Decades-old New Jersey homicide arrest made in 1990 Lisa Marie McBride case

A 35-year-old New Jersey homicide finally produced an arrest Friday night, when Robert William McCaffrey Jr., 54, was taken into custody in Manteo, North Carolina, in the killing of Lisa Marie McBride. Prosecutors say he will face charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and burglary once he is extradited to New Jersey.

The Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office announced the arrest Saturday, saying McCaffrey was held in Dare County, North Carolina, pending transfer back to New Jersey. Local reporting said a multistate task force made the arrest at about 8 p.m. Friday, April 10, a late-night breakthrough in a case that had sat cold since 1990.

McBride was 27 when she disappeared from her small lake home in the Highland Lakes section of Vernon Township. Prosecutors say the alleged killing happened on or about June 23, 1990, in Vernon Township, and her skeletal remains were later found on October 20, 1990. McBride worked as an executive secretary at Lakeland Bank in Newfoundland, and on the night she vanished she had planned to go to a concert in New York City with friends. She and her friends stopped at Big John’s Pub in Newfoundland on the way home, a detail that has long lingered in the case file.

Officials credited the arrest to advancements in DNA technology and the work of New Jersey State Police. Her remains were exhumed on March 9, 2022, as investigators renewed efforts to generate a usable DNA lead, a step that appears to have been central to finally identifying a suspect. The case had remained a fixed point in Sussex County true crime memory for decades, with McBride’s name staying attached to one of the region’s most frustrating unsolved killings.

McCaffrey previously lived in Charleston County, South Carolina, and Sussex County, New Jersey. His arrest may draw added attention beyond this case because South Carolina reporting identifies him as the husband of missing West Ashley mother Gayle McCaffrey, who was once a prime suspect in her disappearance. For now, the focus is on the New Jersey case that finally moved after decades of silence, and on how the DNA trail brought investigators all the way to North Carolina.