Man Arrested in Connection with 1978 Double Murder After Police Find Fingerprint on Decades-Old Taxi Application

• Timothy Joley, 71, has been arrested in connection with the deaths of 18-year-old Theresa Marcoux and 20-year-old Mark Harnish on Nov. 19, 1978
• Investigators managed to match a fingerprint found on the victims’ pickup truck to a taxi license application he made in 2000
• “Tragically, their young lives were cut far too short by a horrendous act of violence,” Hampden District Attorney, Anthony Gullini, said of the victims in a Facebook post while revealing the update

A 71-year-old Florida man is facing charges nearly 50 years after two people were found dead in Massachusetts.

On Oct. 30, Timothy Joley was arrested at his residence in Clearwater in connection with the homicides of 18-year-old Theresa Marcoux and 20-year-old Mark Harnish on Nov. 19, 1978, Hampden District Attorney (DA), Anthony Gullini, confirmed in a Facebook post.

The bodies of Marcoux and Harnish, who had both attended East Longmeadow High School, were found just off Route 5 in West Springfield almost 46 years ago, the post stated. 

“Before her death, Theresa was working at a local hardware store as a clerk in their pet department,” the DA said about Marcoux.

Harnish, meanwhile, “was known as a quiet, polite young man who had been working at a car repair shop in town,” he added.

“Tragically, their young lives were cut far too short by a horrendous act of violence,” Gullini continued.

The remains of Marcoux and Harnish were discovered after an officer from the West Springfield Police Department located a 1967 green Dodge pickup truck owned by Harnish, parked in a roadway rest area on Route 5/Riverdale Street.

Their bodies were lying “just over a nearby guardrail,” the Facebook post added.

“The officer saw that the driver’s side window of the truck was damaged and noticed blood in and around the vehicle,” the police post added, stating the victims — who had last been seen alive at approximately 12:30 a.m. that morning when leaving a friends’ party — “appeared to have sustained gunshot wounds.”  

No firearm was found at the scene, but “investigators concluded that Theresa and Mark 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,” the DA stated.

The medical examiner “opined that their time of death was during the early morning hours of Nov. 19,” per the post. Someone who lived in the area also “reported hearing multiple gunshots at approximately 4:00 a.m.”

Spent projectiles were recovered from the victims’ remains at the time, as well as the passenger area of the pickup truck, and a “latent print in what appeared to be blood on the passenger-side vent window” was located, the police added.

“Over the years as the investigation continued, this latent print was entered into the Massachusetts Automated Fingerprint Identification System (or AFIS), and was also manually compared to approximately 70,000 known fingerprint cards,” the post stated, adding that two law enforcement investigators were eventually provided with Joley’s fingerprint identification card and a match from his left thumb was made.

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Gullini said in a press conference on Wednesday, Nov. 13, that Joley, who was living in Springfield at the time of the killings, had been fingerprinted while applying for a taxi cab license back in 2000, so his details had been on file with the Springfield Police Department.

“Investigators have also learned that Joley was a licensed gun owner in November 1978 and that he purchased a Colt handgun approximately one month before the murders,” the Facebook post said.

The DA confirmed a “two-count murder complaint and arrest warrant for Joley” had been issued by the Springfield District Court on Oct. 29, before his arrest the next day. He was held without bond at the Pinellas County Jail, and waived extradition as he appeared before a Circuit Judge in the county on Nov. 5.

The suspect will be “returned to Massachusetts in the coming weeks to face these charges,” per the DA. It’s not apparent if Joley has an attorney. The Hampden District Attorney’s Office didn’t immediately respond when contacted by PEOPLE.