Her Abandoned Car Sat with the Window Down. What Was in the Trunk Haunted Cops for Decades

An Oregon man was convicted last week of killing his estranged wife, whose death remained a cold case for decades.

On April 17, a jury found Robert Atrops, 70, guilty of second-degree murder in connection with the 1988 killing of Deborah Atrops, the Washington County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement. He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 20.

Prosecutors said Robert strangled Deborah to death and left her body in the trunk of her car at a remote construction site. At the time of her killing, Deborah had separated from Robert due to alleged physical abuse and planned to divorce him. 

According to prosecutors, Deborah had also started dating someone new and told friends that Robert had confronted her about the relationship and that “she was worried he would kill her.” However, decades passed before evidence led authorities to identify Robert as the killer.

Deborah went missing on Nov. 29, 1988, after leaving a hair salon appointment around 7 p.m. that day. Prosecutors said she planned to head to Robert’s house in Sherwood, Ore., to pick up their infant daughter, whom they had recently adopted.

About two hours and a half hours later, Robert called 911, as well as friends and family, claiming Deborah was missing.

“He claimed he made these calls from his home phone, but there was no record of the calls,” the statement reads. “Investigators believe he was not at home when he made these calls.”

On Dec. 1, police responded to a remote construction site in Beaverton, Ore., on a report of a suspicious vehicle. There, they found a car — later proved to be Deborah’s — with no license plates and an open window with the keys still inside. Her body was found inside the trunk covered in mud, prosecutors said.

A medical examiner determined Deborah was killed by manual strangulation.

Robert claimed to police that he never saw Deborah that night, but “his alibi was not fully confirmed,” per the statement. The case eventually went cold as investigators cleared people close to Deborah of being potential suspects, including the new person she was dating.

In 2020, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office took a new look at the case with help from Cold Case Detective Kevin Winfield. They found new witnesses and submitted additional items for forensic testing, including Deborah’s clothes and soil samples collected from the crime scene and Robert’s home in 1988.

“Ultimately, the defendant’s DNA was connected to the coat the victim was wearing when she was murdered,” the statement reads. “In addition, the FBI lab concluded that the mud collected from the victim’s vehicle was indistinguishable from the mud collected at the defendant’s home.”

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When Robert was interviewed by authorities in 2022, prosecutors said there were  “significant discrepancies from his version of events in 1988.” Robert was arrested in March 2023 and indicted on a second-degree murder charge in connection with the case.

Deborah was 30 at the time of her death and married Robert in 1987, according to her obituary, which was published in the Statesman Journal. She worked as a secretary and bookkeeper and was remembered as someone who loved camping and hiking, per the obituary.