Two Minnesota fishermen made an unexpected discovery beneath the Mississippi River this week when sonar technology led them to what authorities say could be a break in a decades-old cold case.
Brody Loch, one of the fishermen, told CNN affiliate WCCO he spotted a car in the river using his sonar device last weekend. Three days later on Wednesday, divers located the vehicle and found human remains inside, Stearns County Sheriff Steve Soyka told CNN.
“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 told WCCO.
Soyka said he feared the car, a 1960s-era Buick, might break apart if it was brought to the surface, given how long the vehicle had been submerged. But when investigators pulled the Buick out of the river, “surprisingly, it came up pretty intact,” he said.
After working with a local towing company to remove the car from the water, investigators then matched the car’s vehicle identification number to Roy Benn, who went missing in September 1967, according to a news release from the sheriff’s office.
The native of Sauk Rapids, Minnesota, was last seen driving a 1963 metallic blue Buick Electra, according to 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 said in the release.
Benn was reported to be “carrying a large sum of money when he was last seen,” according to the bureau.
The search for Benn continued months after his disappearance, and in the more than five decades after he was last seen.
Archives of the St. Cloud Daily Times reviewed by CNN shed light on the man who disappeared without a trace almost 60 years ago after last being seen dining earlier that day at King’s Supper Club north of Sartell, Minnesota.
Benn, 59 at the time of his disappearance, was a businessman and owner of the St. Cloud Appliance Repair Service whose wife had died the year before, the St. Cloud Daily Times reported.
His brother, Walter Benn, worked with law enforcement officials following Roy’s disappearance, as investigators chased leads that never resolved the case.
Benton County Sheriff Troy Heck, whose department has been tasked with investigating Roy Benn’s missing persons case since his disappearance, told CNN investigators from his office have gotten leads over the years – but none “panned out.”
Walter Benn prepared his brother’s personal possessions for sale at an auction in 1968, according to archives of the St. Cloud Daily Times.
Roy Benn was declared legally dead in 1975, eight years after he went missing, according to archives of the St. Cloud Daily Times.
The Benton County Sheriff’s Office is leading the investigation for the case, and the remains found in the Buick have been sent to a medical examiner’s office 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” because of the length of the time the body 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 said.
Heck added Roy Benn’s surviving next of kin has been informed of the discovery. The department had previously 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 said.
