Overview
- Robert McCaffrey, 54, was arrested in Manteo, North Carolina, on Friday by a multistate task force and now awaits extradition to New Jersey on charges of first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, and second-degree burglary.
- Prosecutors say the charges relate to the 1990 killing of 27-year-old Lisa Marie McBride, who disappeared from her Vernon Township home and was found months later in the Delaware Water Gap area.
- Investigators credit significant advances in DNA testing, performed at the private lab Bode Technology after McBride’s remains were exhumed in 2022, for the breakthrough that pointed to a suspect.
- Gayle McCaffrey’s sister said New Jersey authorities told her his DNA was found in McBride’s home and on her remains, though officials have not publicly detailed the specific evidence.
- McCaffrey was long identified as the suspect in his wife Gayle’s 2012 disappearance in South Carolina, was convicted of obstruction for lying to investigators, and her family hopes this arrest revives leads in that still-open homicide probe.