Decades After His Disappearance, Man’s Son Searches For Answers

Before George Carroll disappeared, he’d already lived a pretty eventful life. In 1934, in the midst of The Great Depression, George was born. However, he didn’t let this define him, and he went on to marry a woman named Dorothy, and the two had four children. Those children were named Patricia, Steven, Jean, and Mike, with Mike being the youngest of the four. He’d also be the one to stumble across the clue in the basement later in his life.

There was a lot going on the year George disappeared. The year 1961 was filled with historical events. At the beginning of the year, John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the nation’s first Catholic president and its youngest leader in history. During the event, Kennedy gave his speech and famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

While the world was in the midst of the Cold War and historical events were happening all around them, the Carroll family didn’t have time to take it all in. That’s because this was the year that George disappeared without a trace. From that moment on, nothing would ever be the same, and the entire family would be haunted by the disappearance of George for years and decades to come.

Naturally, the Carroll children grew up wanting to know what happened to their father. However, their mother could never bring herself to talk about the disappearance for very long, and the children were largely left with a slew of unanswered questions. According to an interview conducted by the New York Post with the youngest child, Mike, in 2018, he said, “They always told me, ‘Don’t ask’… So I stopped asking.”

Left with no definitive answer as to why George disappeared, Dorothy could only give limited answers to her children. She reportedly told them that he simply left to go to the store one day and never returned. However, it didn’t take long for the children to have doubts about this theory. For one thing, they came across their father’s wallet when they were still kids. Why would someone go to the store without their wallet?

It didn’t take long for others to speculate as to what happened to George. There were a couple of different rumors, but the most popular was that he’d flown back to Korea. George had served during the Korean War during the early 1950s, and it wasn’t unheard of for veterans to return to the country after the war ended. Just why he’d want to return was never explained in the rumor.

With so much mystery surrounding his disappearance, there was bound to be some rumors that alleged George was actually murdered. One such rumor said that he was buried in the basement. Coincidentally, the basement was being built at the time of George’s disappearance, so it didn’t take long for neighbors and others to connect the two. We could only imagine how devastating it must’ve been for the family to hear things like this.

You’d think that one of the first things someone would do when a family member disappeared was file a missing persons report. However, this apparently never happened after George’s disappearance. It’s unclear why Dorothy never sought the help of the police. Perhaps she really did believe that George had simply abandoned the family. After all, it was a different time, and there were fewer repercussions for fathers who left.

It wasn’t long after George’s disappearance that another man moved into the house. His name was Richard Darress, and he and Dorothy would go on to marry not long after and have a child together. The sudden marriage must’ve seemed strange to the neighbors, not only because of the relatively short timeframe but also because of the times. However, the two weren’t meant to be, and they eventually divorced.

While it’s not known for sure what happened between Dorothy and Richard, we do know that in the divorce filing, she said that he’d been unfaithful. Exactly what happened is still unclear. The divorce was made official in 1983, but she’d asked him to leave years earlier. Undoubtedly, this caused even more rumors in the neighborhood, but after George’s disappearance, it’s not surprising that Dorothy wasn’t willing to put up with any more misbehavior from her husband.

Not long after the divorce, Richard up and moved to Mexico for unknown reasons. We do know that while in Mexico, he remarried, but it eventually led to another divorce. Fox News obtained the divorce filing and learned that his new wife received a temporary protection order against Richard, adding to the mystery of what happened not only between those two but also between Richard and Dorothy.

Dorothy stuck to the theory that George abandoned the family for years, even as the children grew older. What responses they could get from their mother always led back to this theory. However, it was only a matter of time before they became old enough to search for the truth on their own. “There wasn’t a lot of conversation about it. We grew curious about where he may be as grownups,” Steven told local channel WABC in 2018.

Before their mother passed away in 1988, Mike decided to buy the family home. Most likely just to keep it in the family, but he, like the rest of the children, also had some questions. Not able to completely put the old rumors about his father out of his head, Mike started to look towards the basement and wonder if there wasn’t some truth in the rumors about what happened to his dad.

