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On Easter Sunday 1972, 16-year-old Nancy Carol Fitzgerald sat down for dinner with her family. The next day, she disappeared and was never heard from again.
Following an intensive long-term investigation involving numerous interviews and extensive DNA analysis, human remains recovered near the Henry Hudson Bike Trail in Atlantic Highlands in 1988 have now been positively identified as belonging to Nancy – although precisely how and why she died is still unknown.
“Today’s announcement marks the culmination of decades of hard work by a network of individuals whose collective determination and ingenuity proved inexhaustible,” Monmouth County Prosecutor Raymond S. Santiago said.
Fitzgerald’s skeletal remains were recovered during a community clean-up event held along Bayside Drive in Atlantic Highlands on Dec. 10, 1988. The remains were thereafter examined by New Jersey State Forensic Anthropologist Donna Fontana, who ultimately concluded that they had belonged to a young white female, between the ages of 15 and 18, who had probably been deceased since sometime around the mid-1970s.
In the 1990s, a DNA profile was obtained from the remains and used for comparison purposes – which were initially unsuccessful.
However, in 2020, MCPO Lt. Andrea Tozzi and Detective Wayne Raynor contacted a Virginia-based DNA analysis firm, Bode Technology, in order to pursue a forensic genealogical review of the case using technology far more advanced than had been previously available. That effort resulted in the identification of a distant relative of the person long known only as “Jane Doe,” a female resident of Georgia.
The relative agreed to an interview, and thereafter agreed to upload DNA from her own mother into a Bode database, which then led to the identification of another lead: a woman living in Pennsylvania, believed to be Jane Doe’s younger sister.
That woman was interviewed in August and also agreed to provide a DNA sample, which last month indicated a 99.9997-percent probability of an immediate familial match to Jane Doe. Dr. Lauren Thoma, Deputy Medical Examiner with the Middlesex Regional Medical Examiner’s Office, then reviewed the new information and made an official identification of the remains as belonging to Nancy Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald’s known surviving relatives were subsequently notified, with transfer of her remains to them for burial now pending.
“While we are certainly encouraged that the identification was made, solving a 50-year-old mystery, this is ultimately a puzzle that will remain unfinished until we locate the final missing piece: the circumstances behind Nancy’s death,” Santiago said. “To that end, we are urging anyone who may have any information about this matter whatsoever to come forward and tell us what they know.
"Ms. Fitzgerald’s peers would all likely be in their 60s today, so we firmly believe that it is not too late to determine what happened to her and why – and, if possible, to hold any living person who may be responsible accountable for it," Santiago said.
Fitzgerald’s family was living in a home on Mohr Avenue in Bloomfield (Essex County) at the time of her disappearance, having moved there from a home on Crown Street in Bloomfield about three years earlier.
She is known to have attended Bloomfield’s Berkeley Elementary School and North Junior High School (today Bloomfield Middle School).
Anyone with information about Fitzgerald is urged to contact MCPO Detective Raynor at 800-533-7443 or Atlantic Highlands Police Department Lt. Michael Zudonyi at 732-291-1212.
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