Man Arrested in 1990 NJ Cold Case Murder via DNA

Robert William McCaffrey Jr., a 54-year-old man from Manteo, North Carolina, was arrested on April 10 in connection with the 1990 murder of Lisa Marie McBride, a 27-year-old bank employee from Vernon Township, New Jersey, authorities announced. The arrest, resulting from a DNA match in a decades-old cold case, links McCaffrey to the killing that occurred more than 30 years ago, while also drawing renewed attention to his role in the 2012 disappearance of his wife in South Carolina.

McBride vanished from her home in the early hours of June 23, 1990, after returning from a night out with friends around 2 a.m. When she failed to show up for work, her brother checked on her and discovered signs of a struggle, including a cut telephone line outside, slits in a window screen, a stripped bed, and lights left on. Her decomposed remains were found four months later, on October 20, by a hunter in a wooded area of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in Sussex County. Dental records confirmed her identity, and her death was ruled a homicide, but the case stalled without a suspect.

Investigators revisited the evidence in 2022 by exhuming McBride's remains for advanced DNA testing...