In June of 1974, Margaret Ellen Fox was 14 and her normal life was about to change dramatically. The 105-pound freckled-faced, shy girl stood 5’2″. She wore glasses and was missing two of her top front right teeth. Margaret lived at 224 Penn Street in Burlington, New Jersey, took piano lessons, and enjoyed riding horses. She was the only girl in a family of six children ranging from 11 to 22 years of age.

That often made it tough for Margaret but she preserved and managed to keep up with her brothers. She kept track of her daily activities and inner thoughts in dairies and those lay bare the hardships she has faced. The passages detail the bullying Margaret has endured from her peers and how she would like to move to California or Florida to start a new life.

At 14, that is impossible but she has found a possible escape in the form of her first job as a babysitter. Days earlier, Margaret and her 11-year-old cousin Lynne Park, who lives a few doors down, posted an ad in a newspaper advertising their services. The ad which was published on June 18, 1974 read, “BABYSITTERS – Experienced. Teen Girls. Love Kids. Work at your house. Call…” along with two phone numbers. That ad would prove to be effective with a man calling Lynne right away.

He wanted to know if Lynne could babysit his son the following day at his home in Mount Holly. Lynne thought it was best to ask her mother. Lynne’s mother was concerned for her daughter and didn’t want her to work so far away. Lynne’s loss would soon become Margaret’s golden opportunity to earn some money. Margaret received a phone call from the same man and the babysitting job likely felt like a dream come true for a 14-year-old looking to be liberated from a household filled with rambunctious boys.

Margaret listened intently, excitedly as the caller who gave the name John Marshall explained the details of the job. The freckled-faced young lady would receive $40 a week and morning bus fare for babysitting the man’s 5-year-old son 4 hours a day 5 days a week at his Mount Holly home. John Marshall had a backyard pool and Margaret was free to use it at her discretion. The backyard had a swing set as well. With school finished and no boyfriends to tend to, Margaret couldn’t let the unbelievable offer pass her by but there was one hurdle to jump and that was her strict parents.

She would need to convince her mother and father to give her permission to accept the job. Margaret discussed the job offer with her mother Mary only to be sent to her father David. The short, bald self-employed plumber wasn’t born yesterday and understood the dangers involved. Nevertheless, Margaret eventually convinced her parents to let her take the job. She would speak with John Marshall on the phone once again and plan her first day of work on Friday.

Unexpectedly, John Marshall called the Fox home and told David that the job would need to be postponed until Monday because his mother-in-law had passed. So, young Margaret Fox would wait through the weekend as the anticipation compounded. On Monday, Margaret would take the bus to High and Mill Street about 8 miles away from her home where she would be picked up by John Marshall or his wife in a red Volkswagen.

On June 24, 1974, Margaret Fox woke up early so she could meet with her employer first thing in the morning. She left her home at 224 Penn Street wearing jeans with a yellow patch on the knee, a blue blouse, a checkered jacket, and brown sandals with heel straps. She had a gold necklace with flowers and a blue stone on it and a gold charm bracelet. She was carrying an eyeglasses case featuring Huckleberry Hound on the exterior. She also had a bathing suit so she could swim in John Marshall’s swimming pool. Around 8:40 AM, Margaret went to the bus stop with her young brother who watched her board the bus alone.

As instructed by John Marshall, Margaret intended to proceed to High and West Broad Streets in Mount Holly where she would be picked up by John or his wife in a red Volkswagen. The young girl with the “smiley face eyes” would not go unnoticed on the bus. One passenger sat behind Margaret with her young son. When the boy pulled Margaret’s long hair, the girl turned around and chatted with them briefly. That woman would describe Margaret as being happy.

Another passenger watched as a girl matching Fox’s description exited the bus at the High and West Broad Streets intersection before stopping and talking to a young man in a red sports car. And then, she would vanish. Margaret was supposed to phone her parents but that never happened. John Marshall’s wife should’ve brought her home around 2:30 PM but again, it did not happen. David and Mary Fox found notes in their daughter’s room and those notes contained information about the job, Marshall, and a phone number they should contact in case of an emergency.

