Murder of Marcia Trimble

Marcia Virginia Trimble was a nine-year-old girl who disappeared on February 25, 1975, while delivering Girl Scout Cookies in the affluent Green Hills area of Nashville, Tennessee, United States.

Her body was discovered 33 days later on Easter Sunday near the Trimble family home.

She had been sexually assaulted.

During the early years of their inquiry into the assault and murder, the police persisted in investigating one particular suspect, finally charging him in 1979 but he was released in 1980 for lack of evidence.

In 1980, authorities finally arrested him for Marcia Trimble's murder, but the charge was dismissed for lack of evidence.

Many police officers involved in the case continued to believe that he was guilty.

DNA samples were taken from semen collected from Trimble's body, but these samples were stored improperly and deteriorated over time, limiting investigators' ability to identify or exclude suspects.

Police collected DNA samples from 96 suspects, including Womack, but none of these samples matched the DNA found in the semen.

Investigators said they believed more than one man's semen was found inside Trimble's body.

Semen also was found on her clothes.

Investigators believed Trimble had been lured into a garage and killed there.

Her body was found fully clothed next to bags of fertilizer in the garage.

Despite having been deceased for a month, there was little decomposition, due to the cool, dry environment.

In 2008, 33 years after the killing, Jerome Sydney Barrett – not the person police had pursued in the 1970s – was charged with Trimble's assault and murder after DNA evidence recovered from her remains linked him to the crime.

Barrett had been arrested just days after Trimble's disappearance on suspicion of an unrelated sexual assault and was still in jail when Trimble's body was found.

Despite this and his convictions for attacks on other women and children, police had not investigated him in relation to the murder.

On July 18, 2009, a jury convicted him for the killing and he was sentenced to 44 years in prison.

Trimble's murder occurred soon after two other crimes linked to Barrett:

Marcia Trimble disappeared while delivering Girl Scout Cookies in Green Hills, an affluent neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee.

The disappearance was investigated by local and state police; the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) soon joined the investigation due to the possibility of kidnapping.

Trimble's body was discovered more than a month later.

It was found that she had been sexually assaulted before being killed.

Investigators searched the neighborhood, believing it likely that the murderer was a local resident.

Police attention soon focused on Jeffrey Womack, a 15-year-old boy who lived near the Trimble home and one of the last people to see her alive.

Trimble had come to Womack's house the day of her disappearance.

Womack said that he had sent her away because he did not have money to buy cookies.

He said that, after he learned of the girl's disappearance, he went to her house to tell the police there what he knew.

According to Womack, the police aggressively questioned him and then made him empty out his pockets.

Inside the pockets, police found a half roll of pennies, a five-Dollar Bill, and a condom.

This seemed to contradict Womack's testimony that he lacked the money to pay Trimble.

(He was turning her away without being rude.) The condom suggested to police that he may have sexually abused Trimble.

Womack later said that he had the condom because he was having a sexual relationship with a local woman.

According to Womack, his mother and a neighbor found out that the police were questioning him and insisted that any further interrogation must be done with a lawyer present.

Reporter Demetria Kalodimos believed that Womack's decision to call a lawyer made police more suspicious of him.

They felt that an innocent person had no need of a lawyer.

Womack's attorney, John Hollins, advised him to stop cooperating with police.

After that, Womack refused to discuss the case with either the police or the media.

Unable to obtain a confession, the police resorted to other means to try and gather evidence against Womack.

When Womack was 17 years old and working as a bus boy in a restaurant, the police sent an undercover officer into the restaurant to befriend him, but they did not get any incriminating evidence.

Womack passed two polygraph tests.