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Search Of Canal Yields Skeleton, 110 Sunken Cars

Police Say Bones Appear Human


BOCA RATON, Fla. -- A set of bones and 110 cars were found submerged in a canal in a rural area west of Boca Raton, authorities said.


Police told WPBF News 25 that divers were searching a few miles of the Hillsboro Canal along Loxahatchee River Road west of Highway 441 for stolen and abandoned cars around 11 a.m. Tuesday when they came across a silver Mercedes coupe containing what appeared to be human bones scattered across the driver and front passenger seats.


Detective Michael Bianchi with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office told WPBF that the bones appear to have been in the vehicle for a long time.

"We're talking years," Bianchi said.


Bianchi said the car, which he thought to be a mid-1980s Mercedes 380 SEL or 450 SL, had a smashed hood and cracked front and back windshields. Investigators have not confirmed that the remains are from a human because, as Bianchi said, alligators are known in the past to store the carcasses of deer and other animals in sunken vehicles for later.


Bianchi told WPBF that the medical examiner's office will look at the remains to determine if they are human.


"I'm just hoping that it is not a human being in there. I'm hoping that it is just maybe an insurance job where someone dumped a car, or a stolen recovery and what we have is a set of animal remains, because it would be bad if we had to go announce to someone that a loved-one is dead or whatever the case may be," he said.


Bianchi said that the 45-mile long Hillsboro Canal is a popular dumping spot for stolen vehicles. He told WPBF that police divers using sonar equipment in a search along a few miles of the canal located 110 submerged cars Tuesday and that 27 of them had been pulled from the water by mid-afternoon.



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