Donna Macho
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To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com/ForensicTales Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. February 26, 1984. East Windsor, New Jersey. 19-year-old Donna Macho disappears from her family home without a trace.

Her car is found abandoned near a sewer plant, and her skeletal remains are discovered 11 years later in a wooded area near a farm. At the time of her disappearance, the police had a promising suspect. But given the limitations of forensic testing in 1984, the case went unsolved for decades.

This is a story of a young woman's life cut short, a family's decades-long quest for answers, and the relentless pursuit of justice that finally brought closure to a nearly 40-year mystery. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 282, The Murder of Donna Macho. ♪

Situated in the heart of Mercer County, East Windsor, New Jersey epitomizes suburban life.

With its tree-lined streets, family-friendly neighborhoods, and tight-knit community, it's the kind of place where neighbors know each other by name and children play safely in spacious backyards. And with its proximity to major cities like New York and Philadelphia, East Windsor offers the convenience of urban access while maintaining its small-town charm.

But beneath this calm exterior, East Windsor holds darker stories, stories of assault and even murder. In February 1984, Donna Macho was just 19 years old, with her entire life ahead of her. Born on October 16, 1964 in East Windsor, Donna was the daughter of Betty Lou and Ronald Macho.

Then in 1969, her younger sister Julie was born. When Donna was still a kid, her parents separated and her mother remarried a man by the name of Garland. For many kids, divorce can be difficult. But Donna and Julie adapted to their new life, embracing Garland as their stepfather. It took time, but they eventually grew comfortable in this new family dynamic. It became all they knew.

As Donna grew up, she began to think about her future. By 19, she was working as a legal assistant, but she dreamed of a career in modeling. And if you've ever seen a picture of Donna Macho, you'd see that she was more than capable of achieving that dream. With her bright, beautiful smile, long blonde hair, she looked like a natural-born model.

Beyond her job, those who knew her described her as being someone full of life. She loved to cook, was bright, ambitious, and had no problem making new friends. Donna embodied the promise of a bright future, until that future was tragically cut short one night in February 1984.

On February 26, 1984, Donna Macho disappeared from her parents' house. The night before February 25, Donna and her 14-year-old sister, Julie, spent the evening together watching scary movies in the basement, which also served as Donna's bedroom.

The two stayed up until around 2 o'clock, when Julie finally went upstairs to go to bed. Around the same time, their mom Betty and stepfather Garland also turned in for the night, leaving Donna downstairs, as they had done many times before.

The next day, Donna was a no-show at the law firm where she worked. At first, no one thought much about it. Maybe she was just taking a sick day, or she needed to cash in on a personal day. But by that evening, the first signs of trouble began to surface. By dinnertime, Betty became worried. Donna hadn't come home, which is extremely out of character.

She always came straight home after work to have dinner with her family, and if she had other plans, she would have said something. For her to miss both work and dinner with her family without as so much as a single word, something was definitely wrong. Betty went down to the basement to check her room, and from the moment she stepped inside, her worst fears were confirmed.

Several of Donna's belongings were on the floor, stained with blood. That's when she decided to call the police.

When officers arrived, they combed through the basement, trying to piece together what could have happened. They dusted for fingerprints, collected the blood-stained items, searching for any unknown footprints, and even discovered traces of bodily fluid on the floor, a key piece of evidence that would become important later on. It was now painfully clear something terrible had happened.

Donna had missed work, hadn't contacted anyone, and there were unmistakable signs of violence in the very room that she had slept in the night before.

It didn't take long to conclude Donna Macho was in serious trouble. Over the next four weeks, police searched for any clue about Donna's whereabouts, but until March, they found nothing. It was as if she had vanished, snatched right from her bedroom without a trace.

About a month after she disappeared, investigators located her abandoned car near a sewer plant, just about a mile from her parents' house. Immediately, more red flags went up. Inside the vehicle, there were bloodstains, just like the basement.

To be specific, the passenger seat was soaked in blood, suggesting someone had driven Donna's car while she sat beside them, injured. Finding the car was important, but it didn't bring the police any closer to finding Donna. She was still missing. But now, investigators were almost certain that they weren't just dealing with a missing person case. They were investigating a likely homicide.

This led to the first major theory. Donna had been attacked in the basement sometime after 2 a.m. once her sister went upstairs. After sexually assaulting and possibly killing her, the attacker or attackers drove her car to the sewer plant and abandoned it. Then they likely disposed of her body somewhere else.

Over the following months, police worked tirelessly. They interviewed neighbors, spoke with Donna's coworkers and friends, and canvassed the local area. But this was 1984. There were no security cameras, no cell phone data, no digital breadcrumbs. Detectives had to rely on what's often called the boots-on-the-ground approach, door-to-door questioning and old-fashioned legwork.

