Found Deceased FL - William Moldt, 40, Lantana, missing since Nov’97, submerged car spotted on Google Maps Aug 2019

[Elainera]

I couldn't find a thread for Mr. Moldt who was reported missing in 1997 and found two weeks ago.

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The remains of a man who went missing two decades ago in Florida have been found in a submerged car visible on Google Maps.

William Moldt, 40, was reported missing from Lantana, Florida, on 7 November 1997.

He failed to return home from a night out at a club when he was 40 years old. A missing person investigation was launched by police but the case went cold.

On 28 August this year - 22 years on - police were called to reports of a car found in a pond in Moon Bay Circle, Wellington.

When the vehicle was pulled from the water, skeletal remains were found inside. One week later the remains were positively identified as belonging to Mr Moldt.

A report by the Charley Project, an online database of cold cases in the US, said "a property surveyor saw the car while looking at Google Earth".

"Amazingly, a vehicle had plainly [been] visible on a Google Earth satellite photo of the area since 2007, but apparently no-one had noticed it until 2019," according to the report.

More here Missing man’s remains found in car on Google Maps

 

[Pi Thoughts]

Wow, I’ve just been reading this in Australia. A photo of the car is in this report. How amazing, I wonder how many more disappearances are similar and not discovered.
Sighting on Google Earth solves Florida cold case

 

[Elainera]

Thank you for the link @Pi Thoughts . I brought one of the images from the article over.

I wonder if he came down the side road on the left of the image and went straight instead of turning left or right. Were the street lights not working? Was he distracted? Was there another car or pedestrian that he had to swerve to avoid? Was his steering wheel jammed? Was he speeding? So many questions. I hope the car will give up some clues about what likely happened.

 

[dotr]

Missing man’s remains found in car on Google Maps

12 hours ago
Metro

"On the night of his disappearance, Mr Moldt left the club at about 23:00 local time (03:00 GMT), a report by the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System said.
Missing man’s remains found in car on Google Maps
"Mr Moldt, a quiet man who did not socialise much, did not appear intoxicated and left alone in his vehicle, it added.

"He also was not a frequent drinker but did have several drinks at the bar," the report said.

Mr Moldt called his girlfriend at about 21:30, telling her he would be home soon, but was never seen or heard from again."

"Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office told the BBC that Mr Moldt is presumed to have lost control of his vehicle and driven into the pond.

The force said that, during the initial investigation into his disappearance, there was "no evidence of that occurring" until recently, when a shift in the water made the car visible.

"You can't determine what happened that many years ago, what transpired," police spokeswoman Therese Barbera said."

 

[Suglo]

So many people go missing with their cars. My bet is that more than 90% of them are sitting under water, waiting to be found, just like William Moldt was.

 

[MaryG12]

Just read it in the news:

Google Earth helped locate a submerged car in a Florida pond - and the body of a man missing 22 years

His girlfriend at the time says they spoke on the phone a couple of hours before he left a nightclub.

He’s believed to have had several drinks before leaving alone on Nov. 7, 1997.
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Wow. And I quick checked Newspapers.com no information at all about him there. I wonder what happened that he left alone. Glad he was finally found. RIP

 

[dotr]

 

[Elainera]

We should make it a habit to look at bodies of water on Google Earth when someone went missing with their car.

Although of course, the images Google uses are often years old so it wouldn't yield any results for current cases. But who knows how many more cold cases can be solved this way?

 

[BasilFawlty]

Newbie here. I found the car on Google Earth. For anyone interested it is still visible at:

26°37'30.11"N
80°13'39.40"W

If I was going to guess (and that's all it is), I'd guess he may have been coming around Lake Isles Drive ( did a zoomed out screen capture), which makes a sweeping curve to the left, and likely didn't realize there is a T at Moon Bay Circle and probably kept going straight (slightly curving to the left), which would have put him right where the car was found.

 

[Pi Thoughts]

Here’s another one, firstly spotted by cherry picker and then Google Earth.......

David Lee Niles, a 72-year-old dad suffering from cancer and depression, disappeared one night in Michigan after walking out of his local pub.

For nearly a decade, no one had any idea what happened to David, with his heartbroken family giving up hope to find answers.

But his final resting place has been in plain site on Google Earth for years. In 2015, Brian Houseman was decorating a large Christmas tree using a cherry picker when he spotted something lurking in the waters of a pond across the road.

A check on Google Earth showed the car in the water — cops retrieved it, and identified the remains inside as David by his wallet.
Staggering crimes solved by Google Earth

 

[imstilla.grandma]

Moldt’s remains were located inside the vehicle after it was taken from the pond, with a medical examiner confirming Moldt’s identity a week later.

Law enforcement presumes Moldt lost control of his vehicle and drove into the pond, the BBC reports.

According to the Charley Project, an online database that gathers data on cold cases in the United States, the car could have been viewable on Google Maps for more than ten years.

‘Amazingly, the vehicle had been plainly visible on a Google Earth satellite image of the area since 2007, but apparently no one had noticed it until 2019,’ it wrote.
Google Maps Solves 20-Year-Old Missing Person Case