A Florida man missing for nearly twenty years was positively identified after his vehicle was located in a retention pond and his remains were recovered. Police had been made aware of the car’s location earlier this month and now conclusively ended the long-standing mystery of his whereabouts.
Robert Helphrey, 34 at the time of his disappearance in 2006, went missing almost 17 years ago and was last seen leaving a bar in Palm Harbor, Florida at closing time. According to phone records, he had called a friend at 2:05 am and asked them to meet at his apartment.
Tragically, these were the last contacts with Helphrey and he was never seen nor heard from again.
Now, after all these years, his friends and family can have some overdue closure.
At the time of his disappearance, police say they searched nearby retention ponds and forests, but to no avail. Thankfully, new work being done by a volunteer team called the Sunshine State Sonar Search carries out work to locate missing vehicles and persons using more advanced technology than was available at the time of Helphrey’s mysterious disappearance.
The group works with local law enforcement and contacted them after their search of the particular retention pond yielded the hallmarks of a submerged vehicle. Police pulled out a gray 2005 Mitsubishi SUV registered to the missing man along with his remains.
Fox News noted that the man’s next of kin were notified was identification had been made, although they were still investigating the official cause of death. Perhaps – and this is going out on a limb – a man leaving a bar at 2:00 am might have been putting himself in a frightening position by driving.
As sad as these circumstances are, and surely no one deserves to die in this manner, the very least we can say is that no one else was hurt or killed by his decision to presumably drive under the influence.
And Florida, known for its countless bodies of water on the mainland, also revealed another missing person dating back several years. As Fox News continued, in the same timeframe that Helphrey’s mystery was solved, so too was the case of missing person Robert Heikka, who vanished without a trace in the fall of 2020.
Fox News said that he was a 70-year-old teacher whose car was also pulled from the shrouded waters of Port Orange, located on the eastern coast near Daytona Beach. Fox News added:
The discovery of Helphrey’s remains came nearly a week after the volunteer search group helped recover the remains of another missing man near Port Orange in Volusia County.
The remains in that case were identified as Robert Heikka, a 70-year-old teacher who vanished in Port Orange in October 2020.
On April 9, his body was found inside his white 2012 Chevrolet Impala that was recovered from a canal along Pioneer Trail near New Smyrna Beach.
No cause or manner of death were immediately released.
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