Man who killed Oregon couple in 1987 dies in prison at 67

SALEM, Ore. — A man who has been serving a life sentence for the murder of an Oregon couple decades ago died Friday in prison, officials said.

The Oregon Department of Corrections said in a news release that Michael Robert Tucker, 67, died at the state penitentiary in the infirmary while on hospice care, the Statesman Journal reported.

Tucker entered Department of Corrections custody in 1995, from Polk County. Statesman Journal archives show he was convicted of the October 1987 shooting deaths of Barbara Farmer, 71, and her husband Robert, 70, in their mobile home west of Salem in Rickreall.

Tucker and an accomplice planned to rob the couple with help from the accomplice’s wife, who once worked for the Farmers, according to Statesman Journal coverage.

Tucker admitted he killed the Farmers, each dying from a gunshot to the head.

A year later, a Polk County Circuit Court jury found Tucker guilty of 10 counts of aggravated murder, two counts of first-degree robbery and one count of first-degree burglary. The aggravated murder charges, five for each victim, were brought under different sections of the law related to multiple killings.

The same jury sentenced Tucker in 1988 to death by lethal injection.

The Oregon Supreme Court, where death penalty cases are automatically appealed, upheld Tucker’s convictions in 1993 but overturned the death sentence, returning the case to Polk County for a new jury to decide sentencing. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1995.