Two Minnesota fishermen made an surprising discovery beneath the Mississippi River this week when sonar expertise led them to what authorities say may very well be a break in a decades-old cold case.
Brody Loch, one of the fishermen, instructed NCS affiliate WCCO he noticed a car in the river utilizing his sonar machine final weekend. Three days afterward Wednesday, divers positioned the car and found human stays inside, Stearns County Sheriff Steve Soyka instructed NCS.
“It was 100% luck, if my buddy wouldn’t have caught that walleye, we would have kept on floating down (the river) and never would have found it,” Loch instructed WCCO.
Soyka stated he feared the car, a Nineteen Sixties-era Buick, may break aside if it was dropped at the floor, given how lengthy the car had been submerged. But when investigators pulled the Buick out of the river, “surprisingly, it came up pretty intact,” he stated.
After working with a native towing firm to take away the car from the water, investigators then matched the car’s car identification quantity to Roy Benn, who went lacking in September 1967, in keeping with a news release from the sheriff’s workplace.
The native of Sauk Rapids, Minnesota, was final seen driving a 1963 metallic blue Buick Electra, in keeping with a missing person bulletin from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
“Based on the human remains, items found in the car, and verification of the VIN number of the vehicle, the (local) Sheriff’s Offices believe this to be Mr. Benn,” the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office stated in the launch.
Benn was reported to be “carrying a large sum of money when he was last seen,” in keeping with the bureau.
The seek for Benn continued months after his disappearance, and in the greater than 5 many years after he was final seen.
Archives of the St. Cloud Daily Times reviewed by NCS make clear the man who disappeared with out a hint nearly 60 years in the past after final being seen eating earlier that day at King’s Supper Club north of Sartell, Minnesota.
Benn, 59 at the time of his disappearance, was a businessman and proprietor of the St. Cloud Appliance Repair Service whose spouse had died the 12 months earlier than, the St. Cloud Daily Times reported.
His brother, Walter Benn, labored with regulation enforcement officers following Roy’s disappearance, as investigators chased leads that by no means resolved the case.
Benton County Sheriff Troy Heck, whose division has been tasked with investigating Roy Benn’s lacking individuals case since his disappearance, instructed NCS investigators from his workplace have gotten leads over the years – however none “panned out.”
Walter Benn ready his brother’s private possessions on the market at an public sale in 1968, in keeping with archives of the St. Cloud Daily Times.
Roy Benn was declared legally lifeless in 1975, eight years after he went lacking, in keeping with archives of the St. Cloud Daily Times.
The Benton County Sheriff’s Office is main the investigation for the case, and the stays found in the Buick have been despatched to a medical expert’s workplace for examination.
Heck cautioned that “some of the typical techniques that our partners, the medical examiner’s office, would use to identify aren’t going to be real effective” as a result of of the size of the time the physique has been underwater.
“We believe there’s strong indication that this is going to be Roy Benn’s vehicle, and those are likely his remains,” Heck stated.
Heck added Roy Benn’s surviving subsequent of kin has been knowledgeable of the discovery. The division had beforehand reached out to them to get familial DNA.
“We’re just grateful that we may likely have finally gotten the break that we needed to bring closure to this family,” Heck stated.