Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office

25 Kirkpatrick Street, 3^rd Floor, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 08901 (732) 745-3300

*News Release* Date: May 26, 2011

New developments in 1980 homicide

Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce J. Kaplan and Director Robert Hubner of the Woodbridge Police Department announced today that investigators have developed new information in the active investigation of a homicide that occurred in 1980.

While the details of the new information cannot be revealed at this time, investigators may be a step closer to making an arrest in the death on October 6, 1980, of Melvin Hopkins, 21, of the Avenel section of Woodbridge.

Hopkins was found dead in a car parked on an access road in the Keasbey section of Woodbridge, under the Driscoll (Garden State Parkway) Bridge and the Edison (Route 9) Bridge, which span the Raritan River.

An autopsy showed that Hopkins sustained blunt force trauma and died from multiple stab wounds.

Hopkins was the lead singer of a local rock bank known as ‘’High Voltage.’’

An intensive investigation was undertaken by members of the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office and the Woodbridge Police Department, but no arrest has been made.

Anyone with information on the case is asked to call Detective Christopher Lyons of the Woodbridge Police Department at (732) 602- 7398, or Investigator Michael Daniewicz of the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office at (732) 745-4018.

Melvin Hopkins