Fingerprints ID pedestrian killed in 1993 as murder suspect

ELIZABETH, N.J. – A pedestrian who was struck and killed in 1993 has been identified through fingerprint analysis as the same man wanted by police in his girlfriend’s slaying.

Wilmane Nicolas, 31, of Elizabeth, New Jersey, did not have any identification when he was hit and killed by a vehicle in the city on Oct. 28, 1993, authorities said. Two days later, his girlfriend, 31-year-old Magalie Francois, of Linden, was found stabbed and beaten in Elizabeth.

Police identified Nicolas as a suspect in the case, and a warrant for his arrest was issued in January 1994. He was placed on the Union County sheriff’s office’s Most Wanted List.

Meanwhile, the Union County prosecutor’s office said Wednesday that the pedestrian’s fingerprints were submitted to state police in 1993 and to the FBI in 2006. But neither produced a match of a known person, the prosecutor’s office said.

Donna Fontana, a forensic anthropologist for state police, recently entered the fingerprints of a series of unidentified bodies to the National Institute of Justice’s National Missing and Unidentified Person System database. It returned a match to Nicolas.