Art & Inspiration Found:Old cars, some surface rust

I read about the Camaro not too long ago, I think there was the remains of 2 or 3 teenagers in it. They been missing since 1969, the Camaro was a brand new car at the time, the driver's high school graduation present. Read about the Chevy sedan at the same time, 2 girls on their way to a party, never showed up.
Makes you wonder how many cars with remains are out there under water never discovered.

 

I worked for a company that "lost" an accountant. They just figured he had skipped out. They looked everywhere, within the company, for irregularities and found none. Well after a long dry spell the small lake in front of the plant almost disappeared. When this happened they found a small foreign car with said bean counter inside!

 

That would have been a much better story had he been an attorney.................

 

...and even better if it was a 747 load of attorneys.

 

This one meant something to me since it happened close to where I was going to college at the time in 1971.

In this undated file photo provided by the South Dakota Attorney General’s Office shows a Studebaker with skeletal remains found in Brule Creek near Elk Point, S.D. Cheryl Miller and Pamella Jackson were last seen May 29, 1971, driving a 1960 Studebaker Lark on their way to a party. The attorney general, sheriffs from Union and Clay counties, and the Union County state's attorney said Tuesday the girls remains and personal items were found in the car, which appears to have crashed in the creek some 43 years ago.

ELK POINT, S.D. — Two South Dakota girls on their way to an end-of-school-year party at a gravel pit in May 1971 drove off a gravel road into a flooded creek and remained hidden until last fall when a drought brought their Studebaker into view, authorities said Tuesday, April 15, 2014.

State and local officials held a news conference Tuesday afternoon confirming that the 1960 Studebaker unearthed last fall included the remains of Cheryl Miller and Pamella Jackson, both 17-year-olds from nearby Vermillion.

The investigators showed dozens of photographs of well-preserved clothing, a purse and even Miller’s driver’s license with her smiling photograph.

Attorney General Marty Jackley said classmates who saw the girls before they disappeared and other evidence indicated they had not been drinking. In addition, mechanical tests on the car pointed away from foul play because it was in high gear, he said. “It’s consistent with a car accident,” Jackley said. The attorney general said investigators don't know what caused the accident, but he noted that one car tire was damaged, though authorities don't know whether a blowout caused that. He also cited that the tread on the tires was worn.

A fisherman who remembered the 42-year-old case called authorities after noticing one of the car’s wheels sticking out of the creek.

The disappearance of the Vermillion High School girls was one of the initial investigations of South Dakota’s cold case unit in 2004.

(L) Cheryl Miller and (R) Pamella Jackson (Courtesy of Argus Leader)

A September 2004 search of a Union County farm turned up apparently unrelated bones, clothing, a purse, photographs, newspaper articles and other items, but not the car.

In a warrant authorizing the search, authorities said that David Lykken, who lived at the farm in 1971 and was a classmate of the girls, might have been involved in the disappearance of Miller and Jackson as well as three other unnamed people. Lykken is in prison serving an unrelated 227-year sentence for rape and kidnapping.

In July 2007, a Union County grand jury indicted Lykken on two counts of premeditated murder, two counts of felony murder and two counts of murder in the disappearance of Miller and Jackson. But state prosecutors dropped all six murder charges after concluding a jailhouse informant apparently lied about Lykken supposedly admitting to causing the deaths.

Union County Sheriff Dan Limoges said Tuesday he had no regrets about the investigation.
“The only unfortunate thing I would add is for the Lykken family, for what they had to go through. But I don’t make any apologies for doing our job,” he said. “It’s easy to second-guess what could have been done or should have been done,” Limoges said. “It just wasn’t meant to be until recently.”

Family members of the girls attended the news conference but didn’t speak. The girls’ remains will be returned to the families for burial.

 

The first 2 are Model T tourings in a lake thought to be victims of ice fishing / early thaw

There were the remains of 4 missing teenagers in the '69 Camaro ragtop....and the remains of 2 men in the '53 Chevy sedan they were found in the same spot in the same lake although the 2 men had disappeared some years before the Camaro....sad tale but hopefully it gave the families some closure ....
The other one is a 20's Bugatti race car pushed off a wharf in the '30's by a tax dodger...originally it hung from chains which eventually broke so it couldn't be retrieved it sat on it's side at the bottom of a Swiss lake for 80 years til divers found it ...it sank in the mud so one side is good