By JF Grodeska
ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS – This week the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office issued a press release stating that the remains of a young woman found in 1988 on the hillside above what would become the Henry Hudson Trail in Atlantic Highlands, have been identified through advanced DNA forensic technology.
The decedent was Nancy Fitzgerald, 16, of Bloomfield. She was last seen at Easter Sunday dinner with her family April 2, 1972. The next day she vanished without a trace and was never heard from again.
The story continued in Atlantic Highlands Dec. 10, 1988. Several volunteers were cleaning up debris from the old Central Jersey railroad right-of-way that stretched along the bayfront from Atlantic Highlands to Highlands. One of the men saw what he believed to be a white children’s ball partially buried in the hillside. He walked over to pick it up and discovered it was the rear section of a human skull.
Atlantic Highlands Police Patrolman Adam Hubeny and Detective Sgt. John Amici were assigned the case. The process of exhuming the skeletal remains took place over the next two weeks, producing several teeth and lower jaw and approximately 85% of the upper body. In addition, several articles of clothing were discovered: knee-high socks, a bra with lace material and size 8 1⁄2 leather platform sandals with ankle straps.
The remains were in an advanced state of decay and the medical examiner determined they could have lain hidden in the side of that hill for five to 15 years. Additionally, there was no way of knowing if the body had been buried under the dirt and debris or if erosion had covered it over the years.
Residents and the Atlantic Highlands Police department could only think of one case of a missing and murdered young woman, but it had happened nearly 20 years before. Seventeen-year-old Rosemary Calandriello had been abducted and murdered by serial killer Robert Zarinsky in 1969. Her body was never recovered; Zarinsky claimed to have thrown it in the Atlantic Ocean.
By 1975, Robert Zarinsky was in prison thanks to the work of former Chief of Police Sam Guzzi. Guzzi’s gifted investigative skills led Zarinsky to become the first person in New Jersey to be convicted of murder without a body as evidence.
Investigators Amici and Hubeny continued their efforts to identify the victim. The journey led them to different locations and potential witnesses. None, however, produced significant leads.
Then, a potential break.
Adam Hubeny recalls how they began to look into the articles of clothing found near the remains. The sandals were unusual, manufactured in England. Inquiries made to the manufacturer determined this type of sandal only shipped to two stores in the United States. Both were located in Manhattan. However, surveillance cameras and credit cards were not nearly as prevalent as they are today. The lead, unfortunately, led nowhere.
The case went cold and Hubeny left the Atlantic Highlands Police Department to become an investigator for the Monmouth County Prosecutor. In 1997, while working in the Major Crimes unit, he caught a cold case, the one that still haunted him – the unidentified remains from his days on AHPD. At the time, DNA identification had already been used in a number of cases, so Hubeny decided to petition the Monmouth County Prosecutor to allow him to send bone samples to collect DNA to search for a possible match.
When the mitochondrial DNA results were returned to him, Hubeny added them into CODIS (the Combined DNA Index System), now a generic term used to describe the FBI’s program of support for criminal justice DNA databases as well as the software used to run these databases.
CODIS results brought bad news: No matches. And the case went cold, again.
Then, in 2020, according to Mark Spivey of the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, “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.”
That contact led to a woman in Pennsylvania who turned out to be Nancy Fitzgerald’s younger sister. Another DNA analysis showed the woman was a near perfect match to Jane Doe. The identification was official, and Jane Doe now had a name: Nancy Carol Fitzgerald.
Adam Hubeny said during the interview for this story in October that every police investigator has one case that will stick with them to the grave. For Hubeny, this was that case. Told the body was identified after 34 years, he responded, “At least she is identified, now!”
But the case is not closed. There is more work to be done. What happened to Nancy Fitzgerald? How did she go from celebrating Easter 1972 with her family in Bloomfield to being discovered in a shallow grave below Lower Scenic Drive in 1988?
Robert Zarinsky, one of the most notorious serial killers in New Jersey history had still been active in 1972. And there was another predator operating at the same time: Richard Cottingham was a serial killer who murdered at least 12 young women and girls in New York and New Jersey between 1967 and 1980. Could either of those men be responsible for Nancy’s disappearance? Zarinsky died in prison in 2008.
The MCPO investigators, Atlantic Highlands Police Department and New Jersey State Police will continue to work this case.
“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,” said Monmouth County Prosecutor Raymond S. Santiago. “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.”
The article originally appeared in the December 8 – 14, 2022 print edition of The Two River Times.
