Deputy’s killing solved 51 years later with help of Facebook comments, Maryland cops say

About an hour before midnight on a Saturday in 1971, police were dispatched to a country club in Rockville, Maryland, a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C. On arrival, they found 53-year-old James Tappen Hall, an off-duty deputy sheriff, lying face down in a parking lot with a gunshot wound.

Hall, known as JT, died three days later, according to police. The details of his death remained elusive for over half a century.

But in October 2021, on the 50th anniversary of Hall’s death, detectives from the Montgomery County Police Department’s Cold Case Unit vowed to take another crack at demystifying the decades-old case.

The case, which involves prison escapes and an altered identity, was finally solved, in part, using a mixture of old and new technology, police said. Detectives used reel-to-reel audio tapes from the ’70s and Facebook comments to find the suspected killer, according to charging documents provided to McClatchy News by the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office.

After the case was reopened, investigators reexamining evidence found an old reel-to-reel tape, which was sent to the FBI to be converted. After being returned, it was revealed the audio contained a 1973 interview with Larry David Becker, a 22-year-old who had been identified as a person of interest at the time.

Becker and his brother, both of whom had criminal histories throughout their adolescence, were incarcerated in early 1973. In a move that presaged how slippery Becker would be for decades to come, he and his brother managed to escape jail on March 31 of that year, according to the charging documents, and were captured after five days on the lam.

On the converted audio tape, Becker revealed he had been present during the killing of Hall and stated the exact number of times the deputy had been shot, a detail which was withheld from the public, according to the charging documents.

Becker also added that he ran through as many backyards as he could to evade police after the shooting, according to police. Becker, who was adopted by a Rockville family, was homeless at the time of the crime, and stayed with friends or in the woods.

After listening to the tape, investigators in 2021 decided to consider Becker a suspect in the murder.

While pursuing the case, detectives determined that Becker began using a different last name around 1975, when he was in his mid-20s. According to the charging documents, he used Smith, the name of his biological parents, and also moved over 300 miles away to a sparsely populated hamlet in upstate New York, where he was recently living in an assisted living facility.

During the investigation, detectives were able to locate a Facebook account for Larry Smith. They confirmed it was the same individual as Larry Becker after finding comments on his account referencing the high school he attended in Aspen Hill, Maryland, and using photos for for verification, according to officials.

In early September 2022, two detectives on the case traveled to upstate New York to question Becker about the 1971 murder. Police said that Becker, now 70, confessed to accidentally firing upon Hall after the deputy, who was working as a part-time security guard, approached him as he was moving stolen property from a nearby burglary to a car parked close by.

Becker told detectives he did not know that the gunshot wound was fatal, according to the charging documents, and asked the detectives to apologize to Hall’s relatives for the killing.

Officials did not say whether Becker has an attorney who could comment on his behalf.

On Thursday, Sept. 1, Becker was charged with murder. Police said Sept. 7 that he will be returned to Maryland “by the end of the week.” The case was the only and oldest unsolved homicide of a law enforcement agent in Montgomery County, the most populous in the state, according to officials.

Every year, for nearly 40 years, Hall’s relatives travel from across the country to recognize his “ultimate sacrifice” at the Montgomery County Public Safety Memorial, Sheriff Darren Popkin said at a press conference on Sept. 7.

“In May of 2023, when we gather again for Police Memorial Week,” added Popkin, “perhaps Jim will be resting a little bit more peacefully.”

One of Hall’s relatives “never thought this case would be solved.”

“It has been,” the family member said during the news conference. “And anybody out there that wants to be bad, just remember that.”

The case is still being investigated.

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