Fishermen using sonar equipment find car at bottom of Illinois river connected to 1976 cold case disappearance
Fishermen using sonar equipment found a vehicle at the bottom of an Illinois river that is connected to the 1976 disappearance of two men.
The gold 1966 Chevrolet Impala was found about 8 to 10 feet below the surface of the Pecatonica River, Winnebago County Sheriff Gary Caruana said at a news conference Wednesday.
The vehicle is linked to the nearly 50-year-old cold case of Clarence Owens, 65, and Everette Hawley, 75, who disappeared on Feb. 19, 1976.
They were last seen at a farm auction near the Winnebago-Ogle county line and had been driving a gold 1966 Chevrolet Impala when they vanished, authorities said.
Fishermen were using sonar equipment to look for the best fishing hole when they came across what they believed was a car, Caruana told reporters.
On Monday, a dive team went out to the river to retrieve the vehicle.
Human skeletal remains were also found, as well as personal items.
Jennifer Muraski, the Winnebago County coroner, said that a bone was found inside the vehicle and that several other bones were found along the riverbank.
"What we do have right now is what looks to be human skeletal remains of two individuals. We do not know if these individuals are female or male at this point. We are in the infancy stages of the investigation as far as who this might be," she said.
Over 100 skeletal remains have been recovered, Muraski said. Teams were going back out to the river to see whether more can be recovered.
Muraski said once the office has everything that can be recovered, it will work with a forensic anthropologist and the family to "see if there’s any injury to these skeletal remains."
"Can we tell the story of what might have happened to them via their remains?" she said. "And also DNA — who are they?”
Caruana, the sheriff, said investigators are "working on no foul play because there’s many theories here that we can go on."
"At this time we're still working on that it's a missing person's report, a missing person's case," he said. "But I will ask the public to give us some tips."
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
