SCARSDALE, New York — A family is speaking out after a discovery that could help solve the mystery of a couple from New York who vanished over four decades ago.
The missing person’s mystery of Charles and Catherine Romer of Scarsdale, New York, has perplexed investigators for 44 years since they disappeared in April 1980, and has haunted their families ever since.
“All the investigations and psychics and everything, the police, they worked so hard, and Blackwater divers have been searching for years. And they thought it was foul play,” said Christine Seaman Heller, granddaughter of the missing woman.
But on Monday, Seaman Heller learned that the clues to solve the mystery may be at the bottom of a retention pond off I-95 in south Georgia.
On Friday, a team of divers found the rusting, deteriorating remains of a 1979 Lincoln Continental, the car that investigators believe to be the vehicle Seaman Heller’s grandmother Catherine and her husband Charles, an oil company executive, was in when they vanished.
Investigators found a human bone inside the vehicle, and now detectives with the Glynn County Police Department plan to work with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to drain the pond in a search for more remains.
“The rust, corrosion, all kinds of bacteria is gonna develop on that car. And in trying to clean that stuff to see if you can find something…it’s going to be difficult,” Ken Jefferson, a crime and safety expert, said.
But what’s been incredibly difficult for Catherine Romer’s nine grandchildren, all sisters, was thinking all these years that their beloved grandmother and her husband had been victims of a terrible crime and had suffered.
Catherine and Charles Romer were friends, both widowed, who married a few years earlier.
Their disappearance had Catherine Romer’s son, Seaman’s late father, traveling to Georgia for years searching for answers.
“That was all we were consumed about until, you know, today,” Seaman Heller said. “I was talking about it yesterday with a friend of mine because it’s always been such a mystery. So, it would be so wonderful to find out, just have some peace. You know maybe it wasn’t a horrible ending, maybe it was just an accident.”
Investigators have pieced together some facts:
The Romers were on their way back to New York following a vacation in Miami.
They checked into the Brunswick Holiday Inn, which is now called the Royal Inn.
The retention pond is right near where the Romers were staying. It was practically right under the noses of investigators, who conducted one of the most extensive searches in state history to find the couple, who were in their 70’s when they disappeared.
The following day, housekeepers found bags and personal items in the room.
One of the divers told a local reporter in Georgia that perhaps the couple accidentally put the car in reverse and drove into the pond, adding the signs right now indicate a tragic accident.
“I just hope it’s gonna bring whatever happens, however it plays out, it brings closure for the family,” Andy Mavermat, former Holiday Inn manager, said.
Seaman Heller says no matter what the investigation finds now, she and her sisters are eternally grateful to those who have dedicated time and resources over the years as total strangers determined to find out what really happened.
At this time there is no conclusion about the identity of the remains that were found, Glynn County Police said.
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