The unsolved murder of a South Brunswick girl who 'walked her dog and never came home'
On a Friday afternoon in 1971, Susan Sunday took her dog for a walk in the woods near her South Brunswick home.
Three hours later the dog returned home.
But the teenager never did.
Seventy-six days later a decomposed body was found in those nearby woods. The 16-year-old's body was identified through dental records on Dec. 16, 1971. Her death has been treated as a homicide.
And in the past half century, the killer has never been caught.
'It really stands out in your memory'
South Brunswick Deputy Police Chief James Ryan said the investigation into what happened on Oct. 1, 1971, has never been abandoned.
"We in the last 17 years have sent detectives along with the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office to different locations around the country following different leads so we believe that as technology advances, it's our hope we'll be able to make headway on the case," Ryan said.
Each new generation of detectives return to the case and follow leads, he said. Former detectives still meet with current detectives to brainstorm the case.
"This is one that really stands out from the length of time and it's a 16-year-old," Ryan said "If you were here at that time, it really stands out in your memory."
At the time of her disappearance, Susan, a sophomore at South Brunswick High School, was described as a quiet, serious student. There was no indication she had a boyfriend.
She was one of four children in her family and her father worked as a plant supervisor in Carteret. They lived on New Road in the township's Kendall Park section.
Police said that when Susan, who that day was wearing a denim work shirt over a blue and orange striped blouse, jeans and white sneakers, usually took her dog for a walk, she would tie the dog's leash to a tree, sit on the ground and read.
The Home News reported a piece of the leash was found tied to a tree in the woods two days after her disappearance.
The immediate search
On Oct. 4, 1971, the Home News ran the first story about Susan Sunday. The story said the teen had gone missing after taking her dog for a walk. She had plans to meet up with other girls later to go to a movie in Princeton. Her family notified police of her disappearance after the dog returned home without her.
Police, firefighters, first aid squad members and two bloodhounds from the Ocean County Sheriff's Office assisted in the search for Susan in the woods near her home, while scuba divers searched a nearby pond. At that point nothing had been found.
In mid-November, six weeks after Susan had been reported missing, her father, who had distributed flyers throughout South Brunswick with his daughter's photo and clothing description, doubled the reward from $500 to $1,000 for information. Police had also distributed the flyers throughout New Jersey and nationwide.
Two people had undergone polygraph examinations in connection with the teen's disappearance, but the results were negative and led nowhere.
The case a journalist never forgets
In 1971, Frances Kosa was a recent college graduate working as a Home News general assignment reporter. As a rookie, she was responsible for calling local police departments for news, so she developed a rapport with the cops.
"I called South Brunswick police and I would ask every morning, 'Anything new?' and you could hear the disappointment and frustration in the cops' voices, but you ask every day," said Kosa, who later became an editor at the Home News Tribune.
And then one day in December 1971, she called South Brunswick police headquarters and an officer said they had been waiting for her call.
"You need to come here," Kosa said the officer told her. "That was my way of knowing that something had happened. I remember going to South Brunswick. The assistant city editor at that time lived in Kendall Park, and so it kind of tied us to the story because it was really in his community, in his neighborhood."
Kosa went to the scene but couldn't get close to the site where there were many police vehicles. Eventually the news was released – Susan’s body had been found.
The front page of the Dec. 16, 1971, Home News reported the body was found in a heavily wooded area off Sandhill Road between routes 1 and 27. The body was discovered by a deer hunter, who worked for the township road department, about a half mile from her home. The body had clothes similar to those Susan was last seen wearing.
The following day, Kosa wrote Susan's body had been identified through dental records, but indicated it was unclear if she had been assaulted, due to the body's decomposition. "I knew there was a lot of decomposition, and it was just very sad. It was a young girl, she walked her dog and never came home," Kosa said.
A coincidental connection
Deborah Buonocore, a retired South Brunswick elementary school teacher who has lived in town for more than 30 years, didn't know Susan.
But she came to know the case through her friendship with 15-year-old Patricia "Patti" Kuhlthau, who was murdered in 1977 in East Brunswick.
Like Susan's, Kuththau's body was found in a wooded area about a half mile from her home. Jack Houseman, a Milltown man, was convicted of fatally stabbing Kuhlthau and was sentenced to life in prison plus 11 to 13 years.
Buonocore, whose father was a minister in South River, was close friends with Kuhlthau.
When Buonocore went to boarding school in South Carolina, she and Kuhlthau kept in contact through postal letters in the era before texts and emails.
Kuhlthau had disappeared after going to talk to a man, later identified as Houseman, who had placed an ad for a babysitter. In their investigation, police found Buonocore's letters and thought Kuhlthau might have run away to see Buonocore in South Carolina.
"They (State Police) called me," Buonocore said. "My parents weren't telling me she was missing, they were afraid."
Buonocore said she wasn't able to leave school to come home for her friend's funeral.
"It was horrifying for me," she said.
Years later, when Houseman was in prison and looking to be released on parole, Kuhlthau's sisters circulated a petition to keep him behind bars. It was at that time Buonocore learned Houseman's mother lived in a mobile home near New Road in South Brunswick.
And while reading a newspaper story about a South Brunswick police chief's retirement, she remembers the chief expressing regret about not being able to solve the Susan Sunday case.
"I knew where she (Susan) lived on New Road because my (other) friend lived nearby," Buonocore said.
A day after reading the chief's story, Buonocore was in a quilt shop in Allentown, Monmouth County talking to a woman who asked where she lived. The woman said she formerly lived in South Brunswick.
"And she said you might have heard about my sister Susan Sunday," said Buonocore. The comment made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
That's what prompted Buonocore began to wonder if Houseman may have also killed Susan.
In 1972 and 1974, not long after Susan was murdered, Houseman was convicted of assault with the intent to rape and was given probation.
Houseman died of natural causes in October 1997 at age 52 at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. He was never charged in connection with the Susan Sunday case.
"I had never heard of this murder, then I read about it and then the next day I run into the sister," said Buonocore.
She called the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office questioning whether Houseman was at his mother's South Brunswick home and could have been in the woods where Susan was walking her dog.
"It kind of creeped me out," said Buonocore. "It was a little too coincidental. It was such a bizarre thing. A week earlier, if she had said Susan Sunday to me, it would have meant nothing."
Buonocore said people who lived in South Brunswick in 1971 still talk about case and want to know who killed Susan.
Case not closed
The population of South Brunswick has more than tripled in 50 years, from 14,000 to 47,000 today. It's no longer a rural suburb, and the woods near Sunday's home have long since been developed. And though the township has changed, the case still haunts the South Brunswick Police Department, which is not giving up the hunt for Susan Sunday's killer.
Police Chief Raymond Hayducka is a strong proponent of the department's reviewing open cases to see if there is something new that can be used to help close a case, Ryan, the deputy chief, said.
Ryan believes detectives last spoke to members of Sunday's family in 2005 to let them know the status of the investigation.
"If something were to develop, we would reach out to the family and keep them in the loop on anything new," he said.Anyone with information about the Susan Sunday case is asked to contact the South Brunswick Police Department at 732-329-4646.
Email: srussell@gannettnj.com
This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: Cold Case NJ: South Brunswick girl murdered in 1971
