Unsolved and missing persons cases are what the National Institute of Justice has called “The Nation’s Silent Mass Disaster.” In Illinois alone, there are nearly 500 open cases.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office is now unveiling a new effort in its search for missing persons.
Lurking beneath the surface of the cold, muddy waters of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, there’s a graveyard of unknowns.
“They’re all a mystery as why they’re there,” said Commander Jason Moran from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
As head of the office’s Missing Persons Project, Moran is interested in solving each mystery in the waters that conceal them.
“It’s just one place that you can’t easily search,” Moran said. “For that reason, it’s always been sort of … in the back of your mind, what is in the waterways? Is there a potential for cars or other items to be concealed that potentially has the bodies of missing persons within?”
In 2024, the county shared sonar underwater maps with the Sheriff’s Office. The U.S. Geological Survey did the scanning at the request of Cook County’s Geographic Information Systems Department. Throughout all the major waterways in Cook County, which included any passable canal or river and any lakes larger than 5 acres, the scans showed 270 potential anomalies.
“So then, it was a question: OK, what are we going to do now? We have all these anomalies. Many of them look like cars. We have obvious past evidence of other crimes that occur where cars are used in crimes and bodies are put in them. What do we do here?” asked Sheriff Tom Dart.
On a blustery winter Monday, the sheriff’s office invited NBC 5 Investigates to the Sanitary Ship Canal to observe crews recover cars from the water. The Sheriff’s Office decided which vehicles it wanted to recover, and a marine construction company called Lakes and Rivers Contracting, Inc., volunteered to pull them out.
“What does it look like down there? Is there anything that you can see at all?” asked NBC 5 Chicago Reporter Rose Schmidt.“No, not really. It’s so dirty. It’s the visibility. You maybe have a foot at best of visibility, so they can barely see their hand in front of their face,” said Steve Kehr, a superintendent with Lakes and Rivers Contracting, Inc.
Two hours later after the diver went in, the crew pulled out the first car, a stolen 2018 Hyundai Elantra. The crew was careful to bring it out exactly the way it was placed in the water.
“I don’t want to lose any evidence that’s going to come out of the car, specifically human remains. In case there was a deceased person in the car, I want to be able to identify that right away. That changes the nature of the investigation,” Moran said.
The second car was a 2023 Dodge Durango stolen from a southwest suburb in August 2025. The sheriff’s office did not find human remains, but the SUV had something else.
“When you hear that a car has bullet holes, the windows were rolled down, the sunroof was open. What does that say to you?” Schmidt asked.
“We have a feeling that was probably one that was used in a crime of some nature. Yeah. That one is a little bit different,” Dart said.
The team recovered two more cars later that week: a 1971 Porsche missing from Chicago since 1976 and a 1974 Pontiac Firebird missing from Stickney since 1984. Both were much older models in much worse shape. That was on purpose to see if forensic evidence could hold up after decades underwater.
Investigators’ work is just beginning, trying to match cars to cold cases.
“There’s a range of reasons why someone could go off the road into the water and die. Someone could be murdered in a different location, put in a car, the car dumped in the water,” Dart explained.
For Moran, who’s closed nearly 45 missing persons cases over the last five years, everything comes back to bringing closure to families.
“These individuals are some of the saddest people that you could sit with because they just live in a cruel limbo. They just don’t know what to think about their missing loved one. They don’t want to think that their loved one is dead, but at the same time, they’ve been missing for a long time, and sometimes for no reason at all. There was never a disagreement or a fight or argument. One day they were there, and one day they were not,” Moran said.
In total, the sheriff’s office removed four cars and plans to examine many more, but it really comes down to money and time. The car recovery operation normally costs $15,000 to $20,000 a day. When the weather gets warmer, they hope to recover more.
Dart suspects many of the cars underwater were dumped for insurance purposes.
As for the four cars that were pulled out, NBC 5 Chicago is still waiting for answers.
Hence then, the article about cook county waterways hold 270 anomalies many look like submerged cars was published today ( ) and is available on NBC Chicago ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Cook County waterways hold 270 ‘anomalies.' Many look like submerged cars )
Also on site :
- Judge Rules That ICE Agents Violate the Fourth Amendment by Making Arrests While Masked
- Google’s new 1.9GW clean energy deal includes massive 100-hour battery
- Vintage '60s Soda Is Officially Back in Stores — And Shoppers Are Racing to Find It