WYNNE, Ark. (AP) — Capital murder charges have officially been dismissed against a man accused of kidnapping and drowning a 9-year-old girl after prosecutors acknowledged that hair evidence was botched.
"I knew it was a real bad mistake," Robbie Dale Tubbs said Monday following the dismissal of charges against him.
Prosecutor Fletcher Long Jr. said he had no choice because the FBI was unable to extract sufficient DNA evidence the state needed to connect Tubbs to a strand of the victim's hair.
Despite the dismissal, Long said he believed Tubbs was the suspect. Charges against Tubbs, 39, can never be refiled based on the same facts since that would expose him to double-jeopardy.
"There's nothing else we can do," Long said. "We're at a dead end. This is the end of it."
Long had alleged that a hair found in Tubbs' car linked Tubbs to 9-year-old Christina Marie Pipkin, who was found drowned in an irrigation canal in 1991.