44 years after New York couple vanished, car matching description of theirs is found in Georgia

BRUNSWICK, Georgia — A car similar to one driven by 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, police in Georgia said.

Retired oil executive Charles Romer, 73, and his wife Catherine, 75, vanished with their 1978 Lincoln in the spring of 1980. The Scarsdale, New York, couple were returning home from Miami Beach, Florida, and checked into a Holiday Inn in Brunswick, Georgia. Hotel employees were concerned that their bed had not been slept in and reported them missing.

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

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

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“At this time there is no conclusion about the identity of the remains that were found,” police said in a statement.

The statement did not speculate on what might have happened to the Romers, but at the time of their disappearance, law officers 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 burglarized their motel room, The Associated Press reported previously.

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