Canadian man jailed in 1997 cold case killing of New Jersey sex worker

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Robert Creter told detectives he was plagued by nightmares of the 1997 killing of a New Jersey prostitute with his bare hands.

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Creter, 61, of Winnipeg, could run, but he could not hide from the cops — or himself.

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In a NJ courtroom last Wednesday, Creter was sentenced to 10 years in a  state prison for strangling sex worker Tamara “Tammy” Tignor in Bridgewater on Nov. 4, 1997.

“I have had nightmares about this happening for almost 30 years,” Creter reportedly told homicide detectives after he was arrested in Winnipeg in June 2024.

DNA found under the victim’s fingernails led investigators to Creter. He had pleaded guilty to murder, but was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Angela Borkowski on a first-degree aggravated manslaughter charge. Creter will need to serve 85% of his sentence before he’s eligible for parole.

The killer told the judge he strangled Tignor, 23, to death with his bare hands.

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Tignor, a native of Colorado, grew up in New Jersey and had struggled with addiction and homelessness. She survived by working as a prostitute in New York and New Jersey.

At the time of her murder, the petite woman’s life had spiralled into the dead end of drugs, and she reportedly had track marks on her arms, indicating she was a heroin user.

Tignor had been living with friends and at low-rent, hot-sheet motels.

Cops said Tignor spent her final hours at a Newark soup kitchen. There, she showered, was given clothes and had a meal.

Several hours later, she was spotted speaking to someone driving an orange van. At the time, Creter worked for a moving company that had a fleet of orange vans.

Investigators said that on Nov. 4, 1997 at 4:38 p.m., police received a 911 call reporting a body on a dirt access road. Cops identified the victim as Tignor.

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But for nearly three decades, the slaying went unsolved, becoming one of Somerset County’s oldest cold cases. According to MyCentralJersey.comin January 2023, investigators from the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office Major Crimes Unit met with detectives from the New Jersey State Police Cold Case Unit as part of their Garden State Cold Case Network and Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) Grant to discuss the stalled investigation.

Forensic evidence collected in 1997 was resubmitted for DNA testing. On April 6, 2023, during a search of CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), members of the New Jersey State Police Laboratory’s Office of Forensic Science were able to generate a match for Creter based on the resubmitted evidence.

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Cold case detectives began zeroing in on Creter, combing through every inch of his life and the circumstances surrounding the initial killing. The evidence led to Creter, who had moved to Winnipeg in 2002.

On May 18, 2023, Creter was charged with murder, and the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office worked with the U.S. Department of State to follow the legal process of serving him with his criminal complaint in Canada.

He was taken into custody by Winnipeg cops and, five months later, was extradited to the U.S. to face American justice.

“Tammy Tignor is the victim here. She was 23 years old when she was killed,” Somerset County Assistant Prosecutor Michael McLaughlin told reporters in 2024.

“It has been 27 years, as I said, 9,885 days since her body was found. And I want to thank our office, Bridgewater, and all the law enforcement agencies who worked this case because they never gave up. They never gave up in their relentless pursuit of justice.”

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun

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