Florida man missing for 22 years was found in pond after his submerged car was spotted on Google Maps

William Moldt vanished without a trace in November 1997, from Lantana, Florida, leaving authorities baffled by his sudden disappearance.

His girlfriend, awaiting his return on the night he vanished, never heard from him again after he called to say he’d be home soon, having left a nightclub, as reported by the BBC.

After two decades of uncertainty, Moldt’s remains were discovered in August 2019, shedding light on the mysterious circumstances of his disappearance.

The breakthrough came when police were summoned to investigate reports of a car submerged in a pond in Moon Bay Circle, Wellington, 22 years after Moldt’s initial disappearance.

According to The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, Moldt did not appear intoxicated when he left the venue alone before midnight. He had called his girlfriend from the club to let her know that he would soon head back to the home they shared.

After the police were alerted to the discovery, the car was pulled from the water. It was then that skeletal remains were found in a white vehicle – the exterior of which was said to be “heavily calcified”.

The remains were confirmed to be that of Moldt.

The discovery owes its realization to a vigilant individual who, perusing Google Earth to revisit their old neighborhood, noticed something amiss in the satellite imagery – a vehicle concealed beneath the water’s surface.

The manager of The Grand Isles housing development in Wellington, near Palm Beach, made the startling observation, prompting authorities to launch a probe into the submerged car’s origins.

Remarkably, the vehicle had been visible on Google Earth since 2007, raising questions about why it hadn’t been noticed earlier.

Speaking to the BBC in 2019, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office revealed their presumption that Moldt likely lost control of his vehicle and veered into the pond, though initial investigations yielded no evidence of such an event.

Therese Barbera, a police spokeswoman, admitted the difficulty in piecing together the events of that fateful night, acknowledging the passage of time as a complicating factor.

“As to what happened that many years ago, what transpired, all we can say is that he vanished off the face of the Earth, and now he’s been discovered,” she stated.