Policeman haunted by killer's presence
By DAN BURNETT
Pocono Record Day Editor
By his own admission, former Blairstown, N.J., police lieutenant Eric Kranz became obsessed and then frustrated with the Princess Doe case. Kranz, who in 1982 was second in command at the small but spirited police department, headed up the investigation of the murdered teen.
To this day, Kranz said he thinks he spoke to the teen's killer at the cemetery where she was found. But others involved in the investigation — state police and the Warren County Prosecutor's Office — did not want to interrogate the suspect until the girl was identified, he said.
Princess Doe, an unidentified teen between 14 and 18 years old, was dumped in a ravine off Route 94 in the small New Jersey community just 15 minutes from Stroudsburg in July 1982. Despite the case still being open to this day, authorities do not know who the girl is or how she ended up bludgeoned beyond recognition in rural northern New Jersey.
Kranz, who worked day and night on the case in its early years, said he met the suspect shortly after the girl was buried in January 1983. Citizens reported seeing him several times at her grave so Kranz went to the cemetery to see him.
The man, who lived nearby, turned out to have a record of violence, being arrested for fighting with police and assaulting at least one family member before he moved to Blairstown. He traveled in his line of work, and he quite likely passed through Maryland — the girl's last known location before she died — at the time of her death, Kranz said.
Kranz said he also spoke to his suspect's brother during the course of the investigation, who told the then-police lieutenant that his brother had the capacity to commit such a brutal crime.
Kranz said he found no physical evidence linking the suspect to the crime, but the suspect sold his vehicle —which Kranz theorized was used to transport the murder victim — to an out-of-state party shortly after the girl's body was found. Kranz said he went to New York to search the vehicle, but was not able to get access to it.
Kranz said the prosecutor at the time, Howard McGinn, told him not to interrogate the suspect until the girl was identified.
"I have a very strong suspicion he is the killer,'' Kranz said. "I am the only one on God's green earth who really thought the guy did it, and I was never given the opportunity to pursue that the way I thought it should be done. . . . .This thing could have been solved years ago, but I didn't have it in me to pursue it anymore.''
Frustrated with his constant run-ins with other investigators assigned to the case by the New Jersey State Police, Kranz resigned from the township department in 1985. He is now disabled, recovering from a back injury.
Kranz said his suspect moved from Blairstown in the past decade. He does not know where the man lives now.
Different account
McGinn, who was Warren County's prosecutor from 1981-86, said he does not remember Kranz having a suspect he wanted to interrogate.
"I don't recall anything like that at all,'' said McGinn, who now has a private civil practice in Warren County. "That doesn't ring a bell.''
The state police investigators who worked on the case with Kranz have retired and left the area. They could not be reached for comment.
But McGinn did say that the focus of the case from the outset was to find out who the victim was.
"Because we couldn't positively identify her, we couldn't do much else until that was done. Once we had an ID, then we could have focused on who did it,'' said McGinn, who added that he was satisfied with Kranz's handling of the investigation.
When told of Kranz's assertion there is a viable suspect, current Warren Prosecutor John J. O'Reilly said: "This case has been investigated extensively by my office and the state police. That's all I can really say about it. We pursued every lead we had.''
O'Reilly said he thought someone from his office had been in touch with Kranz, but Kranz said no law enforcement officers consulted with him since he left the police department 12 years ago.
Kranz said the state police investigators did not get involved in the case for months, primarily because they knew it would be difficult to solve.
When they did join the investigation, he and they butted heads frequently because the state police were constantly criticizing his procedures.
Kranz called it an "embarrassment'' that a case requiring so much paperwork and legwork only had one township detective working on it in its early months until the state police answered his nine-man department's plea for help.
Former prosecutor McGinn agreed there was not enough manpower in the case's early stages.
"We were concerned about getting sufficient personnel on the case. Blairstown Police Department was small at the time, and of course our office was small at the time, too. But at some point the state police did get involved. I can't recall the timeline anymore after all these years,'' McGinn said.
Obsessed with case
Kranz said he became obsessed with Princess Doe because of the enormity of the workload and brutality of the crime. He labeled as a "failure'' the case's first mission: To determine the identity of the girl whose head was bludgeoned beyond recognition and whose body was then dumped in a ravine off Route 94 during a mid-July heat wave in 1982. After that, find the killer.
Once word was out that the battered corpse had been found near a cemetery on July 15, 1982, hundreds of calls poured into the small police station, from parents whose children had run away, from police officers from other jurisdictions checking on missing persons and from cranks and tipsters. Scores of psychics called, offering their services, but were turned down, Kranz said.
Also, Kranz examined hundreds of missing person and forensic reports in an effort to identify her.
"I'm almost sure she passed through my work, but for the most ridiculous reason I did not recognize her,'' he said.
For example, forensic reports told him that the corpse had no broken bones, so missing-person reports where the victims had once had broken bones were ruled out automatically.
Then, Kranz said, he learned that some young people's bones mend in such a way that it is nearly impossible to tell that they were once broken. Hence, he said, some of the missing-person reports may had been valuable after all.
"At times I was going through the trash can trying to backtrack,'' he said.
Use of media
The strategy from the outset was to keep the case in the media. Kranz named the girl "Princess Doe'' so that she would have some sort of identity and "a personality to keep her in the press.'' A forensic artist from Philadelphia was recruited to reconstruct her appearance in the form of a bust so that it could be photographed to make posters and fliers.
The plan worked. Papers large and small ran stories on the bizarre case, TV crews covered press conferences and an HBO special on strange crimes did a 20-minute segment on it. The show aired nationally and generated many calls from parents who children had run away, but no significant leads materialized, he said.
A novel, "Death Among Strangers,'' used the case as a backdrop.
"I can't for the life of me understand how a life can be erased without anyone coming forward who has some idea who she was,'' said Kranz.
The Warren County Prosecutor's Office, which has since taken over the case, determined three months ago that the girl was likely a runaway last living and working as a maid in Ocean City, Md. But investigators still do not know who she was or how she ended up dead in rural northwestern New Jersey.
With the case taking a toll on Kranz's personal life, in 1985 he resigned to become executive director of the Foundation to Find and Protect Children, a lobby and investigative non-profit agency that helped parents find their runaway children. The job ended a year later when funding dried up.
Since then Kranz said he has had a variety of jobs. "Whatever I had to do to make a living, I did,'' he said. He left Blairstown shortly after resigning from the police department, and he has maintained no ties. He will say only that he now lives in northern New Jersey.
"I was so burned out after that case," he said. "It was enough to exasperate anyone.''
http://www.vidocq.org/doe/doe2.html