On April 2, 1989, 74-year-old American newspaper owner Emily "Cissy" Stuart was stabbed to death in her home in the borough of Princeton, New Jersey. Her fully clothed body was discovered two days later in her locked basement with no signs of a struggle, and nothing was missing from the house. The Mercer County medical examiner found five stab wounds on her back. The murder weapon was never recovered, a motive for the killing has never been determined and no perpetrator was ever identified. , the murder remained unsolved. The case was the subject of a documentary directed by her son Charles Stuart called My Mother's Murder (1992), which aired on the HBO documentary series America Undercover.
Background Emily "Cissy" Stuart was born Emily K. Cowenhoven in New Brunswick to Emily and Charles Tiebout Cowenhoven Jr., a lawyer.Watterson, Kathryn. (July 2, 1989) "A Life Taken, a Town's Illusion Lost". The New York Times. Retrieved July 1, 2026. (August 6, 1939) "Princeton Girl is Married to Donald Stuart – Miss Emily Cowenhoven Wed Yesterday at Trinity Church". The Times. Trenton, New Jersey. Retrieved July 21, 2026. – via Newspapers.com. "Miss Emily K. Cowenhoven, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles T. Cowenhoven Jr., of Lafayette Road, West Princeton, and Donald Clive Stuart, Jr., son of Professor Donald Clive Stuart, of Princeton University, were married yesterday afternoon."Scannell, John J., ed. (1919) Scannell's New Jersey's First Citizens and State Guide 1919-1920. Vol. 2. Paterson, New Jersey. self-published. p. 99. Retrieved July 21, 2026. "Children [of Charles Tiebout Cowenhoven]: Charles Tiebout, Jr., counselor-at-law, and a member of the firm Convers & Kirlin, in New York City, who married Emily Kearney Rodgers, of New York ... Charles Tiebout Cowenhoven—Lawyer, ex-Judge and ex-Prosecutor of the Pleas—is a descendant of one of the earliest and distinguished Colonial families of America. The founder of the family was Wolfert Gerritsen Van Cowenhoven, who came from Holland in 1630, and founded the colony of New Amersfoot on Long Another ancestor, Nicasius de Sille, was one of the Nine Selectmen in the Council of Governor Stuyvesant; also a 'Schepen' and mentioned in the list of 'Great Citizens' of New York, in the year 1657." She was descended from Wolfert Gerritse van Couwenhoven—one of the first pioneers of New Netherland and the founder of New Amersfoort (present-day Flatlands, Brooklyn, New York)Bergen, Teunis G. (1876). The Bergen Family, or, the Descendants of Hans Hansen Bergen, One of the Early Settlers of New York and Brooklyn, L. I., With Notes on the Genealogy of Some of the Branches of the Cowenhoven, Voorhees, Eldert, Stoothoof, Cortelyou, Stryker, Suydam, Lott, Wyckoff, Barkeloo, Lefferts, Martense, Hubbard, Van Brunt, Vanderbilt, Vanderveer, Van Nuyse, and Other Long Island Families. Joel Munsell. Albany, New York. p. 327. Retrieved July 21, 2026. "... Wolfert Gerretsen Van Couwenhoven, the common ancestor of the Cowenhoven, Kouwenhoven or Conover family in this country, who emigrated from Amersfoort, in the province of Utrecht, in Holland, in 1630 ... On the 16th of June, 1636, Wolfert Gerretsen and Andries Hudden bought of the Indians and obtained from Gov. Van Twiller, on the 6th of June, 1637, a patent for the westernmost of the three flats on Long Island ... The settlement was at first named New Amersfoort, in honor of the place of Wolfert's nativity, was afterwards commonly known as the Baai or Bay, and since as Flatlands."—and Nicasius de Sille, a founder of New Utrecht who served as First Councillor and schout-fiscal to Peter Stuyvesant. She moved with her family to the borough of Princeton, New Jersey when she was 11, later attending Rosemary Hall in Greenwich, Connecticut,(May 22, 1939) "Troths Announced of Two Sisters". The New York Times. Retrieved July 6, 2026. "Miss Emily Cowenhoven attended Rosemary Hall in Greenwich, Conn., and Miss Fine's School here and was graduated in 1937 from Wellesley College. Mr. Stuart ... is a member of the Quadrangle Club, graduate secretary of his class and editor of The Princeton Herald. ... Miss Emily Cowenhoven and Mr. Stuart will be married in August." Miss Fine's School in Princeton, and Bryn Mawr CollegeLeDuc, Daniel. (April 26, 1989) "Murder Casts a Pall On Princeton: Townspeople Now Talk of Locks, Alarms and Safety". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved July 9, 2026. before graduating from Wellesley College in 1937. She soon went to work at the Princeton Herald, where her future husband, Princeton University graduate Donald C. Stuart Jr., was editor-in-chief. The couple married in 1939. In 1946, they founded Town Topics, their own local weekly newspaper, together with Mary and Dan Coyle, Stuart's sister and brother-in-law.Papers of Princeton – Town Topics. Princeton University Library. Retrieved July 3, 2026. In 1953 the couple moved into a white Victorian house at 34 Mercer Street. They had two Donald C. "Jeb" III and Charles, a television producer for and four grandchildren.Shea, Kevin. (January 5, 2025) "A Mystery, Decades Later: Who Killed the Grand Dame of Princeton?". The Star-Ledger. Newark, New Jersey. – via Newspapers.com. . Retrieved August 7, 2026. Whitehouse, Beth. (April 19, 1989) "Princeton Murder a Mystery". Asbury Park Press. Asbury Park, New Jersey. p. A6. Retrieved August 6, 2026. Newspapers.com. The couple divorced in 1968,King, Susan. (June 14, 1992) "Charles Stuart: When Mom is Murdered". Los Angeles Times. . Retrieved June 29, 2026. and Stuart's ex-husband remarried.Mann, Virginia. (June 16, 1992) "In Princeton, a Haunting Crime". The Record. Hackensack, New Jersey. Retrieved July 6, 2026. "On that sunny Sunday in April ... everyone had their windows open. The church across the street was crowded with potential witnesses, too, but no one saw or heard anything. ... When she went back inside, someone waiting in the darkness attacked her from behind with a knife, stabbed her in the back five times, then locked the door, leaving no not even a as clues. ... After they sold the house and hired a moving van, for example, [Charles] notes: 'Pieces of furniture that had not moved an inch in 40 years were now being uprooted'. ... she wore her wedding ring even after her husband remarried; indeed, even after he died." He died of cancer in 1981, after which time Jeb took over as editor-in-chief of Town Topics.Rein, Richard K. (February 1, 2017) "Princeton Packet and Town Topics Duel in the Driveway". Community News. Allentown, New Jersey. Retrieved July 6, 2026. Jeb's wife Sheila managed the business side of the newspaper.Johnson, Barbara L.; Stuart, Craig C. (June 11, 2008) "Jeb Stuart, Former Town Topics Editor and Publisher, Dies at 66". Town Topics. Princeton, New Jersey. Retrieved August 3, 2026.
