For 34 years, law enforcement officials have been unable to determine who killed Lisa McBride nor identify who was responsible for a star placed on Echo Lake Mountain to remember and honor her during many Christmas seasons.
The star on the mountain at the Route 23/Echo Lake Road intersection is not visible this year.
George and Norma McBride and their children, Douglas and Lisa, lived near Stowaway Park in West Milford when the children were growing up.
As a member of the New Generation Dance Company in Wanaque at age 16, she performed with the company in Romania and hoped to someday have her own studio.
Lisa graduated in the West Milford High School Class of 1981 before taking classes at Rider College in Lawrenceville.
At age 27, she had a job as an executive secretary in the Lakeland Bank branch office in Newfoundland. She owned her home and lived alone at Highland Lakes.
After ending her workday at the bank June 22, 1990, Lisa and some friends attended a New York City concert. They stopped at Big John’s Pub on “Old Route 23” in Newfoundland on the way home.
Police reports at the time said Lisa drank three beers, spoke with a few friends at the pub, gave three old friends her phone number and left at 1:15 a.m., saying she had to be at work in the morning.
When she did not show up at Lakeland Bank the next morning, a call was made to her parents’ home. She had not missed a day at work for three years.
Her brother went to Lisa’s home, saw her car in the driveway and used a key to enter the house. The reports said he saw that his sister was missing, a light on a bedroom dresser was on, there were no sheets or blankets on the bed, the living room couch was pulled away from the wall and the kitchen light was on.
The FBI joined state and local police to investigate her disappearance. Posters were distributed as far as Canada as police interviewed hundreds of people searching for information. Several suspects were ruled out.
On Oct. 20, 1990, four months after she disappeared, a hunter found Lisa’s skeletal remains off Mine Road in Sandyston in Sussex County.
The death was ruled a homicide and hundreds of leads werefollowed. In 2022, detectives from the Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office exhumed Lisa’s remains from Roseland Memorial Park in East Hanover.
Sussex County medical officials and State Police collected DNA evidence and sent it to Bode Forensic Lab in Lorton, Va. The remains were returned to the grave.
Reports said the cause of death was undetermined. Anyone with information about the cold case was asked to contact the. Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office.
Both of Lisa’s parents have died: George in 2015 and Norma 2018.