New Jersey’s unsolved ‘Princess Doe’ murder

On July 15th, 1982, a gravedigger named George Kise made a grisly discovery: the body of a young woman whose face had been smashed beyond recognition in a ravine next to the Cedar Ridge Cemetery in Blairstown. Kise had been digging a grave near the corpse.

According to a New York Times report at the time, police found the body along with her clothes and a crucifix on a gold chain. They thought the body would be identified by a concerned parent, but it never was. What police did determine was that she was a female between 15-19 years old, blond, and 5’2”, and had been brutally beaten. It was believed that the body had been there for anywhere from 2-3 days to 2-3 weeks; the humid weather at the time made it hard to pinpoint. Investigators also could not determine if she had been sexually assaulted or had drugs in her system.

An autopsy was performed looking for clues. The police checked her fingerprints against the FBI database and pored through 60,000 reports of missing girls from around the country to no avail. Anthropologists reconstructed her skull to make a composite sketch and circulated the picture; one woman claimed that she was her daughter, but the dental records didn’t match. The police chief and police then spearheaded an effort to raise funds to give her a proper burial with flowers and a headstone. She was nicknamed “Princess Doe.”

Various theories have been floated through the years tying Princess Doe to missing women, but none ever panned out. Possible matches were ruled out by dental charts and DNA evidence. One man in prison for other crimes, Arthur Kinlaw, claimed to be the murderer, but, due to holes in his story and the lack of physical evidence tying him to the crime, no charges were filed. The case remains unsolved.

This is a website about the case where you can leave tips about the case or learn more about it.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Bill Doyle. Any opinions expressed are Bill Doyle's own.