One of her town's most well-known residents, Stuart was a feisty and opinionated woman who did not hesitate to speak her mind. Described by a neighbor as being anything but "a little old lady", Stuart would debate controversial topics such as feminism, all while peppering her conversation with four-letter words including damn and hell. She was known to invite into her home door-to-door solicitors who offered religious books, if only for the opportunity to present the counternarrative. Despite the fact that she had an old money background, Stuart was in the habit of doing her own household chores such as splitting firewood, shoveling snow, and repairing things around the house.
Even while she still worked at the family newspaper, Stuart was involved in other activities around town. She participated in local theater, taking on roles with the Princeton Community Players group including Mary Poppins and the wicked witch, and delighted passersby in front of her house on Halloween by wearing her witch hat while raking leaves. A longtime member of the Stony Brook Garden Club of Princeton, Stuart devotedly tended to the roses, monkshoods and daffodils she grew in her yard (referring to the latter as her "Mr. Einsteins"; the famous physicist used to live down the street).(April 3, 2012) "Anniversary for Princeton Slaying of Cissy Stuart". The Trentonian. . Retrieved July 8, 2026. "No neighbors had seen anyone in the yard with her as she tended to her hybrid 'Emily' roses and daffodils she called 'Mr. Einsteins' because the famed scientist Albert Einstein had lived on the street during his Princeton years." She was fond of sprinkling California poppy seeds around town where she thought some color was needed, and would even trim trees in the public domain and pick up litter as she came across it on her regular walks around town.
Murder Stuart began her final day of Sunday, April 2, 1989 by attending services at Trinity Church, which was right across the street from her house. At 9:00 a.m. she had breakfast in her home with her sister, Margaretta Cowenhoven. A little over an hour later, Stuart announced that she was going to do some gardening, at which point her sister left the house. At half past noon, Stuart's friend Doris Mellinger dropped by. Stuart often drank alcoholic beverages such as beer and bourbon with her guests; on this occasion, the two enjoyed Bloody Marys. Mellinger left the house at 1:15 p.m. Police initially assumed that Mellinger was the last person to see Stuart alive; but at around 4:30 p.m. (or not long thereafter) Stuart was outside gardening again when she saw Elias "Bloxy" a local businessowner—driving by on the way to his lumberyard, and she waved to him.
Jeb Stuart spent the day with his family at their Bay Head beach house. Later, he drove with his daughter Laurie to the Town Topics parking lot in Princeton, arriving there at 6:00 p.m.; they went there to retrieve a car and set of keys that his son Craig, a Princeton University student, had borrowed. They left the parking lot ten minutes later after Laurie could not locate Craig in his nearby dormitory, and they arrived home in Hopewell Township at 6:30 p.m. Meanwhile, Sheila and her mother—who had driven to Bay Head in a separate left there at 5:30 p.m. to do some window shopping, before returning home to Hopewell at dusk.
At 1:20 p.m. the next day, Jeb made the two-minute walk from the Town Topics offices at 4 Mercer Street to his mother's house for his daily lunch with her, which she usually prepared for him. He used his own key to enter through the front door, walked into the kitchen, and noticed that the side door leading to a back porch was ajar, the storm door in the door frame was left unlocked, and her copy of The New York Times was thrown down on the porch; his mother was nowhere to be seen. Jeb found all of this to be incongruous, but reasoned that on occasion she was known to leave the door unlocked on her way out. After checking upstairs, he next unlocked the interior hallway door which led down to the basement, opened the light and called out to his mother, with no response. After not finding her in the yard, Jeb noticed that the padlock on the black wooden door on the left side of the house—which provided access from the yard to the basement—was also locked. He thought this was odd, since his mother normally left that door unlocked in order to allow herself easy access to her gardening tools in the basement; she would usually simply slip the shackle into the latch and turn the lock body to make the door appear to be locked, but without actually clicking the lock shut. Jeb later told investigators that having found the basement locked from both sides, he became convinced that no further checking in that space was necessary; on other occasions, he said he had a feeling that day that his mother might be in the basement, that something might have happened to such as a medical emergency—and that he could not bring himself to descend to the bottom of the staircase: