A Florida man who had been missing for nearly twenty years was just positively identified, ending a cold case that lasted for decades. What helped the police finally figure out what happened was the discovery of his vehicle was located in a retention pond, which then in turn led to his remains being recovered. Police had been made aware of the car’s location earlier this month and now conclusively ended the long-standing mystery of his whereabouts.
Robert Helphrey, 34 at the time of his disappearance in 2006, went missing almost 17 years ago and was last seen leaving a bar in Palm Harbor, Florida at closing time. According to phone records, he had called a friend at 2:05 am and asked them to meet at his apartment.
Tragically, these were the last contacts with Helphrey and he was never seen nor heard from again.
Now, after all these years, his friends and family can have some overdue closure.
At the time of his disappearance, police say they searched nearby retention ponds and forests, but to no avail. Thankfully, new work being done by a volunteer team called the Sunshine State Sonar Search carries out work to locate missing vehicles and persons using more advanced technology than was available at the time of Helphrey’s mysterious disappearance.
The group works with local law enforcement and contacted them after their search of the particular retention pond yielded the hallmarks of a submerged vehicle. Police pulled out a gray 2005 Mitsubishi SUV registered to the missing man along with his remains.
Fox News noted that the man’s next of kin were notified was identification had been made, although they were still investigating the official cause of death. Perhaps – and this is going out on a limb – a man leaving a bar at 2:00 am might have been putting himself in a frightening position by driving.
As sad as these circumstances are, and surely no one deserves to die in this manner, the very least we can say is that no one else was hurt or killed by his decision to presumably drive under the influence.
This isn’t the only cold case that police have solved recently. The New York State Police solved a decades-old murder, as we reported on Patriot Fetch, saying:
The New York State Police just made an arrest in connection with Megan McDonald’s murder in 2003. McDonald was, at the time of her murder, the 20-year-old daughter of a New York Police Department detective.
She was found dumped on the side of the road in Orange County, New York in mid-March of 2003. She had been beaten to death in the backseat of her white Mercury Sable. Describing her murder at the time, the FBI said, in a plea for information that offered $10,000 to anyone with details:
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York, New York, is seeking information regarding the murder of twenty-year-old, Orange County, New York, resident, Megan McDonald. McDonald’s body was found on March 15, 2003, in a field off Bowser Road in the town of Wallkill, New York. Her 1991 white Mercury Sable was discovered two days later in the parking lot of Kensington Manor Apartment Complex, also in Wallkill. The cause of her death was determined to be blunt force trauma. At the time of her death, McDonald worked at the Galleria Mall in Middletown and attended SUNY Orange County Community College.”
Well, the police finally made an arrest for her murder. They arrested, on Thursday, Edward V. Holley, a 42-year-old black man. Megan was white. The two had been in a romantic relationship that Megan attempted to end a few days before her murder. State police Capt. Joseph Kolek said at a news conference Thursday that the murder was connected to that relationship, saying: “We believe this crime was intimate partner violence. Additionally, Ed Holley owed Megan a substantial sum of money.”
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