The Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office has announced that a multiagency cold case murder investigation in Barnegat has been solved after 31 years.

According to the prosecutor’s office, DNA testing identified John Pelletier as the person responsible for the murder of Deborah "Debbie" Ann Bloomquist, 30, of Ocean Township in 1991.

The prosecutor’s office says the body of a young woman, later identified as Bloomquist, was discovered in a heavily wooded area in Barnegat. An autopsy revealed she died from multiple stab wounds and was the victim of a sexual assault. The Medical Examiner ruled her cause of death a homicide.

Biological evidence was collected and preserved, but the technology did not exist at that time to submit the evidence for DNA testing.

Over a decade after her murder, the biological evidence led to the development of a male DNA profile. Detectives were able to later identify the profile collected from the scene as belonging to Pelletier and reach the conclusion that Pelletier was the individual responsible for Bloomquist's murder.

Pelletier passed away in North Dakota in 2015.