And that approach paid off. Early in the investigation, a promising suspect emerged, a man by the name of Nathaniel Harvey. Here's why he stood out. First, he lived on a nearby farm, placing him squarely in the area. Second, he had a long criminal history, including arrests for multiple assaults and at least one murder.

While he was never convicted of that murder, he had been detained and questioned. There was also his M.O. According to New Jersey's Office of the Attorney General, Nathaniel Harvey did a lot of bad things. He would break into unlocked homes, rape young women, and then hold them captive.

So when it came to Donna Macho's case, Harvey checked every box. He lived nearby, he had a violent criminal history, and his method of attack aligned very closely with the circumstances of Donna's disappearance. But investigators hit a brick wall. Forensic testing in 1984 just wasn't good enough.

Back at Donna's parents' house, police had collected what they believed to be bodily fluids from the scene. It was clear Donna had been sexually assaulted. But without the ability to identify a DNA profile from that evidence, there was no way for them to definitively link the crime back to Nathaniel Harvey, or anyone else for that matter.

When police brought Harvey in for questioning, he flat out denied any involvement. And without forensic evidence, without witnesses, without a confession, they had nothing, just suspicion.

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A $2,000 reward was offered for information, money that came directly from Donna's parents. But the months went by and no one came forward. Donna remained missing, and eventually years went by. Despite the lack of leads, police never closed the case. But as time wore on, the toll on Donna's family became too much.

Just six months after her disappearance, her stepfather passed away unexpectedly. Now, the family was left grieving not one, but two losses. Donna's mother and younger sister were especially devastated. But even in their grief, they didn't give up.

Over the years, they hired private investigators, not because they had lost faith in the police, but because they were determined to leave no stone unturned. They were desperate for answers. But even with the help of private investigators, the case stayed cold. Over time, Donna's family spent nearly every penny they had searching for answers, and

Then in April 1995, 11 years after Donna vanished from her parents' basement, there was a break in the case. Police received a call from a local Boy Scout troop. While hiking near Cranbury, they had discovered human remains along with several pieces of women's clothing and jewelry scattered nearby.

When investigators got there, it was immediately clear they were dealing with a long-deceased victim. The remains were fully skeletonized. No flesh, no tissue, just bones. There was no way to identify the body on site, so they turned to dental records. And that's when the truth finally came to light. The remains belonged to 19-year-old Donna Macho.

After more than a decade, she had finally been found. Her skeletal remains had been wrapped in a large piece of carpet and concealed in a wooded area near a cranberry farm, just a short distance from where her car had been discovered back in 1984. To investigators, this said a lot.

Whoever killed Donna had gone to great lengths to try to hide her body, and for more than 10 years, a full decade, they had succeeded. Then came the autopsy. The medical examiner found evidence of a massive head injury. At first, they suspected it to be a gunshot wound, but as they looked closer, there was some debate about that.

They couldn't say definitively whether it was a gunshot or just some other type of blunt force trauma. Still, the conclusion was clear. Donna had been murdered. Her death was ruled a homicide caused by a violent and fatal blow to the head. But despite this discovery, the case once again stalled out. Donna's murder went unsolved.

And as it turns out, she wasn't the only young woman to be killed in East Windsor, New Jersey. On June 17th, 1985, just over a year after Donna Macho disappeared, the body of 37-year-old Irene Schnapps was discovered inside of her apartment. She was found by a concerned co-worker who had gone to check on her after she failed to show up to work.

Irene was known to be reliable. Missing work without notice was completely out of character. The initial investigation revealed that Irene had been sexually assaulted and brutally beaten to death, likely with a blunt object. Some reports suggested that the weapon might have been an axe. Inside her apartment, police found a key piece of evidence, a bloody shoe print.

It was later identified as coming from a size 6 shoe believed to have been worn by her killer. And while Irene's case was disturbingly similar to Donna's, both women, sexually assaulted, attacked inside of their homes, killed with blunt force drama, there was one major difference. In Irene's case, police made an arrest. And that arrest would sound all too familiar.

It was Nathaniel Harvey, the same man police had once questioned in connection with Donna's case, only to be let go for a lack of evidence. On October 28, 1985, about four months after Irene's murder, Harvey was arrested after attempting to kidnap a 13-year-old girl in West Windsor.

During a search of his car, police discovered a woman's watch that matched the description of one stolen from Irene's apartment. Then came the shoe print. It was compared to one of Harvey's shoes, and it matched. He was charged with Irene's murder and pleaded not guilty. Nearly a year later, on September 20, 1986, Harvey went to trial.

Prosecutors revealed that Harvey had confessed to killing Irene during his initial police interview, but later recanted. By the time he stood trial, he claimed the confession was false and that he was innocent, but the jury didn't buy it. On October 10, 1986, Nathaniel Harvey was found guilty on all counts. A week later, he was sentenced to death.

