Louisiana police have announced that a podcast helped them solve the decades-old killing of a 16-year-old girl, leading to criminal charges against four men in connection with her rape and murder. The case of Roxanne Sharp, who was killed in 1982 in the woods of St. Tammany Parish, about 30 miles north of New Orleans, had remained unsolved for years due to a lack of evidence and witnesses. However, after investigators approached a local media company to produce a six-part podcast titled “Who Killed Roxanne Sharp?” public interest was renewed, generating crucial tips and prompting new witnesses to come forward.
Louisiana State Police spokesperson Marc Gremillion credited the podcast with helping investigators piece together Sharp’s movements in the days before her death. “It was a very large help with getting that message out to the public, and then, therefore, those witnesses getting back to us,” Gremillion told the Associated Press.
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, while Williams and Spell were arrested earlier this week. Sharp was an acquaintance of the suspects and was known to frequent the neighborhood where they lived, Gremillion added.
Sharp’s niece, Michele Lappin, expressed gratitude on behalf of her family. “We appreciate the hard work and love that has been shown to Roxanne Sharp’s case,” she said. “We hope that with justice will come healing and closure for our family, her loved ones, and the community.”
However, Billy Williams Jr.’s son, Billy Williams III, maintains his father’s innocence. “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, and family members of Spell, Cooper, and Taylor did not respond to requests for comment.
Charles Dowdy, vice president of Northshore Media, which produced the podcast, said the response from the community was overwhelming. “When we started the podcast, we kind of thought nobody cared — we were quickly corrected,” Dowdy 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, marking the exact locations where Sharp’s body was found and other evidence uncovered. “It clearly showed that she’d been grabbed on the street and dragged into the woods,” he added.
Police had once thought the case solved after serial killer Henry Lucas claimed responsibility for Sharp’s murder, but Lucas later retracted his false confession, and other evidence disproved his connection. 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 and remained frustrated about the lack of closure for the rest of his life. “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.” He added that the podcast opened up discussion across generations and throughout the community.
Covington Police Department Chief Michael Ferrell emphasized the persistence required to solve cold cases. “Cold cases don’t close themselves. 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.”
