Donald L. Erwin has been missing from the US state of Missouri since 2013. His car and body were discovered a decade later, on December 14, 2023, by a YouTuber who went looking for him.
One morning in late December 2013, Donald L. Erwin told his wife that he was going to buy cigarettes. But the 59-year-old veteran never returned home.
For nearly a decade, Donald's family, along with friends and local residents, roamed the hilly area near his home in Camdenton, Missouri, looking for clues. “I didn't stop for nine years,” Donald's sister Yvonne Erwin-Bowen said in an interview, noting that she travels to Kansas City at least twice a year to conduct the research. Mr. Erwin's wife has since died.
Last year, Ms Erwin-Bowen, 62, began to lose hope. Little by little she stopped looking for her brother.
Last month, Ms. Erwin-Bowen received a call from a friend: a diver had found her brother's car in a pond about five miles from their home.
The car, a 2002 Elantra, was recovered from a private property in southern Camden County on Dec. 16, according to a news release from local authorities. Days later, investigators and cadaver dogs found human remains and an artificial hip that matched Mr. Erwin's, authorities said.
The man behind this discovery is YouTuber James Hinkle, who specializes in scuba diving and news.
“It scared me.”
The diver said in an interview that he became aware of the case about two years ago and began systematically searching waters near Mr. Erwin's home using a kayak equipped with sonar and a drone.
On the afternoon of December 14, James Hinkle decided to search a pond on private property when he noticed a tire floating in the water. “It scared me,” he said. Using a drone, the YouTuber then observed a light, square object in the water. As he brought the drone closer, he noticed that “it looked more and more like a car.”
For Donald L. Erwin's sister, this sad discovery is “a new sorrow,” even if it makes it possible to “put an end to this affair.”