Following his sentencing, Nathaniel Harvey filed a motion for a new trial, arguing that his alleged confession back to police should have never been used as evidence against him. And in 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed. They ruled that his confession was improperly admitted as evidence and therefore granted him a new trial.

That second trial began in October 1994, lasted about two months. And just like before, Harvey was convicted and sentenced to death. Even without his confession, the jury found that the evidence was strong enough in order to convict him again. Unlike the first trial, though, prosecutors now had DNA evidence.

They claimed Harvey's DNA was found inside of Irene's apartment, the crime scene. Specifically, there were bloodstains at the apartment that matched his DNA. But his defense team pushed back, saying that the DNA results were, quote, flawed. But that argument didn't work. Harvey was once again convicted and sentenced to death. But he never faced execution.

In 2007, New Jersey's governor, an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, signed legislation officially abolishing capital punishment all throughout the state. So as a result, Harvey and seven other inmates on death row were resentenced to life in prison.

Still, that wasn't the end of Nathaniel Harvey's legal battles. In 2015, Harvey appealed his conviction yet again, and this time, he won. An appellate court ruled that there were serious issues with the DNA evidence, so he was granted a third trial.

Two years later in 2017, that decision was upheld. Harvey would go to trial for a third time for the June 1985 murder of Irene Schnapps. But before that could happen, Nathaniel Harvey died. On November 27, 2020, he died while awaiting a retrial at Southwoods State Prison in New Jersey.

He was never declared innocent. He died before the retrial could determine guilt or innocence, but at the very least, there was now doubt surrounding his involvement in Irene's murder. So now we're left with two haunting unsolved murders, 19-year-old Donna Macho and 37-year-old Irene Schnapps. In both cases, Nathaniel Harvey was seen as a likely suspect.

And who knows how many other victims there could be. When it comes to Donna's case, not much happened after her remains were discovered, 11 years after she had first vanished. Yes, Nathaniel Harvey was considered a suspect, like we talked about earlier, but the police never had the evidence they needed to go out and arrest him.

Just because someone's M.O. matches the crime doesn't mean they're automatically guilty. So after Donna's remains were found in April of 1995, her case went cold again. And this time, it stayed that way until February 2022. By 2022, the investigation was nearly four decades old. 38 years had passed since Donna was last seen.

That February, Attorney General Matthew Plattkin and Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo Onofre officially presented Donna's case to the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability's Central Regional Cold Case Task Force. The task force, formed in 2019, is part of New Jersey's Cold Case Network, designed to revisit the state's most challenging unsolved murders.

And almost immediately, they agreed that Donna's case needed another look. It was one of the state's oldest unsolved homicides, and a lot had changed since 1984. As soon as the case was reopened, all of the original physical evidence was resubmitted to the New Jersey State Police Central Regional Lab, including DNA and fingerprints.

Back in 1984, investigators had collected what they believed was bodily fluid in the basement, later confirmed to be semen, validating fears that Donna had also been raped. But DNA testing in 1984 was nowhere near where it is today. The early testing techniques were primitive, and any results they got back then wouldn't have held up under modern scrutiny.

By 2022, though, things were very different. DNA technology had advanced significantly. So in early 2022, the semen sample was retested. And this time, investigators were able to develop a clear DNA profile. That profile was uploaded into CODIS, the National DNA Database. And right away, there was a match.

The DNA profile generated from the semen found at Donna's crime scene matched none other than Nathaniel Harvey. His DNA was the only DNA, aside from Donna's, found in the basement. His DNA was the only foreign evidence in a room where it had no business being. Now, let's circle back to the discovery of Donna's car.

Not long after her murder, Donna's car was found abandoned near a nearby sewer plant. Interestingly enough, this sewer plant was within walking distance of Harvey's residence, making it an easy and convenient place to dump the vehicle. And then, there's the location of where Donna's remains were found.

Her body was discovered in a wooded area right next to a farm where Harvey had worked right around the same time that she disappeared. So Donna's car was found near Harvey's home. Her body was found near his old workplace. All roads seemed to point to Nathaniel Harvey.

He had the means and opportunity. These were places he knew well, and they were easy for him to access. He also had the motive. Harvey had already been convicted twice of murder, specifically Irene's murder. And even though he was awaiting his third trial when he passed away, he was still a convicted murderer. We also know his M.O. fits the crime against Donna Macho.

But all of that, while compelling, is still largely circumstantial. The most concrete evidence tying Harvey to Donna's death is the discovery of his DNA inside of her bedroom. Although Harvey is no longer around to stand trial, police and prosecutors are confident that he was the one that they had been searching for for all of these years.