Mary hastily called that number and asked for Margaret Fox only to be told her daughter wasn’t there. A panicked Mary decided to call the number once again. When she did, she received a frightening revelation making matters dire. This time, Mary was notified that she had been calling a public telephone outside of an A&P Supermarket on Route 38 in Mount Holly. She desperately began calling others who may know something about Margaret’s whereabouts while David Fox drove to Mount Holly to search for his daughter.

Both would come up empty-handed leaving them with little choice but to contact local law enforcement. Police were notified at 12:30 AM on Tuesday. Law enforcement began their search immediately by retracing Margaret’s steps and following the bus route in hopes of finding people who had seen her. They ultimately spoke with the mother of the boy who pulled Margaret’s hair and the other bus passenger who saw Margaret speaking with a young man in a red Volkswagen.

They also interviewed Margaret’s parents. Mary Fox did not believe her daughter has run away saying, “She had no boyfriends. She hadn’t started to date yet. She was never in trouble for anything.” As for David, he told them about his conversation with John Marshall and that he believed the man was between 35 and 45 years old. That was the extent of the evidence police had regarding the man who called himself John Marshall. The circumstances led authorities to believe that Margaret had been abducted so they tapped the family’s phone hoping to catch the kidnapper’s voice.

With local news reporting nearly every detail of the Margaret Fox case, many felt it was their duty to help. Neighbors stopped by the Fox home to express their concern while some notified authorities about a stranger trying to lure their daughters with phony babysitting jobs. However, others were eager to use the terrible situation to their advantage. Shortly after the disappearance, the Fox family received ransom phone calls and notes. The family was asked for $10,000 with the caller saying, “10,000 dollars might be a lot of bread, but your daughter’s life is the buttered topping”. That recording would remain unreleased until FBI could enhance the audio and make it public in 2019.

A letter repeating the phrase was delivered to the family’s home and it was signed “So Long Again” with the letters S L and A capitalized. This led some to suspect the kidnapping might be linked to the Symbionese Liberation Army which was recently linked to the alleged kidnapping of newspaper heiress and fugitive Patty Hearst. While the family did its best to get the money together, the ransom caller never followed through or provided instructions for making the exchange. The FBI obtained fingerprint evidence from the ransom letters and compared those to fingerprints in the local database but never got a hit.

Since then, the fingerprints have gone missing. It has never been determined whether the ransom caller was indeed the kidnapper, hoax, or another red-herring.

For detectives, the number one priority was to identify John Marshall so they could get Margaret Fox back safely. Unfortunately, they had little to go on. The phone number used to contact Margaret was traced to an A&P grocery store in Mount Holly and that is where things got interesting. When Mount Holly Police Lt. Benjamin English heard the name John Marshall, he immediately thought of his friend Jack Marshall who surprisingly was the manager of the A&P store where the phone was located. He was questioned right away and agreed to take a polygraph test but it was determined that the manager was not involved in Margaret’s disappearance.

He would later say, “I have no idea what is happening. It’s just causing me a lot of trouble.” Margaret’s sister-in-law Ramona knew Jack through one of his daughters and she couldn’t believe he was involved either. Investigators were back to square one. Investigators learned that Margaret was spotted speaking with a young man in a red sports car as soon as she got off of the bus so they tracked him down and interviewed him. Again, they hit a dead end.

The man was not involved and it was believed Margaret has approached him mistakenly due to the appearance of his vehicle. Despite countless calls saying a friend, neighbor, or coworker might’ve been the kidnapper, investigators and the Fox family never got the answers they were looking for. Over the years, the case would stall and the amount of manpower dedicated to finding Margaret would shrink but her father David would never give up.

