16-year-old vanished 50 years ago. Remains found in 1988 are now identified as hers

A 16-year-old girl ate dinner with her family for the last time on Easter Sunday in 1972 before she mysteriously vanished a day later.

Nancy Carol Fitzgerald’s family members in northern New Jersey never saw the teen again, according to law enforcement officials.

More than 15 years after her disappearance, skeletal remains were discovered near the Henry Hudson Bike Trail in Atlantic Highlands during a community clean-up on Dec. 10, 1988, according to the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office. A state forensic anthropologist, Donna Fontana, determined the remains were of a young white woman, likely between ages 15-18, who likely died during the mid-1970s.

However, the identification of the remains stayed unsolved — until now.

The remains found near the bike trail are of Fitzgerald, the prosecutor’s office announced in a Dec. 5 news release.

Following several “investigative techniques” that proved unsuccessful over the years, law enforcement contacted DNA analysis firm Bode Technology in Virginia in 2020 to help identify the remains with “technology far more advanced than had been previously available,” the release said.

A forensic genealogical review revealed a DNA match of Fitzgerald’s distant relative, a woman in Georgia, according to officials.

This woman agreed to submit her mother’s DNA into a database maintained by Bode Technology and another relative in Pennsylvania, the woman’s younger sister, was found, the release said. Ultimately, the second woman provided her own DNA, resulting in investigators discovering the skeletal remains found in 1988 were of Fitzgerald.

Death still a mystery

Despite the major breakthrough in the case, it’s still not fully solved.

“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,” Monmouth County Prosecutor Raymond S. Santiago said in a statement.

“We are urging anyone who may have any information about this matter whatsoever to come forward and tell us what they know,” Santiago added. “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.”

Family members of Fitzgerald were notified of the identification of her remains, which will be given to them for burial, according to the prosecutor’s office.

When Fitzgerald went missing, her family was living in Bloomfield and she attended North Junior High School which is now Bloomfield Middle School, the release said.

Officials ask anyone with information regarding Fitzgerald, including her death, to call Detective Wayne Raynor at 800-533-7443 or Atlantic Highlands Police Department Lt. Michael Zudonyi at 732-291-1212.

Bloomfield is about 15 miles west of New York City.

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