A 22-year-old cold case was solved with the help of Google Earth. An eagle-eyed resident of Lake Worth, Florida was browsing through satellite images of his neighborhood when he noticed what appeared to be a car submerged in a pond near the Grand Isles development.
He called the police, who sent a crew to fish the submerged vehicle out of the water. Inside the car, they found the skeletal remains of 40-year-old William Earl Moldt, who went missing in 1997.
“The vehicle’s exterior was heavily calcified and was obviously in the water for a significant amount of time,” the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said.
Moldt was last seen leaving a nightclub and called his girlfriend to tell her he would be home shortly. He did not drink often but did have a few at the bar, though witnesses claimed he did not appear intoxicated when he left.
The gated, single-family housing development was under construction at the time of Moldt's disappearance, and officials do not know how he ended up in the bottom of the pond, or how nobody else noticed his 1994 Saturn SL for 22 years.
Moldt's car was not visible from the ground but could be seen in the satellite photos compiled by Google Earth. The image has been available online since 2007, but nobody noticed the outline of a car near the edge of the water.
Photo: Google Earth