NJ Cold Cases - Where Is Burlington County's Margaret Ellen Fox?

BURLINGTON, NJ — Margaret Ellen Fox, 14, was looking for a part-time job when she stepped off a bus near the intersection of Mill Road and High Streets in the city of Burlington 48 years ago Friday.

She was conducting an ordinary part of teenage life performed by many teenagers as the school year ends and the summer season begins.

However, in Margaret's case, this routine became extraordinary. She has not been seen since.

'I Cannot Find Anything More Important Than That'

The city of Burlington Police Department and FBI have recently been pursuing "some leads" regarding Margaret's disappearance, Burlington Police Chief John Fine told Patch.

The passage of almost a half-century since Margaret vanished has not diminished law enforcement's ultimate goal in the case: Bringing Margaret home to her family. Alive, obviously and preferably, but even if she is deceased, law enforcement still wants to bring her home.

"This is one of the biggest unhealed wounds in our community," Burlington City Police Chief John Fine told Patch.

"Devoting time and resources to bring a 14-year-old girl back home, either to her family, or to give her a proper burial, I cannot find anything more important than that."

Justin Notarfrancesco, the FBI Agent In Charge who works on Margaret's case out of the agency's Newark office, agreed.

"We believe this case, and cases like it, is as important now as it was 50 years ago," he said in an interview with Patch. "It is important that we try to get as much closure for families as we possibly can."

Many of Fine's colleagues on the Burlington City Police Department share the same sentiment, he said.

"Many retired officers who worked this case still wonder what happened to Margaret," he said. "Unfortunately, many of the original investigators died not knowing the answers they worked so hard to get. We do [the investigation] in honor of them too."

Investigation's Early Years

Investigators who took part in the immediate aftermath of Margaret's disappearance knew what Margaret was wearing when she was last seen — jeans with a yellow patch on the knee, a blue blouse, a white-and-black checkered jacket, brown sandals, a gold necklace with flowers and a blue stone and a gold charm bracelet with a blue stone — according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

These investigators also knew that at the time Margaret disappeared, she stood about 5 feet and 2 inches tall, weighed about 105 pounds and had brown hair and blue eyes, the center also said.

These investigators would also soon learn that Margaret took that bus ride on that ill-fated day 48 years ago to meet a man she had spoken to on the phone several times before she disappeared.

The man called himself John Marshall and said he was looking for a babysitter. He provided a phone number and told Margaret to look for a red Volkswagen when she got off the bus, the Bucks County Courier Times reported in 1974.

After Margaret disappeared, authorities discovered the phone number the man gave her belonged to a payphone. This discovery cast doubts on the man's claim of needing a babysitter, according to a 1974 article in the Doylestown Intelligencer and a 2019 article in the Courier-Post.

Then, in late 1975, Charles Clobridge, a "thin, gaunt-looking" vagrant from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who was under arrest for larceny in Norristown, said he had "strangled" Margaret and "threw her off a cliff," in the mountains of upstate New York, the Courier-Post reported.

Consequently, some 50 law enforcement officials spent that year's Thanksgiving weekend investigating Clobridge's claim, the newspaper also said.

However, authorities eventually determined Clobridge was in a hospital when Margaret
first disappeared. Clobridge also eventually acknowledged that his story was a lie, according to the newspaper.

"The monetary expense and manhours ... were stupendous," then-Assistant Burlington County Prosecutor Paul E. Letterman said in the article.

Burlington County Detective Neil Forte added "the Fox case is back to where it was, still open. "We have no knowledge of her whereabouts, or whether she is dead or alive."

Investigation Goes On For Decades

Ten years passed, then 15 years.

In 1992, some 18 years after Margaret vanished, a girl's body was discovered in the Atlantic Highlands.

Authorities put together a description of what the girl likely looked like when she was alive, and it was a near-perfect match to Margaret's, according to a 1992 article in the Asbury Park Press.

The only way a positive match could be made was through the Atlantic Highlands girl's teeth, the newspaper reported.

However, Margaret's dental records were lost in the years in between her disappearance and the discovery of the girl in the Atlantic Highlands, the newspaper continued.

Years of wondering if the Atlantic Highlands girl was indeed Margaret took six years to put to rest, when advances in forensic science allowed authorities to compare DNA samples, the Asbury Park Press reported that year.

Those DNA tests "eliminated any possibility" the skeleton was Margaret's, according to the newspaper.

Interest in Margaret's disappearance was renewed again in 2019.

In that year, and on the 45th anniversary of Margaret's disappearance, authorities released a recording of a phone call the Fox family received four days after Margaret's 1974 disappearance.

Fine explained the rationale for not releasing the recording earlier.

"From what I understand through speaking with the original investigators is that they didn’t know if the audio was part of a hoax or opportunist trying to capitalize financially on the disappearance," he told Patch.

In the recording, a voice that appears to be male said "$10,000 might be a lot of bread, but your daughter's life is the buttered topping."

The caller never reached out to the family again.

"The FBI decided to release the audio recordings of the phone call [in 2019] with the hope that it would generate positive leads for the case," Notarfrancesco told Patch. "The hope was someone would hear the recording and possibly recognize the voice of the man from the phone message."

The release of the recording spurred leads that "are still under investigation," Fine said in the interview.

Around the same time the recording was released, the National Center for Missing Exploited Children released the age-enhanced image of Margaret that accompanies this story.

Susan Kennedy, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Senior Program Manager of Outreach & Prevention told Patch the age-enhanced images are based on photos from various family members of the missing person.

'Never Loses Hope'

If Margaret is alive, she would be 62 years old.

The New Jersey that existed on that last day Margaret was seen is different.

The year Margaret vanished, a young singer and musician from Freehold named Bruce Springsteen had only recently emerged onto the music scene. He likely never imagined he would share a stage in his home state with Paul McCartney.

The year Margaret disappeared, a television show featuring long-time Collingswood resident Michael Landon called "Little House on the Prairie" premiered. He likely never thought one day there would be a plaque placed in a borough park that was named after him.

The passage of nearly a half-century since Margaret's disappearance complicates, but does not end, the search for answers in the disappearance of Margaret, Fine and Notrarfrancesco said.

"We are finding, unfortunately, is some people that would have been good to talk to are now deceased," Fine told Patch.

Notarfrancesco agreed that solving a case that is almost 50 years old poses challenges.

"The reality with cases like this is they become extremely difficult to solve as time passes," he said. "However, the FBI never loses hope that these cases will eventually be solved. All it takes is one small tip from the public to solve the whole thing."

If you have any information about the disappearance of Margaret, or know where she might be now, please contact the FBI's Newark office at 973-792-3000, the agency's Philadelphia office at 215- 418-4000 or the Burlington City Police Department at 609-386-3300.

Got a news tip? Story idea? Send me an email with the details at janel.miller@patch.com.