Nancy Noga SAYREVILLE — It has been 15 years since Janice Whitt’s 17-year-old sister, Nancy Noga, was found dead on Jan. 12, 1999, five days after she went missing.
There are still no answers regarding who killed her, but Whitt has come to peace with that.
“When and if God wants her to have justice, she will,” said Whitt, of North Carolina. “I spent a lot of years being really angry about it, and I still am, but I have to let that go. It’s taken 15 years to get here.”
Whitt prefers to reflect on the kind of person her younger sister was: a smart high school senior and a hard-working teenager who had aspirations to earn a college degree.
“She was funny, really loyal and just a good person,” Whitt said. “As a sister, I couldn’t have asked for a better sister. She was my best friend.”
Whitt said Nancy wanted to enlist in the Marines, following in the steps of their grandfather, a colonel in the Army who served in three wars. Several of their cousins served in the U.S. military as well.
“The Marines is a hard branch to get into, but she was very smart,” Whitt said. “She was a really smart kid growing up. She was in Advanced Placement classes, so she could have done whatever she wanted to do.”
Whitt said she advised Nancy to take advantage of the G.I. Bill after her military service so she could attend college.
“I’m sure she felt some duty to her country, too, but ultimately, I think it was a good way to pay for college for her,” Whitt said. “There weren’t a whole lot of other options.”
A native of North Carolina, Nancy moved to Parlin while she was in middle school to live with her father, Mark Noga.
Noga died Nov. 9, 2013, with the mystery of who killed his daughter still unsolved.
“I didn’t get to live with her for the last few years of her life,” said Whitt, who remained in North Carolina when her sister moved to New Jersey. “I thought that when she turned 18, we would get to be closer together. We shared a room together when we grew up. I made sure she had her lunch money. She was my first baby — you know how big sisters are — and I always felt like it was my job to protect her. I wish I could have protected her.”
According to the Sayreville Police Department, Nancy was last seen alive around 6:15 p.m. on Jan. 7, 1999, leaving her parttime job at the Rag Shop on Route 9. She was reported missing by her family after she did not return home to the Skytop Gardens apartment complex, triggering a search by police.
Whitt said police contacted her soon after Nancy was reported missing, asking if Nancy had run away to North Carolina to see her.
“I didn’t have a good feeling about it from the very beginning,” Whitt said. “She would have communicated with me from the very beginning; it was out of character for her [to run away]. She would not have pulled something like that.”
A passerby discovered Nancy’s remains across the street from the apartment complex, behind the Mini Mall on Ernston Road, on Jan. 12, 1999. According to police, the cause of her death was determined to be blunt-force trauma to the head.
Each year, around the anniversary of her sister’s death, Whitt calls the Sayreville Police Department to see if there have been any breaks in the case. She receives a similar answer each time.
“Each year, I try to find out who is on the case, let them know who I am and make sure they have my phone number,” Whitt said. “Unfortunately, there haven’t been a whole lot of leads.”
Lt. Timothy Brennan of the Sayreville Police Department said that there have been no breaks in the case in recent years, but it is still open.
“It’s been an active investigation, and we’ve been doing work on it all along,” Brennan said. “It’s definitely not a case that’s far from our memory.”
Whitt said that instead of focusing on Nancy’s death, she concentrates on her sister’s life.
“In this situation, you don’t have many options,” Whitt said. “You can be mad about it, but I try to remember her happily and try not to think that the world is a bad place.”
Anyone with information may call the Sayreville Police Department at 732-727- 4444.
Contact Stella Morrison at [email protected].