Podcast helps Louisiana State Police arrest 4 suspects in decades-old murder of teenage girl

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Louisiana police say a podcast helped them solve the decades-old killing of a 16-year-old girl and announced Friday that four men now face criminal charges in connection with her rape and murder.

In 1982, teenager Roxanne Sharp was killed in the woods of St. Tammany Parish, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of New Orleans. Police 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, which agreed to produce a podcast, “Who Killed Roxanne Sharp?” renewing public interest in the case after its six-part series aired last year.

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."

Over the past few days, police charged four men with aggravated rape and second-degree murder: Perry Wayne Taylor, 64; Darrell Dean Spell, 64; Carlos Cooper, 64; and Billy Williams, Jr., 62.

Cooper and Taylor were already in prison on unrelated charges, and Williams and Spell were arrested earlier this week. Sharp was an acquaintance of the four arrested suspects and was known to frequent the neighborhood where they lived, Gremillion added.

“We appreciate the hard work and love that has been shown to Roxanne Sharp’s case,” Sharp’s niece, Michele Lappin, said in a statement on behalf of her family. “We hope that with justice will come healing and closure for our family, her loved ones, and the community.”

Billy Williams Jr.’s son, Billy Williams III, said his father is innocent of the crime.

“He thinks they’re putting him in for something he didn’t do,” the younger Williams said. “He says he would never in his life hurt anyone.”

The St. Tammany Parish clerk of court did not have attorneys listed for any of the suspects. Family members of Spell, Cooper and Taylor did not respond to requests for comment via phone numbers associated with them.

“When we started the podcast, we kind of thought nobody cared — we were quickly corrected,” said Charles Dowdy, vice president of Northshore Media, which produced the podcast. “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 Sharp'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 cases 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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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.