Tortured: Who Killed Jeanette Tambe?
A New Jersey Jane Doe Identified - But Who Killed Her?
This is the story of a most horrific and sadistic murder of a young woman whose body was found more than 35 years ago on a remote property in New Jersey. The circumstances of the homicide evokes a range of emotions – not just because of the brutality from which she died, but in the circumstances of fate that changed her name from Jane Doe to Jeanette Tambe.
On a hot, humid day in August of 1986, a young couple from Philadelphia was driving to Buena Vista, New Jersey to check on the progress of a new home they were building. But when they arrived, their excitement turned to horror. They discover the body of a young woman lying in a corner of the property. They call New Jersey State Police. Detective Taylor Bonner is in charge of the case today and has visited the crime scene in recent years. He described the remoteness of the scene, and the dirt roads that lead to the property past a railroad crossing. “If I didn’t know the area, I would have never located it,” said Detective Bonner. If this was the location where the young victim was killed, her screams would have gone unheard.
The body was that of a white female, 18-24 years old, about 5’ 6”, 115 pounds with brown hair. She had pierced ears and was wearing a blue Varsity House brand pullover sweater, Sergio Valenti jeans, and grey, size 8 high top sneakers. She had orthodontic brackets in her mouth, indicating that she had braces or retainers at some point.[i] There was no identification on the body, and her name was a mystery – at that time, she becomes Jane Doe.
The brutality of the assault that took place was something that Det. Bonner had not seen in any other of his unsolved cases. “Throughout all these cold cases, it’s just so hard to describe, how brutal and intense it was what they did to her.” Bonner described that the victim’s hands had been bound behind her using copper pipe hangers, the kind used in home plumbing, though they did not appear to have come from the house under construction where she was found. Her legs had been bound with fabric which was apparently used to drag the body to its final resting place. She appeared to have been fully clothed, and her pants were still buttoned, although acid had been poured on her and had eaten away at her skin and her shirt, so detectives are unable to determine a motive or conclusively say whether there was any sexual attack. Most disturbing was the finding by the medical examiner that there was sulfuric acid in her lungs – Jeanette was alive when the acid was poured on her. “It was brutal,” said Det. Bonner.
Police interview neighbors, but the canvass does not elicit any leads. The investigation stalls.
Less than 2 years after Jane Doe is found in Buena Vista, skeletal remains of another young woman are found in an abandoned industrial well in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles from Buena Vista, NJ. Similarly, there is no identification with the remains, and that girl becomes known as Publicker Jane Doe. Police review missing persons cases in an attempt to identify the body, but there are no matches. That case goes cold until 2002 when Detective Christopher McMullin of Bensalem, Pennsylvania PD picks up the file. At first, he thinks that Publicker Jane Doe could be missing 14-year-old Tracy Byrd of Bensalem, and he collects family DNA samples for comparison (learn more about the Tracy Byrd case in our podcast, Family Secrets). The DNA indicates that the skeletal remains are not Tracy Byrd, so McMullin explores other possibilities, one of which is a missing person from Bensalem named Jeanette Tambe. Again, Det. McMullin obtains a family reference sample from the Tambe family, and waits. After several months, he gets a call from the Center for Human Identification telling him that there is a match to the Tambe family. McMullin is excited about getting the identification, thinking it is for the remains found in the well in his jurisdiction. But then the detective is told, “She’s a Jane Doe that was found in Buena Township in New Jersey in August 1986.” Jeanette Tambe was not the girl in the Publicker Distillery well. Instead, she was the murder victim that New Jersey State Police recovered in 1986. Detective McMullin still did not have an identification on his Publicker Jane Doe at that time, but now, New Jersey State Police have a significant lead in their investigation (Learn about the eventual identification of Publicker Jane Doe in our episode, Girl in the Well).
Now that New Jersey State Police know who their victim is, perhaps they can determine who her killer is. But as they get deeper into the investigation, they learn that Jeanette was always on the move. The 22-year-old spent her last years living on the road - a free-spirit. Some of that time was with her boyfriend.
Among the last people known to have seen Jeanette alive was her cousin who saw her in Philadelphia with her boyfriend in July 1986, after she was reported missing by her family and just a month before her body would be found. Police have looked at a number of people and examined several leads in their investigation, including Jeanette’s former boyfriend. Investigators are also reviewing the physical evidence in this case hoping that modern forensics might provide a clue. Detective Bonner said that some items have been sent to the lab for re-examination. While the sulfuric acid may have tainted some of their samples, Bonner said that there are portions which were unaffected.
But the biggest obstacle, says Bonner, is the lack of information on Jeanette’s day-to-day life. When Jeanette’s brother last saw her in October 1984 she was with her boyfriend; and when her cousin saw her in July 1986 in Philly, she was again with her boyfriend. Police said that the boyfriend was in Florida at one point. Did Jeanette go with him, or follow him there? Police have not ruled him out, but they say he is now deceased.
State Police are interested in Jeanette’s travels and her boyfriend and would like to hear from anyone who knew them. Said Det. Bonner, “Whether you knew Jeanette in 1980, 1984, 1986, anything…that little bit of information might help lead us to a suspect.”
If you have any information about the murder of Jeanette Tambe or if you can help police in reconstructing her whereabouts, call New Jersey State Police at 1-833-4NJCOLD, or send an email to ColdCase@NJSP.gov.
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[i] New Jersey State Police Bulletin 86-6; Sept. 10, 1986