Nearly four decades after his estranged wife was found dead, Robert Elmer Atrops has been convicted of killing her.
The cold case, which has haunted Sherwood and the rest of Washington County since 1988, came to a close Thursday, April 17, following a three-week trial that ended with a Washington County jury finding the now 70-year-old guilty of second-degree murder.
The body of 30-year-old Deborah Lee Atrops was discovered in the trunk of her car in late 1988, months after she had separated from her husband. But it wasn’t until the case was reopened in 2020 — and a DNA breakthrough surfaced — that investigators arrested Robert Atrops at his Newberg home in 2023…