A North Carolina man has been apprehended in connection with the murder of a lady in Vernon Township, New Jersey, which occurred decades ago.
Robert William McCaffrey Jr., 54, was arrested Friday night at his house in North Carolina and charged with the 1990 kidnapping and murder of Lisa Marie McBride, 27.
New DNA evidence solves cold case, police say
The Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office stated that McCaffrey formerly lived in the county and that the case was solved using advances in DNA technology, “combined with the relentless investigative efforts of detectives” across the state.
According to the New Jersey State Police, McCaffrey’s DNA was submitted into an FBI database and matched with a vital piece of evidence after McBride’s remains were exhumed in 2022.
Police said McCaffrey’s DNA was collected in 2018 when he served a jail sentence in South Carolina for impeding an inquiry into his wife’s disappearance in 2012. His wife’s body has not been discovered.
McCaffrey is being held in a North Carolina detention center for an extradition hearing to New Jersey. He is accused with first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, and second-degree burglary, according to Prosecutor Daniel Perez.
The death of Lisa Marie McBride
McBride was reported missing from her home in Vernon Township’s Highland Lakes area. Her remains were recovered near the Pennsylvania border on June 23, 1990.
Daryl Eastlake, who was 9 years old at the time, recalls when the unsettling case became public.Unfortunately, my family and I were driving across the Dingman’s Ferry Bridge when they discovered her body. I happened to move to the street where she lived, and I also worked for the same company,” Eastlake explained. “There’s a lot of people who wanted some sort of closure to what was going on.”
Eastlake, who lives next door to McBride’s previous house, stated that detectives visited her home in 2022.They were simply wondering whether there was anything weird that we discovered when I purchased the house, either during construction or otherwise,” Eastlake explained.
Anyone with information about this case is encouraged to call the Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office at (973) 383-1570.
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