44 years after the New York couple disappeared, a car matching their description is found in Georgia

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A car similar to that of a wealthy New York couple missing for more than four decades has been found in a south Georgia pond near the hotel where they were last seen, Georgia police said.

Retired oil executive Charles Romer, 73, and his wife Catherine, 75, disappeared in their 1978 Lincoln in the spring of 1980. The couple, from Scarsdale, New York, returned home from Miami Beach, Florida, and checked into a Holiday Inn Brunswick, Georgia. Hotel staff feared that no one had slept in her bed and reported her missing.

On Friday, a Florida team that uses sonar to search for missing items discovered a vehicle that matched the description of the Romers’ vehicle submerged in a pond near Interstate 95, Glynn County police said. A human bone was also found inside the vehicle, it said.

The pond is being drained and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is assisting in the investigation.

“At this time there are no conclusions as to the identity of the remains found,” police said in a statement.

The statement did not speculate about what might have happened to the Romers, but at the time of their disappearance law officials expressed concerns about foul play. Catherine Romer was wearing about $81,000 worth of jewelry at the time, and police said one theory was that thieves broke into her motel room, The Associated Press previously reported.

“We all felt from our experience that these people were kidnapped and killed for their jewelry and that the vehicle and the bodies were hidden in the water,” rescue diver George Baker, who searched for the car for years, told AP in 1998.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.