Cold case cracked after 40 years as teen's alleged killers are caught after podcast helps find new leads
Four men in Louisiana have been charged with the 1982 rape and murder of 16-year-old Roxanne Sharp, whose body was found in a wooded area in Covington. The case remained unsolved for over four decades due to lack of evidence and witness cooperation. Advances in DNA technology and a podcast titled 'Who Killed Roxanne' helped generate new leads and ultimately led to the arrests.
- ▪Roxanne Sharp was found dead in Covington, Louisiana on February 12, 1982, after being raped and murdered.
- ▪The suspects, Perry Wayne Taylor, Darrell Dean Spell, Carlos Cooper, and Billy Williams Jr., were arrested in April 2026.
- ▪A podcast produced in 2025 with a local radio host generated new information and witness cooperation that advanced the investigation.
- ▪Louisiana State Police credited both new DNA technology and interagency cooperation for solving the decades-old cold case.
- ▪Sharp’s niece, Michele Lappin, expressed hope that the arrests would bring closure to the family.
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| Original publisher | Fox News |
| Canonical URL | https://www.foxnews.com/us/cold-case-cracked-after-40-years-teens-alleged-killers-caught-after-podcast-helps-find-new-leads |
| Publication time | Tue, 28 Apr 2026 12:09:48 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-04-28T16:37:43.353Z |
| Last seen | 2026-04-28T16:37:43.353Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | O8EymbNYLgF3 |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Louisiana Cold case cracked after 40 years as teen's alleged killers are caught after podcast helps find new leads Roxanne Sharp was found dead in a wooded area in Covington, Louisiana, on Feb. 12, 1982 By Adam Sabes Fox News Published April 28, 2026 12:09pm EDT Facebook Twitter Threads Flipboard Comments Print Email Add Fox News on Google close Video Fox News Flash top headlines for April 28 Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on FoxNews.com. NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Four men in Louisiana were charged with rape and murder four decades after 16-year-old Roxanne Sharp was found dead, thanks to a podcast and new DNA technology.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Fox News.
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