Referring to the search for his father, Mike told reporters, “It didn’t happen overnight. It’s something that’s been spoken about for years,” adding, “This is something that, as we got older, you know, we heard various stories.” We can’t imagine what it must’ve been like to grow up hearing the rumors and finally having the chance to begin your own search. We’re sure there were parts of him that were split on what he actually hoped to find.

Mike began to break ground inside the basement of the family home in 2012. We can’t imagine what must’ve been running through his head at the time. However, whatever it was, it was interrupted by the fact that he had to stop not long after he’d begun. Structural issues forced him to temporarily halt his digging because he feared that the house could collapse if he continued to dig around the foundations.

Despite the temporary setback, Mike was determined to continue the search, and not long after, he decided to bring in a group of experts to help him dig up the basement. However, he also made sure that he was involved in the search every step of the way, and he often occupied his time by carrying slabs of concrete from the basement upstairs before throwing them outside and going back down to grab more.

Among the team of experts Mike brought in was someone who knew how to scan the Earth using ground-penetrating radar. And it wasn’t long before the radar picked up something strange in Mike’s basement. Around six feet under the floor, it detected a strange mass that was different from the surrounding soil. But just what was this anomaly, and could it lead to answers concerning his father’s sudden disappearance?

Mike was far more concerned with using modern means to find their father, but when someone in your family mysteriously disappears, you’ll do whatever it takes to track them down. So, after urging from his sister, Mike visited physic, who he hoped could shed some light on the mystery. “There are, of course, premonitions, hunches, things like that,” Mike told the New York Post during the interview they had together.

At one point during his interview with the local News 12 station, Mike said that he remembered a weird encounter he and a friend had in the family home when they were little. “My friend came over from Georgia and said, ‘Mike, I came out of your bathroom, and I saw a guy standing there, like, you know, the shadow of a man, standing up and coming down the stairs’— But that’s beside the point,” he said.

Whether you believe in the paranormal or not is beside the point. There is certainly reason to be skeptical when it comes to people who claim they can connect with the other side, but according to Mike, something strange happened when the psychic visited the Carroll home. “There was a guy who came into my basement. And he went to the right place and said, ‘The energy is here,” Mike said during his interview with the New York Post.

During the search for his father, Mike suffered from a stroke. Having a stroke is never a pleasant experience, but Mike had one at what must’ve seemed like the worst possible time. Luckily, Mike’s two sons, Christopher and Michael Jr., said that they would carry on the search while their father was recovering. “I think they felt bad for me because they knew this was important to me,” Mike said during his interview with News 12.

Mike’s two sons were digging in the basement when they happened across something not long after they had started. The discovery was around seven feet down, and it was in the same spot where the gound-penetrating radar and the physic had told Mike to dig. Excited about their discovery and also probably a little shocked about what they’d just found, the two quickly ran out of the basement to tell their father.

Mike was still recovering from his stroke when his boys ran up the stairs and told him they’d found something while digging. He told the news station that it was a bit hard for him to go upstairs and downstairs but that he had to go into the basement and see for himself what the boys had found. He was simply too eager not to go and see for himself.

The bones weren’t laid out as you might expect them to be in a casket. Instead, “He was twisted into a knot, weird-looking,” Mike said, adding, “He was lying twisted in the dirt… he wasn’t totally exposed either.” Whatever had happened, it looked as though it wasn’t pleasant. This probably immediately raised more questions, but at the time, Mike knew he had to contact the rest of the family.

It didn’t take long for the police to get to the home and confirm that they’d found human remains. However, to know if it really was George buried in the basement, the bones would have to be sent away for DNA testing. The police opened an official investigation for the first time since George’s disappearance, but everyone would have to wait for the test results to find out for sure if it was him.

While the world would have to wait to know for sure if the remains belonged to George or not, Mike had no doubts. During his interview with the New York Post, Mike said, “[They’re] going to be [of] my father. This is going to be a great thing for him — to be emancipated from that place where he didn’t belong.” The burden of years of wondering what happened must’ve finally lifted when the remains were found.

From the interviews he gave when the bones were being tested, it was clear to see that Mike had found some solace in discovering the remains. “I felt a vindication for my dad. I felt like he was dancing in the sky,” Mike said during an interview with News 12. The rest of the family was also relieved to finally know what happened to their father after decades of wondering.

It took a couple of months for the family to get the results back. However, when they did come back, they must’ve been a relief to the whole family. They confirmed that it was indeed George’s remains that were buried in the basement. “The DNA was extremely well preserved within the skeletal remains, even after nearly 60 years,” Michael Caplan, the medical examiner, told the media in an interview.

While everyone was happy to finally know what happened to their father, Mike was understandably more relieved than the rest. “I took a chance. I could have done all this and found nothing, and then I would have had a whole basement in a mess,” he said during an interview with the media. “I have a basement in a mess. But I’m so glad we found what we found. It gives my family peace of mind.”

The medical examiner alerted the police to what they found when examining George’s remains, and it shouldn’t have come as a shock to anyone at this point that George had been murdered. After all, his body had been dumped and covered back up with dirt, meaning someone had to have at least known that he was buried down there. The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.

While the news that George had died due to blunt force trauma may have surprised some in the community, Mike had already heard this theory before. When he had consulted with the psychic, he had been told that his father was struck with a pipe to the head, and that was how he’d passed away. “She informed me it was a pipe, that he was buried after being struck in the head with a pipe,” He told the New York Post.

While everyone was probably understandably curious as to who was responsible for George’s death, Mike and the rest of the family took this time to grieve a bit. Still, Mike knew that there was more work to be done. “There’s so much unfinished business here. There’s a story behind the story behind the story,” Mike said in an interview with News 12. However, for now, that story would need to wait.

While Mike and the rest of the Carroll family took a break, the police continued their investigation, but there was a big problem. Everyone who might have information as to what happened was now dead. Richard had died in 2018, and he had been one of the people the police wanted to speak with the most, according to the Washington Post. However, his entering the picture so soon after George’s disappearance did seem a little suspicious.

Considering there weren’t any obvious avenues to finding out who murdered George, the Carroll family children decided that it was best not to speculate about what happened to their father. After all, it seemed likely that they would never know for certain, and pointing fingers at someone who wasn’t around to defend themselves didn’t seem very productive. For Mike, finding his father’s remains and laying him to rest was enough.

The police were in a tough bind. Their two main suspects were dead, and other avenues of questioning seemed like longshots at best. If it wasn’t Dorothy or Richard who committed the murder, then maybe it was someone else who lived nearby. However, most of the people who had lived there when George was alive were either long deceased or they and their families had moved out of the neighborhood.

It’s hard to overstate just how important it was for the Carroll family to find George’s remains. For decades, his disappearance had hung over his children’s heads like a rain cloud. For Mike, finding his dad was enough, and he and his children could finally move on with their lives. “I tell my kids… we hit a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth, two outs,” he said.

Mike wasn’t the only one in the family who was very relieved to have found their father. Steven released a message not long after the remains were found. “I was surprised that he was here the whole time, and it’s wonderful. The grandkids can now say they found Grandpa,” he said. He, his children, and the rest of the family had wondered all their lives what really happened, he added.

Despite being glad that the remains were finally uncovered, Steven also expressed his disgust at whoever it was that was responsible for George’s death. “How does something like this happen? How do you get rid of someone and bury them in the basement and pour cement on them without anyone knowing?” he said in an interview with Newsday. He has more than one good point here, and it’s still perplexing that someone could get away with something like that.

The Carroll children organized a funeral for their father not long after the examination of the remains was finished. George was buried at the Calverton National Cemetary and given a veteran’s service to honor his time in Korea. “I want him to be a soldier. I want him to get what he needs,” Mike told the media. Thanks to him, his father was finally given a proper burial decades after he’d passed.