Deborah Lee cold case: Robert Elmer Atrops arrested for allegedly murdering estranged wife 34 years ago
WASHINGTON COUNTY, OREGON: Police have made an arrest had been made in a 34-year-old cold case of Deborah Lee Atrops, 30. Deborah disappeared after she failed to pick her daughters up from her estranged husband's home in Oregon in 1988, she was later found dead in her car trunk in November of that year.
Robert Elmer Atrops, her husband who was then 34 years old reported her missing. However, the pair was still married they had been living separately since June of 1988, Washington County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
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Deborah's husband filed a missing person complaint
On March, 2 her husband was arrested on second-degree murder charges. According to authorities, when Deborah didn't show up to pick up their adopted eight-month-old daughter from his husband's Sherwood home on November 29, 1988, after her hair appointment, following which he reported her missing. Robert then called her acquaintances and family and a day later informed Tigard Police Department to make a missing person report, the news release added.
How Deborah Lee was found dead?
On December 1, a city public works employee reported a "suspicious abandoned car" with the keys on the driver's seat of the "two-door 1988 black Honda Accord". According to the authorities, the car had been parked near the location since November 30. As per the investigators, the body was found inside the trunk of the car and it appeared to them that it "body was placed in it after her death."
Later the autopsy determined that Deborah was "physically assaulted and strangled to death". The cause of the death was deemed as a "homicide". But Deborah’s case eventually went cold, authorities said.
DNA test led to arrest
In 2020, authorities said that Washington District Attorney's office secured a grant for "Prosecuting Cold Cases Using DNA," which led them to launch a "Cold Case Unit" to investigate cold cases with a focus on crimes of violent nature. The investigation of Deborah's death was carried out in May 2021 in collaboration with the Washington County Sheriff's Office and the District Attorney's Cold Case Unit.
Over the next year and a half, detectives and investigators reinterviewed multiple witnesses and had forensic evidence reexamined, the Sheriff's office said. Details of the case were revealed to a Washington County grand jury on Tuesday, February 28, 2023. The grand jury charged Atrops with one count of second-degree murder after hearing all the testimony. On March, 2 Robert Elmer was arrested after being served with a search warrant at his Newburg home and logged in to the Washington County Jail.