True crime podcast helps police arrest four suspects 44 years after teenager’s murder

Four men have been arrested in connection with the 1982 murder of a teenage girl – after a true crime podcast on the cold case generated key new tips.
Roxanne Sharp, 16, was found dead in the woods of St Tammany Parish, about 30 miles north of New Orleans, on February 12 that year.

Detectives struggled to solve the case due to a lack of evidence and witnesses willing to come forward.

But then, investigators approached a local media company and they agreed to produce the six-part podcast ‘Who Killed Roxanne Sharp?’.

Louisiana State Police spokesperson Marc Gremillion credited the podcast with generating crucial tips from the public and prompting new witnesses to approach investigators.

‘It helped our investigators piece together where Roxanne was days before to the time she died, to where we’re at now,’ Gremillion told The Associated Press.

‘
It was a very large help with getting that message out to the public, and then, therefore, those witnesses getting back to us.’
Perry Wayne Taylor, 64, Darrell Dean Spell, 64, Carlos Cooper, 64, and Billy Williams, Jr, 62, have all now been charged with aggravated rape and second-degree murder.

‘When we started the podcast, we kind of thought nobody cared — we were quickly corrected,’ Charles Dowdy, vice president of Northshore Media which produced the podcast, said.

‘A lot of people stepped up and said they knew Roxanne, they remembered her, they were friends with her.’
Dowdy recorded audio as investigators recreated the crime scene using measuring tapes to mark the exact locations where Roxanne’s body was found and where other pieces of evidence were uncovered.

‘It clearly showed that she’d been grabbed on the street and dragged into the woods,’ Dowdy said.

Police had once thought the case solved after serial killer Henry Lucas claimed responsibility for Sharp’s murder.

But Lucas, known for making false confessions, later retracted his claim, and other evidence disproved his connection to the murder.

St Tammany Parish resident Justin Joiner, 39, told the AP that his father, a Covington police officer, had been one of the first law enforcement to arrive at the scene of Sharp’s death and remained frustrated about the lack of closure for the rest of his life.

He kept a briefcase full of his notes on the case until he passed away last year.

‘It’s been a big black cloud on the community,’ Joiner said.

‘”Nobody would talk about it – it was hush, hush, you talk about it in your house, not in public.’
Joiner added that the podcast opened up discussion about the case across generations and throughout the community.

‘Cold ca ses don’t close themselves,’ Covington Police Department Chief Michael Ferrell said in a statement.

‘They close because people show up, year after year, and refuse to quit.

‘That is exactly what our agencies did, and today, Roxanne and her family finally have the justice they have waited so long for.’
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