A New Jersey man has been sentenced to life in prison for the decades-old murder of 17-year-old Nancy Noga, who was also sexually assaulted before she was killed and her body was dumped behind a strip mall.
Bruce Cymanski was convicted in October of murder, felony murder, aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose in connection with Noga’s slaying, according to the the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office.
It came more than 25 years after the teen, a senior at Sayreville War Memorial High School at the time, was reported missing on January 7, 1999.
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. Before her death, Noga had enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and was planning to start basic training after graduation, her sister, Janice Whitt, said in a 2011 interview with NJ.com.
An autopsy later revealed her cause of death to be blunt force trauma, and the murder weapon was later determined to be a large tree branch.
The deadly violence sparked an intense effort to locate Noga’s killer, but authorities for years struggled to identify a suspect and the case eventually turned cold.
In 2021, investigators managed to identify Cymanksi as a suspect by way of forensic genealogy, a process they used to confirm preserved semen found on Noga belonged to Cymanski, police said.
He was sentenced on Monday to life behind bars with 30 years of parole ineligibility for her murder. He was also ordered to serve consecutive sentences of 20 and 15 years for the other charges, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.