# Why are so many missing persons cases being solved at the bottom of lakes? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 9, 2021, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749 "2021-12-09T04:17:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/21 "2021-12-09T13:44:55Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > My question is why so many people drove into lakes and rivers? [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/DOW_kPzY_JY/maxresdefault.jpg "Michael Drives Into A Lake - The Office US") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOW_kPzY_JY) ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/22 "2021-12-09T15:13:08Z")
On top of that, when they did realize someone had gone missing, looking in a lake wasn’t necessarily the immediate go-to activity to try and find them unless they had a good reason to look in one, like broken guardrails near a body of water along a route frequently used by that person. But if you typically didn’t go by any water, or there wasn’t any reason to look, then they probably figured you had just run off or got murdered or whatever, and it was unlikely that they were going to go drag all the nearby ponds and lakes on the off chance you might have driven into them. That cost money and time that could be better spent following up on other, more productive lines of investigation, especially for smaller law enforcement agencies. Today they could likely get a general idea of what route you followed based on cell tower activity, and even probably note when and where that activity stopped- i.e. next to the lake. So they’d have incentive to look there. But without a working phone, we’re still in the same situation as I describe above. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/23 "2021-12-09T15:17:59Z")
I would thing it is a convenient way to dispose of bodies. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/24 "2021-12-09T15:52:39Z")
Being drunk or distracted can lead to plunging one’s car into a body of water. I seem to recall a famous politician who got in trouble that way. In one of Ann Rule’s cases, a young woman vanished without a trace. Many years later her submerged car was found tangled up in the support structure of a bridge. It wasn’t even on her route, but somehow her car plunged over guard rails without leaving obvious damage. These days, cellphone/texting distractions probably heighten the risk. I’d suspect there’s a car hidden at the bottom of our pond, if it wasn’t so far from the road. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/25 "2021-12-09T17:13:54Z")
When I lived on the Olympic Peninsula in the early 2000s the big story was finally solving the mystery of a couple who went missing in 1929. Their car was found 400 feet below the surface of Lake Crescent, 60 feet from the shore and Hwy 101. Bones were also found and there was talk of comparing the DNA to that of the couple’s grandchildren who still lived in the area. They also found other cars that had driven off the road at the same place which is called Ambulance Point because that is where an ambulance went into the lake in the 1960s killing its patient. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/26 "2021-12-09T17:47:50Z")
> [@bump](#): > > On top of that, when they did realize someone had gone missing, looking in a lake wasn’t necessarily the immediate go-to activity to try and find them unless they had a good reason to look in one, like broken guardrails near a body of water along a route frequently used by that person. Sometimes, they do look in the lake but overlook searching in other bodies of water. > **[Missing Auburn student's car, human remains found in creek after 45 years](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/12/08/us/missing-student-1976-car-found-trnd/index.html)** > > Authorities searching for a Georgia college student who's been missing for more than 45 years got a big break after his car was found in an Alabama creek -- along with his wallet, ID card and suspected human remains. > [@](#): > > He said they’ve drained lakes and conducted numerous searches in hopes of finding Clinkscales. They spent four and a half decades searching but didn’t find anything until the car spontaneous broke water surface in a creek not 30 feet from a road. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/27 "2021-12-09T17:55:13Z")
That sounds like one helluva deep “creek”. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/28 "2021-12-09T18:29:22Z")
Yep, search teams and police are fairly good at finding cars or people that are not submerged. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/29 "2021-12-09T18:29:23Z")
Read recently about missing persons who may have been blown right off the Mackinac Bridge. There was some reason given as to why they couldn’t do an underwater search. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/30 "2021-12-09T18:55:53Z")
300 feet deep, dangerous unpredictable currents. ---
