In June 1990, Lisa Marie McBride, 27, disappeared from her home in the Highland Lakes section of Vernon Township, New Jersey. She had spent the evening out with friends and was last seen returning home on the morning of June 23rd.
When she failed to show up for work at the local bank, colleagues and relatives went to her house on Glenn Road. They found the telephone wires cut outside, a slit in the rear window screen propped open with a log, and the bed sheets, blankets, and pillows missing from the bedroom.
Lisa was not there. A search involving family, volunteers, and law enforcement followed, but four months passed without answers.
In October 1990, a hunter discovered human remains in a wooded area near the Delaware Water Gap. The remains were identified as Lisa Marie McBride. An examination found trauma to her left cheekbone, and the medical examiner’s office determined she had been killed during the night of June 23rd, 1990.
From the start, investigators identified Robert William McCaffrey Jr. as their primary suspect. He lived about 13 miles from Lisa’s home and may have known her through the bank where she worked. Investigators learned he had been discharged from the Navy in September 1989 with a psychological diagnosis.
But there was not enough evidence to bring charges. No witnesses placed him at the scene, and the DNA evidence collected from the house could not be matched to him at the time.
In 1996, McCaffrey left New Jersey and moved to South Carolina. Investigators later believed he took items from Lisa’s home with him, including her black wallet, her driver’s license, and a brass keychain engraved with the word “Weesa.”
The case file stayed open, but the investigation stalled for years.
Around 1995, McCaffrey told an acquaintance that he had killed Lisa because she refused to go on a date with him. He also said he had tried to return to her house in the days after the murder to retrieve something that could connect him to the crime.
That information was not reported to police at the time. It remained dormant until the case was reopened in 2019.
In 1997, McCaffrey married Marjorie Gail Broom in Charleston, South Carolina. On March 18th, 2012, she disappeared from their home and was never found. McCaffrey became a suspect in her disappearance.
In 2014, he was arrested in connection with her case, not for murder, but for obstruction of justice. That arrest led to his DNA being collected and entered into the national CODIS database.
For years, the DNA evidence from Lisa’s home could not be matched. The sample was a mixture of male and female DNA, and the technology at the time could not separate it to meet CODIS standards.
In 2019, the Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office reopened the case. Investigators re-interviewed people connected to McCaffrey, and for the first time, the 1995 confession was officially recorded.
In August 2020, advanced testing on evidence from Lisa’s bedroom confirmed the presence of male DNA, but it still could not be uploaded to CODIS. Over the next five years, investigators compared the profile against more than 50 potential suspects.
In 2022, Lisa’s remains were exhumed to obtain a clean sample of her DNA. Modern technology allowed investigators to separate the unknown male DNA from the mixed sample.
In January 2026, the male DNA profile was submitted to CODIS. On February 27th, 2026, it matched Robert William McCaffrey Jr.
On April 10th, 2026, a multi-state task force arrested McCaffrey in Manteo, North Carolina. He had been released from prison in 2023 after serving time for obstructing the investigation into his wife’s disappearance.
Five firearms were seized from his home following the arrest. McCaffrey, 54, was charged with first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, and second-degree burglary.
On April 12th, 2026, Sussex County Prosecutor Daniel M. Perez announced the arrest and charges. McCaffrey was extradited to New Jersey and appeared in court on April 20th, 2026, where he pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Lisa’s family issued a statement noting that her parents, George and Norma McBride, had passed away in recent years without seeing this day. “We know they are resting a little more peacefully,” the statement read.
Neighbor Ken Marsh, who lived in the community through all those years, told the press, “It was terrible for the family. The family didn’t have closure on it.”
The case against McCaffrey is still in the early stages of legal proceedings. He remains held awaiting trial.
A second question remains unanswered. Marjorie Gail McCaffrey disappeared in 2012, and her body has never been found. McCaffrey is a suspect in her case but has not been charged.
Investigators are also still searching for the items McCaffrey allegedly took from Lisa’s home in 1990. The wallet, driver’s license, and brass keychain were not found during the search of his North Carolina home.
The Lisa Marie McBride case took 36 years to reach this point. It was solved through preserved evidence, advances in DNA technology, and a confession that took decades to reach the right ears.