December 2013. Donald L. Erwin, a 59-year-old veteran, tells his wife that he is going to buy cigarettes. He left his trailer in Camdenton, Missouri, and got behind the wheel of his Hyundai. He never returned. Ten years later, in December 2023, his car was found submerged in a pond about 8 km from his home, reports the New York Times.
The car, a 2002 Elantra, was recovered Dec. 16 from private property in Camden County, according to a news release from local authorities. Investigators found human remains matching Donald L. Erwin. The man behind the macabre discovery is YouTuber James Hinkle, who specialises in scuba diving and miscellaneous facts. He told The New York Times that he learned about the case of Donald L. Erwin's disappearance in 2021, and that since then, he had methodically explored the bodies of water near Mr. Erwin's house using a kayak equipped with sonar equipment and a drone.
"It startled me"
On the afternoon of December 16, Mr. Hinkle decided to dig a pond on private property, the American newspaper reported. He then spotted it like "a floating tire" in the water. "It startled me," he admits to The New York Times. Then, the YouTuber discovered, with the help of his drone, that this object "looked more and more like a car". Sheriff's deputies and investigators, accompanied by divers, shortly thereafter pulled the car out of the pond. The licence plate matches Mr. Erwin's.
For Donald L. Erwin's sister, this sad discovery "is a new sorrow," even if it "brings this matter to an end." For nearly a decade, Mr. Erwin's family, along with friends and local residents, searched the area for clues. During this time, Donald L. Erwin's wife even died.
More than 24,000 people remain missing in the United States, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. Other court cases have in the past been solved by amateurs before the authorities. In 2021, a YouTuber discovered the car of two teenagers from Tennessee who had been missing for 21 years.