun about one month before the killings.
“Based upon these very recent developments, I authorized investigators to seek a complaint and arrest warrant,” Gulluni said.
Joly was arrested in Florida on October 30 on a two-count murder complaint, ordered held without bond, and then waived extradition in a Pinellas County courtroom on November 5.
Joly will be returned to Massachusetts in the “coming weeks” to face murder charges in Springfield District Court.
Gulluni didn’t say whether or not Joly knew the victims in this case.
Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW