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Saturday 25 October 2014

Oklahoma Lake Reveals Its Secrets After 40 years: Car Wrecks With Bodies Of Teens Whose Car Span Off Road And Missing Middle-aged Friends Found by Coincidence

Oklahoma lake reveals its secrets after 40 years.

Skeletal remains found in two rusting cars at the bottom of an Oklahoma lake belong to six people who vanished in two separate incidents more than 40 years ago, DNA tests have confirmed.
The discovery - made accidentally as police tested out sonar in Foss Lake in September 2013 - brings an end to two cold cases, stretching back to 1969 and 1970.
This week, more than a year after the discovery, the state Medical Examiner's Office confirmed the identities of the bodies, and said they all died from drowning in accidental deaths, CNN reported.

In one car, a 1969 blue Camaro with a white top, investigators found the bodies of 16-year-old Jimmy Williams, who was driving, and his friends Thomas Rios and Leah Johnson, both 18.
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Jimmy WilliamsLeah JohnsonThomas Rios
Solved: From left, Jimmy Williams, 16, Leah Gail Johnson, 18, and Thomas Michael Rios, 18, disappeared in 1970. Their remains were discovered in a lake last year and DNA tests have just confirmed their identities
Discovery: A photograph from September 18, 2013 shows law enforcement officials examining two cars pulled from Foss Lake in Oklahoma. They were discovered as police tested out sonar equipment in the lake
Discovery: A photograph from September 18, 2013 shows law enforcement officials examining two cars pulled from Foss Lake in Oklahoma. They were discovered as police tested out sonar equipment in the lake
On November 20, 1970, Williams was driving the two older teens in his new car - which he had bought just three days before - as they made their way to a football match, but they never arrived.
The second car, a green 1952 Chevrolet, was carrying 69-year-old John Alva Porter, Cleburn Hammack, 42, and Nora Marie Duncan, 58, who vanished on April 8, 1969.
The friends were last seen 'when their 1953 green Chevrolet car was given a push to help it get started,' according to a July 1969 newspaper article published in Oklahoma.

Authorities discovered the cars accidentally when dive teams conducting training with sonar at Foss Lake came upon the vehicles.
Even though the cars were linked to cases years apart, they were found submerged side-by-side, 12ft under the surface of the murky water.
When authorities pulled the cars out, they were stunned to find bones inside, Betsy Randolph, spokesman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, said last year.
Found: Teams found a 1969 Camaro and a 1952 Chevrolet  and were shocked to see skeletons inside
Found: Teams found a 1969 Camaro and a 1952 Chevrolet and were shocked to see skeletons inside
Evidence: An investigator takes a picture of a shoe at the crime scene where six bodies and two cars were pulled from the lake last year. The discoveries finally solve two decades-old cold cases
Evidence: An investigator takes a picture of a shoe at the crime scene where six bodies and two cars were pulled from the lake last year. The discoveries finally solve two decades-old cold cases
Bizarre: Even though the cars were from two separate cases, they were found side-by-side in the lake
Bizarre: Even though the cars were from two separate cases, they were found side-by-side in the lake

SOLVED: DRIVER WAS TEEN WHO VANISHED DAYS AFTER BUYING CAR

Proud owner: Jimmy Williams is pictured by his new Camaro just days before he vanished
Proud owner: Jimmy Williams is pictured by his new Camaro just days before he vanished
Jimmy Allen Williams, 16, and his friends Thomas Michael Rios, 18, and Leah Gail Johnson, 18, disappeared on On November 20, 1970 - baffling their community.
Jimmy, who had a part time job at a grocery store, had bought himself a brand new Camaro muscle car just three days before he vanished.
He told his parents he was going to a football game, but according to reports at the time, he backed up his car to the back door of the home and loaded shotguns into the trunk with the help of one of his younger brothers.
According to one of his friends called Wayne, the three friends were actually going on a shooting trip.
Wayne said he was had planned to join them but changed his mind at the last minute because there was not enough room for him in the car.
The three teenagers never returned home.
When the cars were pulled from the lake, their bodies were found among the rifles and beer bottles. The medical examiner determined that they had died from drowning. 

'When they pulled the cars out of the water, the first one that came out they found bones in the car,' she said. 'When they pulled the second car out, another set of bones was discovered.
'The divers then went back in the water and searched around and found a skull.
'We thought it was just going to be stolen vehicles and that's not what it turned out to be, obviously.'
Although the cars were found close to a boat ramp, authorities said the water was so cloudy that it was understandable that they had remained undetected for decades.
The unexpected discovery of the remains brought closure to a community who had long questioned how six people could vanish without trace.
Last year, the family of Thomas Rios said his mother never gave up hope that her son would be found, after he made an off-the-cuff comment once about how easy it would be to disappear.
Pearl Guzman had insisted on staying in the town where Thomas grew up so that he could find them again, and regularly called the police for updates until she died, heartbroken, in 2010.
'Mom didn't ever want to leave Sayre because she told us if Thomas came back, he'd be looking for us,' Lucia VanZandt, his sister, told the Associated Press.
'Since we didn't have a body to lay to rest, it was just like he vanished.' 
VanZandt, who was 16 when her brother vanished, recounted how her mother appeared to shrink after her brother's disappearance. 
'She was beside herself. She couldn't cope,' she said, adding that her mother pulled through thanks to her strong Christian faith. 
In a tragic twist, the missing teenager's brother died just hours before Thomas's remains were finally discovered.
Leah Johnson was Native American and related to legendary Indian chief Sitting Bull, Dayva Spitzer, publisher of The Sayre Record & Beckham County Democrat newspaper, told CNN.  
Scene: The cars were 12ft below the surface of the murky water in Foss Lake in Foss, Oklahoma, pictured
Scene: The cars were 12ft below the surface of the murky water in Foss Lake in Foss, Oklahoma, pictured

Bottles of beer were also found in the car believed to belong to the teenagers and rifles were found inside the car, suggesting they might have gone hunting instead of heading to the game. Spitzer said. 
The mystery surrounding the teenagers' disappearance led to theories that they had stumbled across a crime and had been murdered - but the medical examiner's conclusion suggests they accidentally drove into the lake and drowned there. 
Kim Carmichael, a friend Jimmy Williams, told Oklahoma's News9: 'I just remember how devastated everybody was. We lived in a little town ... Nothing like that ever happened in Sayre.'
At the time of the disappearance, her father was the undersheriff in nearby Beckham County where the teenagers were last seen. He died in 2003 never knowing what happened.
'He said there was nothing,' she recounted. 'There were no leads, no nothing. He said it was just like they vanished into thin air.'

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