Agency creates Violent Crimes Task Force to help solve community-impacting violent crimes
By: Hilary Parker
Since 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s efforts have been largely directed toward counter-terrorism efforts. Now, with the creation of a Violent Crimes Task Force, the FBI’s Trenton office will partner with local law enforcement agencies to help solve community-impacting violent crimes and its investigation into the gruesome 1989 murder of Princeton Borough resident Emily "Cissy" Stuart has already begun.
The FBI was previously involved in the case in both 1989 and 2003, according to Bill Evanina, the supervisory special agent of the FBI’s Trenton office, and Princeton Borough Police Chief Anthony Federico. A criminal profile was completed at the time of the crime in 1989, Chief Federico said, and the bureau’s behavioral analysis headquarters did further work on the case three years ago.
With the new task force, Mr. Evanina said the FBI has pledged to remain involved with this case until the completion of the investigation.
While the Princeton Borough police are clearly the lead agency on the case, he said the additional resources of the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office and "all the resources available through the FBI" will help them solve the case.
"I believe that there are enough leads out there to make a solution to the crime probable," Mr. Evanina said. "Any time you bring people together from different law enforcement agencies, new avenues are going to arise."
Re-interviews of witnesses are already under way, he said, and the invigorated investigation will revisit anyone remotely involved in the case, including family members of the then-74-year-old victim and suspects.
Declining to comment as to whether interviews of existing suspects have started at this point, Mr. Evanina added that the possibility exists that other suspects will arise as the evidence is re-considered, 17 years after the murder.
"We have very, very strong suspects that I can’t discuss," Chief Federico the first officer to respond when the body was found in 1989 said Thursday.
The FBI’s newest involvement in the case came about as a result of Chief Federico reaching out to Mr. Evanina at a Sept. 14 meeting of the Mercer County Chiefs of Police Association. As the case is the department’s "one and only open homicide case," Chief Federico said his force "owes it to the victim to do everything possible to solve the case.
"The FBI, obviously, is the premier law enforcement agency in the U.S. and they have facilities, assets and experts in every field of criminology that there is from their laboratories to their investigative personnel," the chief said. "It’s phenomenal the amount of assets that they have. By having them on board with us, it brings all those assets to bear on this case."
Most promising among these, according to Mr. Evanina, will be the information generated by new DNA analysis technologies, which improve yearly. All of the evidence from the scene is currently undergoing forensic analysis at the FBI’s lab in Quantico, Va.
"Every piece of evidence that can have new light shed on it, we are evaluating," Mr. Evanina said.
This includes evidence gathered in the days following the discovery of Ms. Stuart’s body April 4, 1989, in the locked basement of her Mercer Street home near the Princeton Theological Seminary. At the time, then-Mercer County prosecutor Paul Koenig said Ms. Stuart died of multiple stab wounds to her aorta, lungs and back. Based on the evidence, investigators ultimately determined that the murder took place April 2. There were no weapons found in the course of the investigation, and the gardening tools Ms. Stuart often used were in their usual place in the basement.
At the time of the murder, Ms. Stuart’s son, Jeb Stuart, owned the Town Topics newspaper, which he sold in 2001. Her other son, Massachusetts resident Charles Stuart, created a documentary about the crime, titled "My Mother’s Murder," aired by HBO in 1992.

