Here is a 33 year old story on the case from New York Times 7 January 1986...
One night 10 years ago Carolyn Majane, then 15 years old, left two girlfriends on Main Street here to walk to a party nearby. It was the last time her friends and family were to see her alive.
And it was the last trace of her until two weeks ago when three 10-year-old boys playing in the freshly turned earth of a housing construction site found her skull.
Stephen G. Raymond, Burlington County Prosecutor, said in an interview that he was waiting to learn the cause of death to see if his office should investigate.
At the same time, he said, one lesson emerging from this case for law-enforcement authorities is that they cannot assume that missing children are runaways and must investigate the possibility of foul play immediately while evidence and witnesses are readily available. Police Practice Criticized
Ten years ago, Mr. Raymond said, police departments were inclined to list disappearances of teen-agers routinely as runaways rather than to treat them as suspicious.
''Many missing persons are runaways,'' he said, ''and the universal view at the time was that there were so many missing-persons cases that you couldn't possibly investigate them all, so why investigate any unless there was some clear indication of foul play.''
''Law enforcement cannot any longer assume that any case is merely a runaway,'' the Prosecutor said. ''If no reason is found for a disappearance, it must be treated as calling for an investigation.''
Mr. Raymond, who has been County Prosecutor since 1982, is also chairman of the State Commission on Missing Persons. He said the 16-member commission, which has just completed a one-year study, would submit a plan to the Governor and Legislature this month outlining a more effective method of dealing with cases of missing people.
Family Now in Maryland
Carolyn Majane's father, John Majane, who moved to Maryland with his wife and four sons two weeks after Carolyn's disappearance, said by telephone from his home in Bethesda that he heartily endorsed immediate investigation.
He said he had told the police from the beginning that his only daughter was not the type to run away from home. He said one of the first places a full-scale criminal investigation would have checked would have been the site in Mount Laurel where the skeleton of the girl was found, about four miles from where she was last seen.
In 1975, the father said, it was a heavily wooded hideaway known to residents as a ''lover's lane'' and a drinking spot for young people.
He said he and his wife had suspected the worst but were wrenched with uncertainty about what actually had happened after Mrs. Majane gave her daughter a ride from home to meet friends on Main Street the night of Aug. 22, 1975. Nevertheless, he said, they continued to press authorities for more than a perfunctory investigation.
Mr. Majane said he and his wife were notified the day after Christmas of the finding of the skeleton. The couple returned to New Jersey the next day and went to the construction site. The bones were only two to three feet under the surface, he said. Identified by Dental Charts.
Mr. Raymond said positive identification of Carolyn's skull was made by a forensic odontologist who compared dental charts with her lower teeth, which had had extensive dental work and still held her braces.
Close to the skull, detectives found the rest of her skeleton and a shell necklace and bits of the clothing she had been wearing.
Mr. Raymond said a visual inspection of the bones by the County Medical Examiner's office found no fracture or evidence of trauma, so the skeleton has been sent to the State Medical Examiner's office for microscopic examination by a forensic anthropologist to try to determine the cause of death.
Meanwhile, Mr. Raymond said, the death will have to be classified as ''suspicious'' rather than a homicide. The Prosecutor said that if forensic detective work indicated homicide, it would set off the kind of full-scale investigation that was not conducted in 1975.
Tough Investigation Feared
''Now we will have to reconstruct history,'' he said. ''And we will be dealing with 10-year-old memories and people who could be living anywhere in the country or abroad.''
There has been much improvement in handling the cases of missing people, he said, since the Federal Missing Persons Act of 1982 created a national system of hot lines for the public to call in tips.
He noted that in 1984 New Jersey adopted legislation creating a missing persons unit in the state police. The same law established the commission that Mr. Raymond heads and charged it with developing a plan for further state action.
Last year Attorney General Irwin I. Kimmelman directed all county prosecutors to report immediately to county and state authorities all missing children and adults. Prosecutors ordered local police departments to comply.
Now, Mr. Raymond said, computerized communications systems link local, county, state and national law-enforcement offices for reports on missing people.
LINK:
10-YEAR-OLD DEATH OF GIRL INVESTIGATED
