DNA in Missing Wife Case Ties Husband to 1990 Murder

A South Carolina woman has been missing for more than a decade. The police consider her husband a person of interest and eventually arrested him for obstruction of justice. After the husband’s DNA was collected and tested, authorities found a match for another homicide committed years before his wife’s disappearance.

Robert McCaffrey Jr. said he had a major argument with his wife, Gayle McCaffrey, on March 17, 2012, according to a court affidavit. He left their Charleston, S.C., house for a walk “to consider the state of their marriage.” When he returned, she was in bed ignoring him, so he left again. McCaffrey said that he drove more than 200 miles northwest to visit family in Easley. Upon his return the following day, Gayle was gone. 

McCaffrey claimed that she left in the middle of the night while their 4-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter slept. He waited about 12 hours before reporting her missing.

"I know my sister. She would not have left her kids. She wouldn't have even left them to go out for a walk," Gayle’s sister, Debbie Pearson, told local TV station NBC 2. "So, something happened that night."

McCaffrey handed investigators a letter supposedly from Gayle that stated she was running away with her lover, Nicky. “I am going! I am going to be happy!” the letter read. She also threatened in the letter to shoot McCaffrey if he tried to find her.

Although McCaffrey was a person of interest, there was not enough evidence to charge him with murder, and Gayle’s body has never been found. Per the affidavit, McCaffrey “lied to investigators” and “refused to cooperate with search efforts.” Investigators learned that McCaffrey was having an affair with a woman who lived near Easley. 

In 2018, Gayle was legally classified as deceased. McCaffrey was charged with murder, but a grand jury declined to indict him. The following year, he was convicted of obstruction of justice for tampering with evidence. Forensic experts testified that the “Nicky” letter did not match Gayle’s tone or diction; it was determined that McCaffrey forged it, and authorities believe Nicky never existed. McCaffrey was sentenced to 10 years in prison but only served four and was out by 2023 on an early release program.

Following his arrest, McCaffrey’s DNA was collected, and investigators in New Jersey eventually linked him to another murder. 

On June 23, 1990, Lisa McBride of Vernon Township, N.J., got home around 2 a.m. after seeing musician Clint Black perform in Manhattan. A co-worker noticed that she failed to report for work that day and called McBride’s brother, who stopped by her place. Her car was in the driveway, but she was not around. Some lights were left on.

He spotted other anomalies and notified the police. They found signs of foul play in her home, according to an affidavit. The telephone line was severed, her bed sheets were missing, a window screen was cut and her living room couch was pushed away from the wall. Investigators collected evidence from the headboard of her bed. 

A hunter discovered skeletal remains in a wooded area of Sandyston, N.J., on October 20, 1990. An autopsy confirmed they belonged to McBride. She had suffered an orbital fracture, and her death was ruled a homicide.

At the time, McCaffrey lived in New Jersey. Following McCaffrey’s arrest in 2018, a witness stepped forward. Per the affidavit, McCaffrey confessed to a work associate in 1995 that he killed McBride because she refused to go out with him.

In 2020, New Jersey authorities submitted DNA samples from McBride’s remains to a lab for testing, which confirmed the presence of male DNA. However, the sample was not large enough to be entered into the Combined DNA Coding System (CODIS), a national database maintained by the FBI.

Undeterred, authorities exhumed McBride’s remains in order to extract another DNA sample that did qualify for CODIS. “Given the fact that they said they put it into CODIS, that’s telling me they did nuclear autosomal DNA testing,” Independent DNA Consulting owner Angela Ross tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “The chemistries and equipment have gotten a lot more sensitive, so the labs are able to maintain more complete profiles.”

Mark Barash, associate professor and forensic science program coordinator at San Jose State University, tells A&E Crime + Investigation, “After exhumation of Lisa McBride's remains provided a victim DNA reference, it was used to subtract the known female contributor and separate the mixed profiles well enough to elevate the unknown male profile for CODIS entry.”

In February 2026, another test result showed a match with McCaffrey. He was arrested April 10 and charged with first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping and second-degree burglary. He pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

“I think this case perfectly illustrates why cold cases should never be deemed truly dead,” Barash says. “The biological evidence collected from the 1990 crime scene did not change over 36 years, but our ability to read it did. Furthermore, it underscores the critical value of database continuity and cross-jurisdictional cooperation. Without South Carolina entering Robert McCaffrey’s DNA profile into CODIS 12 years ago—and New Jersey utilizing modern genotyping to upload the crime scene profile recently—these two cases may never have intersected.”

Gayle's body still has yet to be found, and no one else has been charged in connection with her case.

"We always thought there had been a domestic argument or something that went too far, and she ended up dying as a result of that kind of situation," Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon told NBC 2. "Now, this makes you stop and really reevaluate that and ask yourself whether there's something else going on here in terms of his history."