The self-employed plumber cruised the streets of Mount Holly and other nearby local areas in hopes of finding his daughter. Sometimes, his sons would tag along and they would travel 30 miles or further to look for Margaret. Unfortunately, their efforts would never pay off. But two years after Margaret’s disappearance, there would be a break in the case.

On November 23, 1975, Charles Clobridge was serving time for larceny at the Montgomery County Jail in Norristown, Pennsylvania. He agreed to sit down with investigators because he had something ghastly to tell them. He was ready to confess to the unsolved murder of Margaret Fox. According to Clobridge, he picked up Margaret Fox in Mount Holly and took her to the Catskill Mountains where he strangled her and threw her off a cliff. To validate the claim, investigators dropped down from a helicopter and combed the treacherous mountains on Thanksgiving weekend of 1975.

Despite Clobridge leading them to the spot where he had dumped the body, Margaret’s remains were never found. Then, he changed his story claiming he buried her body in several landfills in Burlington County. Before long, investigators knew something wasn’t adding up so Burlington County Detective Neil Forte decided to investigate Clobridge’s history. He would discover that Clobridge had been in a North Jersey hospital on the day of Margaret’s disappearance. He would say, “We were able to find out details of his hospital stay – right down to the hour his temperature was taken, when he got injections or medication.”

Clobridge was a vagrant and many believed he was trying to secure permanent housing by confessing to the crime. In the courtroom, Charles was asked by Judge Paul Kramer why he committed the gigantic hoax. His response was “Honestly, judge, I can’t answer that”. And once again, detectives were right back where they had started. Square one without any solid evidence.

An additional two years would pass before another suspect landed on the detectives’ radar. This time, law enforcement had a sex offender in their crosshairs. The man had a red Volkswagen around the time of Margaret’s disappearance and he lived in Mount Holly not far from the bus stop. By all accounts, he ticked all of the right boxes so he was interviewed promptly. During the interview, the man presented a solid alibi. Since he was a ham radio operator, he kept a logbook of his conversations and that evidence showed that the man had been on the radio around the time that Margaret Fox departed the bus.

Investigators believed that was enough to clear the man. Since then, little has happened to push the investigation forward. From time to time, bones are discovered in New Jersey giving hope that detectives might get a break. Or, a local newspaper will run an article trying to revitalize the case yet nothing has uncovered the mystery involving the disappearance of Margaret Fox.

In 2017, it was announced that former Willingboro Police Detective Michael Dalesio would be working to revive the case. Although a long-time member of law enforcement, Dalesio felt his career was cut short when his ankle was crushed during a scuffle trying to take a man to a psychiatric facility. When speaking about the Fox case, we would say, “Is she alive? I hope so. Maybe she felt she wanted a new life but how could she fall off the grid like that for so long?”

Around this time, it was revealed that Margaret’s diaries contained accounts of bullying including one incident when snowballs were hurled at her. Also, one new tip said someone matching Fox’s description had been spotted giving hope Margaret was alive and living under an alias. Retired Burlington City detective Leonard Burr was the first officer sent to investigate the disappearance on June 24, 1974.

He wondered, “Maybe she just decided she liked her freedom and went off?” He also admitted that a rivalry between local police and the FBI hindered the investigation while claiming those problems no longer exist. Dalesio told a local newspaper he hoped to find the fingerprints collected from the ransom note and place them into the national database. Back then, they were only matched against local collections but have since gone missing. If only that evidence had been retained, a suspect may have been brought to justice.

Over the years, many unidentified women have been ruled out as Margaret Fox. The Knox County Jane Doe killed in an attempted robbery and the Fairfax County Jane Doe are among those cases.

Margaret Ellen Fox was born on February 4, 1960. She was 14 years old when she disappeared in suspicious circumstances in Burlington, New Jersey on June 24, 1974. Margaret’s parents have gone to their graves without answers. They wait to be reunited with their daughter on the other side.