Car likely belonging to couple missing for 44 years pulled from pond
Parts of a car likely belonging to a couple who vanished 44 years ago are pulled from a pond in Georgia near a hotel they were staying in. (Credit: Sunshine State Sonar)
A wealthy New York couple vanished without a trace in Georgia 44 years ago, but it appears it took a pair of volunteer divers just seven minutes to discover what are likely their car and remains submerged in a murky pond near a hotel they had been staying in.
Retired oil executive Charles Romer, 73, and his wife Catherine, 75, disappeared with their 1978 Lincoln in the spring of 1980. The Scarsdale, New York, couple were returning home from Miami Beach, Florida, and checked into a Holiday Inn in Brunswick.
Hotel employees were concerned that their bed had not been slept in and reported them missing. Fears were raised that the couple, known to carry expensive jewelry, had been victims of foul play and robbed.
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Charles and Catherine Romer are seen in the top right along with photos of their purported car and divers extracting pieces.
The hotel is situated next to a pond which, diver Mike Sullivan tells Fox News Digital, had been searched many times before, but terrible visibility had hitherto prevented searchers from making a breakthrough.
But the cold case suddenly heated up on Friday when Sullivan and his brother, John Martin, searched the pond in their tiny 6-foot-long boat and their specialized sonar equipment pinged a vehicle at the bottom of the pond.
Sullivan says he quickly dived to the bottom of the lake and pulled the nose from a 1978 Lincoln. He says human remains and a spate of jewelry were also found in the car.
"We got to the pond at about 10 a.m. in the morning and we found the car by 10:07 a.m., seven minutes later," Sullivan says.
The pair, who operate Sunshine State Sonar, a Florida-based volunteer search and rescue organization, then called the police, who arrived on the scene.
The submerged Lincoln as the pond is drained.? (Sunshine State Sonar)
The Glynn County Police Department and the Camden County Dive Team then tried to pull the Lincoln from the water and in doing so, spun the car around and ripped the axle off the car, video provided by Sullivan shows.
He says police then drained the pond to reveal the badly deteriorated car, which he says they eventually removed.
"The vehicle is similar to the description of a vehicle that Charles and Catherine Romer were believed to be driving when reported missing in April, 1980," Glynn County Police Department said in a statement. "At this time there is no conclusion about the identity of the remains that were found."
Police did not say what happened to the car or the people found inside.
The back seat of the car they discovered had the initials "C.R.R" embroidered, left, and an axle with a wheel, right. (Sunshine State Sonar)
Sullivan is convinced the remains are those of the couple and believes that they may have inadvertently reversed into the pond while trying to park and drowned in a tragic accident.
Sullivan says that the couple’s Lincoln was custom-made and the back seat of the car they discovered had their initials "C.R.R" embroidered.
The Romer’s checked into the Holiday Inn along Interstate 95 and U.S. 341 just before 4 p.m. on April 8, 1980, and took their belongings to their room. At around 5 p.m., a Georgia Highway Patrol officer saw the couple's car south of Brunswick near some restaurants and neither the Romer’s nor their car was seen again.
"It looks as if they were parking at the diner and he accidentally stepped on the gas pedal when he was parking and they backed into the lake," Sullivan says. "He must have had the car in reverse, and he stepped on the gas because the headlights are facing the shore. He backed into the lake accidentally."
Sullivan says police found diamonds worth tens of thousands of dollars wrapped in the carpet of the trunk.
"We also found a diamond ring, necklace, a gold purse, a gold diamond purse. We also found stuff with their initials on it and stuff," he says.
The closeness of the pond to the hotel and the length of time it has taken to make a breakthrough in the case has raised questions as to why a discovery was not made earlier.
"The pond has been checked many, many times throughout the years because it was literally a hundred yards from their hotel room. The problem is the sonar technology was not available back in 1980," Sullivan says.
"Divers would go in the pond and swim around and feel for the car but with zero visibility it is very difficult to find a car doing that. Sometimes you get lucky, it's very difficult. But they tried, you know, they probably came within feet of the car but just didn't find it."
Sullivan says they were initially called to the scene about a tip about a Ford sedan which had reportedly gone into the water. He says no bodies were found near that vehicle.
He says that the work of Sunshine State Sonar is done for free.
"Nobody hires us. We work with law enforcement agencies on cold cases and we take these cases on for free, pro bono," Sullivan says. "We specialize in underwater sonar and we are also a dive team."
Divers in the water at the scene. (Sunshine State Sonar)
"We have a database of all cases of people missing with their vehicles. These are specific types of missing persons cases where the victim's vehicle has never been recovered. And so what we do is we go to the area of their last known whereabouts and we search all the water where these people were last known to be."
"And the reason we were at that pond is because that is the pond in front of the hotel that they were staying at."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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