According to law officials, a suspect has been extradited from Canada to face murder charges, decades after a woman was murdered and her body was left in the New Jersey woods.
In Bridgewater, close to Washington Valley Park, Tammy Tignor’s body was discovered in the afternoon of November 4, 1997, close to a hiking trail off Gilbride Road. It was determined that the 23-year-old’s death constituted a homicide since she had been strangled.
According to Somerset County Prosecutor John McDonald, Tignor’s body was discovered by an ATV rider on the dirt access road that led to a dead end. For days, investigators from Somerset County and Bridgewater police combed the forest for any hints or evidence that would help them find the murderer. However, the case went unsolved for years.
There were no answers from the DNA evidence discovered on the Newark woman’s body. Her family, meanwhile, endured the heartbreak of losing their daughter while being aware that the murderer was at large.
Every year on November 4, the anniversary of Tammy’s passing, her mother calls our office to inquire about any updates, said Assistant Prosecutor Mike McLaughlin of Somerset County.
More time has passed after Tignor’s death than during her lifetime.
The strange incident was investigated for years by town police and investigators from the county’s major crimes and cold case departments.
Evidence in the case was permitted to be resubmitted for DNA testing in January 2023, something that the prosecutor’s office stated could not have been feasible in prior years. A few months later, state police received a high stringency match for Robert Creter, a potential suspect in the crime, based on resubmitted evidence.
According to the prosecutor’s office, Creter was charged with first-degree murder in May 2023; however, there was a problem: Creter had relocated to Winnipeg, Canada, in 2002. Following collaboration between the U.S. Department of State and the Somerset County prosecutor’s office, Creter was arrested by Canadian officials on June 27, 2024, using the warrant for his arrest in New Jersey.
The hunt for justice for Tignor saw a significant turn just before Thanksgiving: Creter was arrested on Tuesday in connection with the murder that occurred almost thirty years ago after being extradited back to New Jersey.
According to McLaughlin, it has been 27,885 days since her body was discovered. I talked to the mother of the victim. I informed her that the individual who killed her daughter had been taken into custody. It was quite sentimental. She expressed her gratitude to our detectives both then and now.
The updated Jersey State Police employed updated DNA technology to analyze the sample again and compare it to CODIS, a DNA index system, which resulted in a match for Creter, according to the prosecution. This was not a genealogical DNA finding obtained through a family member.
When I notified the victim’s mother that we had apprehended the individual responsible for her daughter’s death, she became quite upset and expressed gratitude to our investigators today. At the time, she said
Wednesday morning in Somerville was set aside for Creter’s initial court appearance.
County officials stated on Monday that they were looking into eight additional cold cases and hoped the DNA technology would offer the victims’ families hope that justice may still be served decades later.
According to New Jersey State Police Superintendent Colonel Patrick J. Callahan, the arrest of a suspect in this decades-old case is evidence of law enforcement’s steadfast commitment to pursuing justice, regardless of the amount of time that has elapsed.
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