A 54-year-old North Carolina man, once central to the mystery of his wife’s 2012 disappearance, is now behind bars for a brutal cold case murder committed over thirty years ago.
Robert William McCaffrey Jr. was arrested Friday in Manteo, North Carolina, and charged with the 1990 kidnapping and slaying of Lisa Marie McBride in Vernon Township, New Jersey.
The charges against McCaffrey include first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, and second-degree burglary. Authorities say the breakthrough came after investigators exhumed McBride’s remains in 2022 to apply modern DNA testing techniques that were unavailable when she was first killed.
Lisa Marie McBride was 27 when she vanished from her home in the early hours of June 23, 1990. She had just returned from a night out with friends around 2 a.m. When she missed work later that morning, her brother checked the house and found a scene of violence.
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Police discovered a cut phone line, a damaged window screen, and a stripped bed. Four months later, a hunter found her skeletal remains in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. While her death was immediately ruled a homicide, the trail went cold for decades.
McCaffrey’s name is already familiar to law enforcement in the South. In 2012, his wife, Gayle McCaffrey, disappeared in South Carolina.
While Robert McCaffrey was never charged with her murder—and her body has never been found—he served a 10-year maximum sentence for obstruction of justice after investigators proved he fabricated a “farewell” letter to make it look like she had left him voluntarily. He was released from prison in 2023.
The Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office credits the recent arrest to a multi-agency effort involving the New Jersey State Police and local Vernon Township detectives. While specific details of the forensic hits remain under wraps, the evidence was enough for a task force to move in on McCaffrey without incident.
The news has sent ripples back to the family of his missing wife. “They said the case against him is very strong,” Gayle McCaffrey’s sister, Helen Banach, told The Post and Courier. “Evidently, his DNA was found in the house and on her person… they can finally get some closure after 30-some-odd years.”
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McCaffrey is currently held in Dare County, North Carolina, awaiting extradition to New Jersey. While the McBride case appears to be heading toward a courtroom, the investigation into Gayle McCaffrey’s disappearance remains open.
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