In 2019, a Florida resident spotted a car in a pond on Google Earth; police recovered the remains of a man missing for 22 years

William Moldt disappeared from Lantana, Florida, in November 1997. He was 40 years old and had gone out for the evening before failing to return home, and for 22 years, his whereabouts remained unknown. The break in the case came in August 2019, when a former resident of the Grand Isles neighborhood in Wellington used Google Earth to look over the area. The person noticed what appeared to be a vehicle submerged in a pond while examining satellite imagery.

The former resident contacted a current homeowner, who used a drone to inspect the location. The drone confirmed that a white vehicle was sitting in the water near the edge of the pond, following which the homeowner contacted the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. Deputies arrived on August 28, 2019, and confirmed that a vehicle was submerged in the retention pond. Its exterior was heavily calcified, which indicated that it had been underwater for a long period. Skeletal remains were found inside after the vehicle was removed.

The car had been visible in older satellite imagery


The Charley Project is a database that tracks missing-person cases, and reports that the vehicle was visible in Google Earth imagery dating back to 2007. It apparently remained unnoticed until someone examining the neighborhood years later recognized what looked like a car in the pond, and that detail became one of the strangest parts of the case. Moldt had disappeared in 1997, but the subdivision around the pond was still developing at the time. The vehicle was ultimately sitting in an area that later became part of a residential neighborhood.

The Charley Project's case record says that Moldt disappeared on November 7, 1997, from Lantana. He was later found inside his vehicle in a pond in Wellington, and the case was marked resolved after his remains were identified. The astonishing part was that the imagery itself was ordinary satellite mapping data that happened to show an object beneath the surface clearly enough to attract attention. It did not identify Moldt or explain how the car ended up in the pond; it simply provided a visual clue that had apparently been available for years.

Investigators recovered Moldt's remains from the vehicle

The remains inside were sent for examination after the car was removed. Authorities later identified them as those of Moldt, who had been missing since 1997. Local reporting at the time said that Moldt had left a nightclub in Lantana before midnight on the night he disappeared. He had called his girlfriend and indicated that he was heading home, but he never arrived.

A local television report from WPBF said that deputies were called to the pond on August 28 after a resident reported the submerged vehicle. Police confirmed the vehicle and later found skeletal remains inside, and the remains were subsequently identified as Moldt's. The discovery resolved where Moldt had ended up, but the circumstances surrounding how his car entered the pond were not established by the discovery itself.

What investigators did know was that the vehicle had remained underwater for years in a pond near the neighborhood where Moldt was ultimately found. The satellite image had preserved a view of the vehicle long before anyone recognized it as a missing-person clue, and by 2019, a routine look at a Florida neighborhood on Google Earth had supplied the lead that ended a 22-year search for William Moldt.