A man already convicted in connection with his wife's disappearance has been arrested over the unsolved 1990 murder of a woman in New Jersey. Robert “Bob” McCaffrey Jr, 54, was taken into custody in Manteo, North Carolina, after a traffic stop on 10 April, authorities said.
McCaffrey faces charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and burglary over the killing of Lisa Marie McBride, 27, whose remains were found in the Delaware Water Gap national recreation area in October 1990. McBride, a bank employee, had disappeared from her home in Vernon Township, Sussex County, four months earlier. She was identified through dental records and the death was ruled a homicide.
New Jersey cold-case investigators entered DNA recovered from McBride into a federal database. The sample matched McCaffrey's profile, which had been added after his 2019 conviction for intentionally misleading an investigation into the disappearance of his wife, Gayle, in Charleston, South Carolina. He was released from prison in May 2023.
Gayle McCaffrey, 36 at the time, went missing in 2012. A grand jury declined to charge Bob McCaffrey with her murder, and she was declared presumed dead in 2018. According to local reports, he moved to North Carolina and had a new love interest within months of her disappearance.
The investigative journalist Delia D'Ambra reported that McCaffrey appeared in a North Carolina court on Tuesday and agreed to be transferred to New Jersey. A search warrant on his home indicated investigators suspected he may have kept McBride's missing purse, wallet, keys and a key chain with the word “Weeza” as “trophies”.
Gayle McCaffrey's sister, Helen Banach, said her family were “shocked to learn that [Bob] might have killed someone before in his lifetime”. She added: “We are glad that her family will get some justice.” The prosecutor in Sussex County, Daniel M Perez, said the arrest brought “long-awaited progress toward justice” and highlighted the “significant advancement in DNA technology” that led to McCaffrey.
