Charles and Catherine Romer were snowbirds. The wealthy couple who enjoyed an active social life in their hometown of Scarsdale, New York, would escape to their apartment in Bal Harbour, Florida, every year to take advantage of the Sunshine State's warm winters. But in April 1980, the two never made it back home.
The couple, who was in their seventies at the time, packed up their black Lincoln Continental and headed north in early April, just after Easter, but after a long day of driving, they stopped that afternoon to spend the night in a Holiday Inn in the coastal town of Brunswick, GA. They checked into their room, unpacked their belongings, and after that, they were never heard from again.
The next morning, a housekeeper let herself inside the empty hotel room to straighten up. She saw a novel and glasses next to the bed, clothing hanging in the closet, and a a bottle of Scotch, along with the couple's tax forms on a desk. After a few days, the hotel staff realized that the couple hadn't been back in their room since the day they checked into it.
Charles and Catherine were never heard from again. Both on their second marriages, they'd only been married for six years. Charles was a retired oil executive who had two sons, Charles Jr. and Richard. Catherine had worked as a stenographer until she met and married businessman Frank Heller. They had a son, Frank Jr. Both couples ran in the same social circles in New York, but sadly, Frank and Charles's first wife, Jane, died years before.
Charles Romer Jr. had last heard from his father and stepmother on Easter Sunday of that year, but he began to worry when he didn't hear from them again on the day they were scheduled to arrive home in New York. When they didn't answer his phone calls, he tried the South Carolina hotel they were planning to visit along their route home and found out they never arrived.
Despite what a police officer called "the biggest all-out search in the history of southern Georgia," the Romers were never found, though there has been plenty of speculation about what may have happened to them. Some say it was just a freak accident. The older couple was tired after a long day of driving and simply ran off the road into the water. Glynn County, where Brunswick is located, has "over 400 square miles of coastline, marshland, and timber," according to a police captain who was involved with the case.
Others believe someone targeted the couple, as they weren't hesitant to show off their wealth. Not only were they driving a new car with a custom license plate, but at any given time, Catherine allegedly wore hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry. Some Georgia state troopers claim they spotted the car on the roads in Glynn County that evening. Someone said they saw the Romers interacting with another couple outside their hotel room. One man said he talked to the Romers that evening at a local business, and they told him they were heading to nearby Jekyll Island to do some sightseeing, a story Charles Romer, Jr. didn't believe.
Police received numerous tips, most of which led nowhere. The most interesting one came from a delivery driver who claims he was almost run off the road by a black Lincoln Continental the night the couple disappeared.
Fast forward to this week: Florida’s Sunshine State Sonar Team, a group that helps find missing people in bodies of water, found a Lincoln Continental in a pond off New Jesup Highway near the Royal Inn Hotel (formerly the Holiday Inn) in Glynn County. The car matches the one the Romers were driving at the time of their disappearance. Even more noteworthy is that they found a human bone inside the car, though they have yet to announce whether the remains belong to either of the Romers. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is now involved, and authorities are draining the pond to look for more evidence.
‘"I’ll never give up on it. I’ll always try to find out what happened," Charles Romer, Jr. told the New York Times a few years after the disappearance. Hopefully, this new discovery will help the Romer family find some closure.
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