A man has been convicted in the sexual assault and murder of 17-year-old Nancy Noga more than 25 years after her body was found dumped behind a New Jersey strip mall.
A senior at Sayreville War Memorial High School, Noga was reported missing on January 7, 1999, after she failed to return home from her after-school job at a clothing store, the local Patch reported. Five days later, a man walking his dog spotted her body in a wooded area near the Mini-Mall Plaza Shopping Center along on Ernston Road. Police said her remains were frozen and covered in about five inches of snow at the time.
An autopsy later revealed her cause of death to be blunt force trauma, and prosecutors said the murder weapon was a large tree branch.
Despite an intense manhunt for her killer, a suspect was not identified until 2021, when authorities arrested 52-year-old Bruce Cymanski in connection with her slaying. He was linked to the crime through the use of forensic genealogy, a process investigators used to match preserved semen found on Noga’s body and her underwear to Cymanski, police said.
Following a weeks-long trial in Middlesex County, jurors — a panel made up of eight women and four men — found Cymanksi guilty on counts of murder, felony murder, aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office announced Thursday.
Middlesex County Prosecutor Yolanda Ciccone thanked officers, “both active and retired, from the Sayreville Police Department, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office, the New Jersey State Police Office of Forensic Sciences, and the Barnegat Police Department for their unrelenting commitment to this investigation and prosecution.”
Cymanksi is slated to be sentenced on January 6, 2025, just one day shy of the 26th anniversary of the day Noga was reported missing.
