Cold, wet cases: Oklahoma troopers stumble on five bodies in two cars at bottom of lake
A mystery. Murder, or accident? Looking at a map, it seems Highway 44 runs very close to the lake; but I’ve never been there. Could be easy to drive into the lake if the driver was impaired or suffered a moment’s inattention. Could be convenient to dump bodies, too.
The cars’ orientation relative to each other would be interesting. Anything suspicious?
I didn’t read anything about anything suspicious. I don’t think much can be learned from the orientation of the vehicles in the article. Obviously they were hauled out of the lake, and their actual and relative positions are no doubt just where they ended up on recovery.
The Camaro’s rear end looks chewed, and its nose is pointed toward the lake. My first thought would be that it went into the lake nose-first, and hauled out by the rear and – which failed structurally after rusting for over four decades. Why is the '50s Chevy’s tail pointed toward the lake? Did it go in backwards? Why isn’t it as damaged as the Camaro? I don’t know. Again: It might just be where the recovery crews dropped them.
I wonder where the location is in relation to the road?
Saw this on the news earlier and it’s a fascinating story. I think both must be accidents but we’ll ze how things play out. It’s hard to believe they laid undiscovered for that long.
I’m not sure they have their best men on the case yet.
Nice work so far detective. 
November 20. I wonder if it was cold enough to ice over and they decided to drive out there.
The Camaro crashed in November. I don’t know what the weather is like in Oklahoma, but in many places in the U.S. there can be ice on the roads that time of year. I can imagine a 16-year-old kid showing off his brand-new muscle car to impress his older friends, and hitting a patch of ice and skidding into an icy lake. You don’t even need an icy road. A teenager and horsepower are enough. Perhaps the rear-end damage is not from hauling the car out of the lake, but from the crash itself.
There’s not enough information to come up with a similar hypothesis for the older crash. But it looks like they cars may have been found near each other, since they were hauled out to the same place. Could be a ‘Dead Man’s Curve’ situation, where caution is advisable.
Or they could have been dumped. But applying Hanlon’s razor, they were probably accidents.
EDIT: I see that MacCat beat me to the ice hypothesis.
.
Elk City is about 120 miles east of Amarillo, it’s unlikely to have frozen lakes in November. A patch of ice on the road maybe.
According to Weather Underground, in Oklahoma City (100 miles east) it was 62 degrees that day and 30 that night with no precipitation. 59/42/no precip the day before, and 73/44/no precip the next day.
Body count is up to six. They found a third one in the older vehicle.
A couple of years ago there was a similar thing in a local lake – two bodies found in a car that had been under water 30 or 30 years. One of my co-workers was totally freaked because she grew up living on the lake shore and she spent her childhood “swimming with bits of human bodies swirling all around me.”
Looks like the new sonar equipment paid off. The first training exercise, and this.
Looking at the map it seems like a pretty straight piece of road. Both cars were found next to each other. It is bizarre that they would both be in the lake next to each other ten years apart.
It is clearly a case of a Lady in White ghost which caused both cars to veer off into the lake.
♫ OOOOk-lahoma, where the cars go driving in the lake ♫
I’m a bad person
Seriously, though. I wonder if some folks are getting some closure on this - are the parents of the teenagers even still alive?
I’m going with serial killer. It can’t be a coincidence.
Very odd. I wonder if an OK DOPER could head out and report back as to whether there were any blind curves on the road that would land a reckless driver at that exact spot in the lake. (Thanks in advance! Don’t forget your tape measure!) Otherwise, a dark, remote lake…yeah, I’m going with the Bogey Creek Monster.
Seriously, I’m happy for the families that they know what happened to these people. I can’t imagine anything worse.
I wonder if Foss Lake was searched after either disappearance, especially after there was speculation after both that they were headed to Foss Lake.
P.S. I’m crossing “Foss Lake” off my list of possible lake properties to buy.
I think they were probably accidents, but it’s odd when the vehicles disappeared nobody noticed tire tracks/skid marks heading into the lake. They’d have to be going pretty fast to get far enough into the lake to not be seen for 30 years. I guess they could have slowly settled lower.
From Google Maps, Highway 44 goes very near the eastern edge of the lake. But there don’t appear to be any sharp curves. Pretty straight road.
Imagine the horror of crashing into the lake, and the last thing you see as you drown are dead bodies in the car next to yours.
And it doesn’t resemble the area in the photos where they’ve pulled the vehicles out.