Man gets life in prison for 1980 assault and murder of Gresham student

PORTLAND Oregon (KPTV) – A 61-year-old man will spend the rest of his life in prison for a 1980 murder in Gresham, the Multnomah County prosecutor announced Friday.

According to prosecutors, Robert Arthur Plympton was sentenced Thursday by Judge Kelly Skye to life in prison with a minimum of 40 years for the murder of Barbara Tucker near Mt. Hood Community College where she was a student.

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A Multnomah County judge on Monday entered a guilty verdict against Robert Arthur Plympton, 60, for the 1980 murder of Barbara Tucker.

On the evening of January 15, 1980, Tucker was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and beaten to death near a campus parking lot. The next morning, students arriving for class found her body in a wooded area near the school parking lot. In 2000, vaginal swabs taken during Tucker’s autopsy were sent to the Oregon State Police crime lab for analysis, where they were able to develop a DNA profile.

In 2021, a genealogist from Parabon Nanolabs identified Plympton as a likely contributor to the unknown DNA profile developed in 2000.

Gresham Police Department detectives found Plympton living in Troutdale and began monitoring him.

When they saw Plympton spit a piece of gum onto the ground, detectives recovered the gum and submitted it to the OSP crime lab. The laboratory determined that the DNA profile developed from the chewing gum matched the DNA profile developed from Tucker’s vaginal swabs.

On June 8, 2021, Plympton was taken into custody and booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center.

Plympton was convicted March 15, 2024, by Judge Amy Baggio of first-degree murder.

Plympton was transferred to the custody of the Oregon Department of Corrections, where he will remain for the remainder of his sentence.