By EMANUEL PERLMUTTERJAN. 12, 1975
JERSEYAN SEIZED M STRANGULATION
"A 40‐year‐old Maplewood, N. J., accountant has been arrested and charged with the murder of 24‐year‐old Joan Kramer, whose nude body was found
Aug. 28, 1972, in water‐filled ditch in Union Township. N. J.
The suspect was identified yesterday by Assistant Prosecutor Anthony Mautone of Essex County as Otto N. Nilson. He was picked up late*Friday night at his home at 173 Maplewood Avenue, which also served as his accounting office. He is to be arraigned tomorrow in Essex County Court.
Missing for 13 Days
Miss Kramer had been missing since Aug. 15, 1972, when she walked out of her home at 65 Crest Drive, South Orange, N. J., after a quarrel with her fiancé, a medical student at Columbia University.
She had walked about a mile to the center of the South Orange business district, according to the police, and then called a girlfriend about midnight to say that she was going to get a taxi to take her home.
Witnesses had reported, however, that they had seen a man in an automobile drive up to her at Sloan Street and South Orange Avenue and offer her a ride.
She had been missing for 13 days when two youths found her body in Elizabeth River Park in Union. An autopsy indicated that she had been strangled.
Mr. Mautone said yesterday that detectives from his office and the South Orange police began watching Mr. Nilson last summer When they became convinced that he resembled the composite sketch of the man identified by witnesses as the motorist who had given Miss Kramer a ride. He said that Mr. Nilson, who was divorced, lived alone.
Miss Kramer was the daughter of Julian Kramer, president of Suburban Foods, Inc., and the Tanteff Beef Company. Her death had led to an intensive investigation by the South Orange police as well as by the Essex County and Union Coun‐i ty Prosecutors’ offices."
Cases New Jersey Girl Murders 1960-1980