The skeletal remains of a Florida man missing for 22 years were uncovered thanks to someone enlarging a Google Earth image of his ex-neighborhood in Florida and noticing a car submerged in a lake, authorities said.
The remains were from William Moldt, who disappeared in 1997 at age 40, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
Police spokeswoman Teri Barbera said that a former resident of the Grand Isles neighborhood in Wellington was looking at the neighborhood on Google Earth when he enlarged an image of the lake and saw something that looked like a car.
The person contacted a current resident, who used a drone and confirmed that there was a submerge white car at the edge of the pond behind his house. The man called the police on August 28. When the agents arrived they discovered that the exterior of the white sedan was “heavily calcified.” After they removed the vehicle, they found human remains inside.
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System said that Moldt went to a nightclub in November 1997, but he didn’t seem drunk when he left on his own before midnight. He had called his girlfriend from the club telling her that he would return home soon in Lantana.
The area was in urbanization when Moldt disappeared, but the pond was already there. Barry Fay, who found the vehicle, told The Palm Beach Post that he had never seen anything unusual on the shore.
“I never thought there was a corpse from 22 years ago,” Fay told the newspaper.
