But lack of physical evidence hampers recently developed high-tech investigative techniques.
By: Jennifer Potash
A Princeton Borough murder whose trail has long gone cold may be warmed with a renewed investigation.
A newly formed task force of local, county and state law enforcement agencies will take a new look at the 1989 murder of prominent resident Emily Stuart.
An avid gardener known as Cissy, Mrs. Stuart was found stabbed to death in a cellar storage area in her Mercer Street home.
A discussion in mid-2002 among senior borough police officers generated a to-do list of unresolved matters in the department, including the Stuart murder, said Princeton Borough Police Chief Charles Davall.
Despite a few new leads that tend to emerge whenever a newspaper article about the murder appears, the case was cold, he said.
Since several of the officers involved in the case had retired or were nearing retirement, Chief Davall said he thought it would be helpful to take a fresh look.
And there is another reason to keep working on the case, he said.
"If I were a member of a family that had suffered a murder, I would want the police to do everything in their power to bring the case to closure," Chief Davall said.
Investigators in the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office offered to review the investigation for the borough, Chief Davall said. At the same time, the chief also approached the New Jersey State Police. While lacking a cold case unit, the State Police do allow detectives in the Major Crimes Unit to review dormant cases across the state when time permits, Chief Davall said.
The State Police also conducted the crime scene analysis at the time of the murder, said Princeton Borough Police Captain Anthony Federico, who is leading the borough’s investigation of the case.
Since the State Police agreed to review the case, Burlington County bowed out, Chief Davall said. A task force comprising the borough police, State Police and Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office formed in late 2002 to revisit the Stuart investigation, he said.
While advances in DNA technology have cleared many cold cases across the nation, those techniques would be of little help in solving Mrs. Stuart’s murder, police said.
The investigation was always hampered by the lack of physical evidence, such as fiber and DNA, Chief Davall said.
Capt. Federico said the investigation did yield fingerprints and a footprint.
New, and better, state fingerprint databases are now available that may help the investigation, Chief Davall said. The task force is already re-interviewing witnesses and others involved in the case, Capt. Federico said.
The task force has generated some new directions for the case including individuals not interviewed at the time of the murder, Chief Davall said.
The facts of the case are as follows:
The fully clothed body of Mrs. Stuart, 74, who lived in a wealthy residential neighborhood near the Princeton Theological Seminary, was found face down in a locked basement storage room by her sister, Margaretta Cowenhoven, on the morning of April 4, 1989.
Mrs. Stuart died from multiple stab wounds to her aorta, lungs, spinal cord and back chest cavity, according to law enforcement officials in 1989.
Her body was found in the rear portion of the basement where police believe the attack occurred. There were no signs of forced entry, police said. Her beloved gardening tools lay undisturbed in the basement. Everything else in the house was also undisturbed.
The victim was not sexually assaulted.
Capt. Federico said it appeared the killer was familiar with the neighborhood.
Mrs. Stuart died sometime in the afternoon of April 2, 1989, nearly two days before her body was discovered by her sister. The day of the murder, she had breakfast with her sister and lunch with a friend early in the afternoon, her family said. Two days later, Miss Cowenhoven who had been concerned about Mrs. Stuart’s whereabouts entered the Mercer Street home using her own key and discovered her sister’s body in the basement.
Mrs. Stuart’s son, Donald C. "Jeb" Stuart, then the editor and publisher of the Princeton weekly newspaper Town Topics, stopped by his mother’s house the afternoon of April 3 and became concerned when he found his mother’s glasses, wallet and keys on a table. But he dismissed her absence as typical. Mrs. Stuart was an independent and free-spirited woman, her son said in 1989. She often traveled alone. Mr. Stuart said in 1989 he thought his mother might have taken a trip with the Historical Society of Princeton to Washington, D.C.
Mr. Stuart, who sold Town Topics in 2001, said Thursday he had no comment on the current investigation.
A year after the murder, a Princeton Township woman was stabbed in her bathroom by borough resident Gerald Geffrard. Mr. Geffrard was convicted in 1991 and sentenced to 20 years in jail. He is eligible for a parole hearing in October and has a maximum release date of December 2004 if his parole is approved, according to the state Department of Corrections.
A documentary on HBO in 1992 by Mrs. Stuart’s other son, Charles, suggested Mr. Geffrard may be the killer. Mr. Geffrard, according to one of his attorneys, passed a lie detector test regarding the Stuart murder.
At this point, no suspect in the investigation has been ruled in or out, Chief Davall said.
"That’s one reason why we’re doing this," he said. Capt. Federico said Mr. Geffrard remains "a person of interest" in the investigation.
The police department sought reviews of the case by outside organizations in the past.
Around the 10th anniversary of the murder, in 1999, the borough police department contacted the Vidocq Society, a Philadelphia-based organization of top forensic specialists and others in law enforcement, which evaluates cold-case murders and unsolved suspicious deaths brought to it by the investigating agency, Chief Davall said. The Vidocq Society, which is named for famed 18th century French criminal turned master detective Eugene Francois Vidocq, does not make public its review of the cold cases. The society’s work has led to charges in cold cases and the exoneration of an innocent person in an Arkansas murder case.
Due to legal issues, the case was not reviewed by the full Vidocq Society but a subcommittee of the organization, Capt. Federico said.
That review did generate some new theories for the investigation, said Chief Davall, declining to provide specifics.
Capt. Federico said anyone who has information relevant to the Stuart murder should contact the borough police at (609) 924-4141.