**Author:** ![Esprise\_Me](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprise_me/32/2947_2.png) [@Esprise\_Me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprise_Me)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/31 "2021-12-09T20:09:26Z")
Yeah a lot of bodies of water are deeper than most scuba divers can go. Many police departments limit their police divers to depths of 60 feet. Recreational divers are technically certified to 132 feet, but there’s some debate about how safe it really is at that depth, particularly for search and recovery which can involve hard physical labor. One issue is gas narcosis–basically getting high off the pressure. It doesn’t cause long-term damage but can lead to a fatal mistake. Another concern is carbon dioxide retention; you can’t breathe it out fast enough when you’re working hard at depth, and that can exacerbate narcosis or even cause loss of consciousness, which is almost invariably fatal underwater. There’s also the problem of decompression sickness, aka the bends. To avoid it, one needs to either observe a sliding-scale no decompression limit (the deeper you go, the shorter time you spend there), or plan for decompression stops on the way up, the latter of which is a more advanced kind of diving. Lastly, for really deep dives (like 300 feet), there’s a risk of seizures from oxygen toxicity. Many of these risks can be managed with special breathing gases and extensive training, but it’s a tiny minority of divers who are qualified for that. I have over 300 dives and I’m not there myself. Also, those special breathing gases are expensive–think hundreds of dollars for a single dive by a single person, and you can’t expect one person to find what they’re looking for on their first try. Visibility is often so poor you have to practically hit your head on the thing you’re looking for. So yeah, these search and recovery operations are not trivial. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/32 "2021-12-09T20:54:54Z")
I’ve owned a Pinto (and lived to tell the tale). They’re not that tall, but with the tailhatch open they’re about 18" taller than the roofline. I guess they either literally never looked in the creek or a foot of muddy water was enough to completely obscure the large white roof of a car. ---
**Author:** ![agzem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@agzem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/agzem)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/33 "2021-12-09T23:22:07Z")
I think this is the location: https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=%213m2%212sen%214v0%216m8%211m7%211sqD3asDsvcxd-b4iXDMJKLQ%212m2%211d32.7690791%212d-85.301504%213f147.2%214f6.526%215f0.75 It’s hard to see how how that was deep enough to be hidden for 45 years and it was close to the road. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/34 "2021-12-10T01:33:47Z")
The CNN article (and others about this case) had a picture of the creekside with the car being towed out of it. [![](https://cbsnews1.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2021/12/09/5749a39b-0c64-46ea-8bb2-0381364d1c49/thumbnail/1240x718/0b7a07afbbc9e047fb0b118a2e64de5d/car.jpg) ](https://cbsnews1.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2021/12/09/5749a39b-0c64-46ea-8bb2-0381364d1c49/thumbnail/1240x718/0b7a07afbbc9e047fb0b118a2e64de5d/car.jpg) It’s a close picture with very little context, but it looks like a clear shot from the road to the creek to me. Certainly, if there had been trees, the Pinto wouldn’t have gone into the water. I mean, it shouldn’t have been hard to see, and yet it took decades and only after something happened to make part of the car surface. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/35 "2021-12-10T01:40:44Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > Presumably the roads you are familiar with aren’t the ones people drive off into lakes. > > This sort of thing is fairly common around here. Not that it is a lake. > > [Dunedin. Portobello Road](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAy3vmjI99o) I drive by a similar road frequently, and when it’s foggy out, it’s always very, very thick fog. If someone told me that one of the semi-frequent accidents that temporarily closed down the road was because someone went into the lake during fog, I’d believe it without question. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/36 "2021-12-10T01:46:55Z")
A Pinto? Would have been better if it spun and hit the water tail-first. The resulting explosion would have been obvious to anyone. ---
**Author:** ![agzem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@agzem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/agzem)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/37 "2021-12-10T03:14:08Z")
I don’t see how the tires could still be intact. To me that suggests the car hasn’t been there 45 years. And the tires aren’t even flat. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/38 "2021-12-10T03:15:25Z")
Ford quality. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/39 "2021-12-10T03:57:35Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > It’s also important to remember that 20, 30 years ago it was way more common for no one to know exactly where you were for a while. With no cell phones, GPS, any of that, people were often untraceable for much of the time. That, and also aerial photography is a lot easier and more accessible these days. They’ve found a few of these old wrecks because someone was looking at Google maps and noticed a weird shape in the water. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749/40 "2021-12-10T04:02:08Z")
> [@agzem](#): > > And the tires aren’t even flat. Well they are only flat on the bottom. The front tire is in the mud, so you can’t tell. The back tire is buckled under the wheel and projecting towards the camera, which makes it look as if there is inflated tire, but the rim is actually fully down on the tire. The rubber is no doubt pretty degraded, but no reason to think it should have vanished. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-missing-persons-cases-being-solved-at-the-bottom-of-lakes/955749.md?page=3)