Four Men Charged in 1982 Murder of Louisiana Teen Roxanne Sharp

DNA testing and new witness cooperation pushed the 1982 killing of 16-year-old Roxanne Sharp into court, leading Louisiana investigators to charge four men after more than four decades of silence. Sharp’s body was found on February 12, 1982, in the woods near the St. Tammany Parish Fairgrounds in Covington, and the case remained unsolved until detectives reopened it in 2023.

Louisiana State Police said the case had gone cold because of limited evidence and a lack of public cooperation at the time. Detectives revisited the original file, re-interviewed witnesses and suspects, and resubmitted evidence for DNA analysis. Working with the Covington Police Department, the 22nd Judicial District Court District Attorney’s Office, the St. Tammany Parish Coroner’s Office, the Ohio Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and the Louisiana Department of Corrections, investigators eventually narrowed their focus to Perry Wayne Taylor, Darrell Dean Spell, Carlos Cooper, and Billy Williams Jr.

All four men were charged with aggravated rape and second-degree murder. Taylor, Spell, and Cooper are 64. Williams Jr. is 62. Williams Jr. was arrested in Covington on April 21, 2026, while Spell was arrested the same day in Dayton, Ohio, and is awaiting extradition to Louisiana. Taylor and Cooper were already incarcerated in the Louisiana Department of Corrections on unrelated charges.

The break came after renewed public attention from the six-episode podcast Who Killed Roxanne Sharp?, produced in 2025 by Northshore Media Group and Lake 94.7 host Charles Dowdy. The series ran from February 25 through April 2, 2025, and investigators said it generated new tips, new information, and witness cooperation that had not previously been available. Marc Gremillion of Louisiana State Police said the podcast helped detectives piece together where Sharp had been in the days before her death.

Sharp was an acquaintance of the four men and was known to frequent the neighborhood where they lived. Her family had kept the case alive for years, and the arrest announcement brought a mix of grief and relief. Michele Lappin, Sharp’s niece, said the family hoped justice would bring healing and closure. Billy Williams III said his father is innocent and would never hurt anyone.

For true-crime followers, the case now sits at the point where cold-case myth turns into criminal procedure. A body recovered in the woods near Covington in 1982, a podcast that reopened public memory, and DNA work that finally gave investigators leverage have moved Roxanne Sharp’s story from decades of uncertainty into the courtroom.