Husband of missing woman arrested in 1990 New Jersey murder case

Robert William McCaffrey Jr., the husband of missing South Carolina woman Marjorie “Gayle” McCaffrey, was arrested April 10 in Manteo, North Carolina, in a decades-old New Jersey homicide that investigators say finally broke open through DNA. Prosecutors say the 54-year-old is wanted in the June 23, 1990 killing of Lisa Marie McBride in Vernon Township and will face charges of first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping and second-degree burglary.

McBride, 27 when her remains were discovered, vanished from her home in the Highland Lakes section of Vernon Township after she failed to answer the phone following a night out in New York City. Detectives found the lights on, sheets removed from the bed, a cut telephone line and slits in a window screen. Her body was later found by a hunter in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area on Oct. 20, 1990, and the case sat unsolved for years.

Authorities said the investigation was revived by advancements in DNA technology and renewed forensic work. McBride’s remains were exhumed in 2022, and one report says a DNA profile developed from evidence collected from her bed matched McCaffrey in February 2026 after his profile had already been entered through his South Carolina incarceration. Investigators from the Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office, New Jersey State Police and Vernon Township Police Department, with help from the Dare County Sheriff’s Office, arrested him around 8 p.m. and took him into custody pending extradition to Sussex County, New Jersey. Detectives also searched McCaffrey’s North Carolina home, a detached shed and two vehicles for McBride’s missing belongings and possible trophies or mementos.

Newly released documents add another disturbing layer. An associate told detectives in a 2019 interview that McCaffrey had confessed around 1995 to killing McBride and then returning to the home to retrieve something that might link him to the crime. Prosecutors have not said that claim alone drove the arrest, but it now sits alongside the DNA evidence and the physical search of his property.

The New Jersey case is separate from the disappearance of Gayle McCaffrey, who vanished from the couple’s West Ashley home in Charleston County, South Carolina, on March 18, 2012, after an argument. Police later said the farewell letter McCaffrey claimed to have found was fabricated, and he was convicted of obstruction of justice. Gayle McCaffrey was declared dead in 2018. Authorities say there are no known ties between the two cases, but the arrest has put both names back in the spotlight, with McBride’s long-cold homicide now headed toward court and McCaffrey’s history under renewed scrutiny.