More than 100-year-old human bones found on three South Jersey beaches identified

Vincent Jackson

In March 1999, Paulette Fox walked the Margate beaches with her two boys, her husband and her Labrador Retriever, Katy.

Katy found a femur bone on the beach.

“It looked human,” said Fox, who added she took the bone to the Margate police department. “It was a complete femur bone. It was too large to be anything else.”

A skull washed ashore in 1995 in Longport, and more bones than just the femur were found in 1999 in Margate. Additional remains were found in 2013 in Ocean City.

John Doe’s scattered remains went without a name for 30 years since traditional methods of investigating could not deliver an identification.

New Jersey State Police and the Ramapo College of New Jersey Genetic Genealogy Center, Mahwah, Bergen County, confirmed the identity April 8. The bones bel