Source: CNN
The family of a New York couple missing since 1980 says authorities informed them that human remains found inside a car submerged in a Georgia pond are those of the pair.
“We are deeply saddened and equally relieved that our grandparents Charles and Catherine Romer’s 44-year mystery disappearance has been solved. While this discovery brings closure, it still has been very emotional,” the Romer family said in a statement to CNN Thursday.
CNN reached out to the Glynn County Police Department and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to confirm the identities of the remains but did not receive an immediate response.
On November 22, a human bone was found inside a submerged Lincoln Continental, prompting authorities to drain the pond in Brunswick to search for further remains.
Kim Romer told CNN that she received a call from a detective the same day, informing her that a single bone and her grandparents’ initials in a monogrammed headrest were found in the car, confirming that it was “definitely” theirs.
“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,” the Glynn County Police Department announced on social media on November 23.
“Ultimately a match must be determined by the VIN number, and it has not been possible yet to get that from the vehicle found in the pond,” a department spokesperson told CNN on Tuesday.
The Romers were on their way back to New York after a vacation in Miami when they disappeared near the Brunswick Holiday Inn, now known as the Royal Inn, CNN affiliate WABC reported. Housekeepers found their bags and personal items in their hotel room the day after they were last seen.
The car was found in a pond along Interstate 95 and New Jesup Highway, near the hotel where the couple was last seen.
Authorities credited Sunshine State Sonar, a nonprofit focused on locating missing persons, and the Camden County Dive Team for their assistance in finding the vehicle.
Sunshine State Sonar said they acted on a tip regarding a submerged vehicle and found a 1970s Ford sedan. A second vehicle was then discovered, they said, which matched the description of the Romers’ 1979 Lincoln Continental.
“There was zero visibility … so everything was by feel,” Sunshine State Sonar co-founder John Martin told CNN Wednesday. The team used a part number from a grille they removed from the car to identify the make and model, Martin said.
“I went back down and dove the vehicle and found an open window,” Martin told CNN’s John Berman. “I reached inside the window and just started feeling around. I felt something hard and long, so I grabbed whatever it was, brought it to the surface of the water and, sure enough, it happened to be a … bone.”
The Romers’ disappearance has puzzled their families, investigators and the community of Scarsdale, New York, for more than 40 years. “All the investigations and psychics and everything, the police, they worked so hard. And they thought it was foul play,” Christine Seaman Heller, a granddaughter of the missing woman, told WABC of the years of searching.
The investigation led her late father, Catherine Romer’s son, to travel to Georgia for years seeking answers.
“That was all we were consumed about until today,” Seaman Heller told the news outlet. “It’s always been such a mystery. It would be so wonderful to find out. Just have some peace. Maybe it wasn’t a horrible ending, maybe it was just an accident.”
“Sadly, Charles Romer Jr, Jim Romer and Frank Heller are not with us to share this momentous turn of events and to know their parents will finally be laid to rest in peace,” granddaughters Kim Romer and Diane Romer Pao said in the family statement. They also thanked South Carolinians Jason Souhrada and Adam Brown for their assistance finding the vehicle.