By sharing personnel, expertise, and technological resources, the Central Regional Cold Case Task Force took a fresh look at this decades-old mystery and identified the suspect in this horrific crime, said Attorney General Matthew Plattgen.

We are grateful Prosecutor Onofre referred this case to the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability, and that all the agencies involved collaborated as a team to bring some resolution to the victim's family. The life and loss of Donna Macho was not forgotten, and this announcement illustrates the Cold Case Network will not relent in its pursuit of justice."

All of the evidence that was viable to be tested and then retested and all the leads have been exhausted, said Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo Onofre.

End quote.

In a press release dated April 26, 2023, Attorney General Plattkin and Prosecutor O'Nofri thanked everyone who helped keep this case alive over the years.

the Attorney General's Office of Public Integrity and Accountability, the New Jersey State Police, the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office, Ocean County Prosecutor's Office, Morris County Prosecutor's Office, and the Morris County Sheriff's Office.

They also expressed their appreciation to the NJSP Office of Forensic Sciences, the NJSP Central Regional Laboratory, the Middlesex Regional Medical Examiner's Office, the New Jersey Department of Corrections Special Investigations Division, and the East Windsor Township Police Department.

Donna's sister, Julie, was just 14 years old when her older sister disappeared. In an interview with NJ.com, Julie shared that the case completely shattered her family. They spent decades searching for answers, and in that time, they drained nearly every penny they had.

They offered reward money from their own bank accounts, hired private investigators, turned to psychics, even used trackers, anything to solve Donna's murder. We spent all the money we had, Julie said, now living in Texas,

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In honor of Military Appreciation Month, Verizon thought of a lot of different ways we could show our appreciation, like rolling out the red carpet, giving you your own personal marching band, or throwing a bumping shindig.

At Verizon, we're doing all that in the form of special military offers. That's why this month only, we're giving military and veteran families a $200 Verizon gift card and a phone on us with a select trade-in and a new line on select unlimited plans. Think of it as our way of flying a squadron of jets overhead while launching fireworks. Now that's what we call a celebration because we're proud to serve you. Visit your local Verizon store to learn more.

$200 Verizon gift card requires smartphone purchase $799.99 or more with new line on eligible plan. Gift card sent within eight weeks after receipt of claim. Phone offer requires $799.99 purchase with new smartphone line on unlimited ultimate or postpaid unlimited plus. Minimum plan $80 a month with auto pay plus taxes and fees for 36 months. Less $800 trade-in or promo credit applied over 36 months. 0% APR. Trade-in must be from Apple, Google, or Samsung. Trade-in and additional terms apply.

For nearly four decades, Donna Macho's brutal murder haunted her family, friends, and the community. With no arrests and few answers, her case faded into the shadows of unsolved history, a tragic reminder of a young life stolen far too soon. But time and science wouldn't forget Donna. As forensic technology advanced over the years, investigators returned to the evidence collected in 1984.

evidence that had patiently waited for the right tools to unlock its secrets. In 2022, with the help of cutting-edge DNA retesting, investigators identified Nathaniel Harvey as the man responsible. Although Harvey passed away in prison in November 2020, the DNA match provided the one thing Donna's loved ones had been searching for, the truth.

For her family, it wasn't justice in the traditional sense. There would be no trial, no sentencing, no final confrontation. But there was finally acknowledgement, closure, and a long silenced voice heard at last through the relentless pursuit of truth and science.

Today, Donna's story stands as a testament to perseverance, the importance of preserving evidence, and the enduring hope that no matter how much time passes, no matter how deep the silence runs, the truth will eventually rise to the surface. To share your thoughts on this week's episode, follow the show on Instagram and Facebook.

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If you'd like to become a producer of this show, head over to our Patreon page or send me an email at Courtney at ForensicTales.com. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.

In honor of Military Appreciation Month, Verizon thought of a lot of different ways we could show our appreciation. Like rolling out the red carpet, giving you your own personal marching band, or throwing a bumping shindig.

At Verizon, we're doing all that in the form of special military offers. That's why this month only, we're giving military and veteran families a $200 Verizon gift card and a phone on us with a select trade-in and a new line on select unlimited plans. Think of it as our way of flying a squadron of jets overhead while launching fireworks. Now that's what we call a celebration because we're proud to serve you. Visit your local Verizon store to learn more.

$200 Verizon gift card requires smartphone purchase $799.99 or more with new line on eligible plan. Gift card sent within eight weeks after receipt of claim. Phone offer requires $799.99 purchase with new smartphone line on unlimited ultimate or postpaid unlimited plus. Minimum plan $80 a month with auto pay plus taxes and fees for 36 months. Less $800 trade-in or promo credit applied over 36 months. 0% APR. Trade-in must be from Apple, Google, or Samsung. Trade-in and additional terms apply.