Indy woman's mother found in submerged car decades after she went missing in Florida
The grainy video on the sonar screen showed the murky depths of a South Florida pond.
Two men aboard a small boat dutifully watched the screen for clues as the camera scanned. Slowly, the outline of what they believed to be a car wheel appeared. They became more confident they were seeing a wrecked vehicle after they threw a buoy down to the depths and the rope snagged.
The duo had traversed to the body of water that day in January of 2023 in Davie, Florida hoping to find the whereabouts of an air conditioner repairman missing since 1986.
They instead made another miraculous discovery.
Soon after diving roughly 20 feet below to investigate, they realized the car was a silver Saturn, the same type of vehicle police said belonged to Karen Moore before she went missing in Davie in 2001. Moore, a nurse, was supposed to pick up her 8-year-old daughter from Girl Scout camp on June 27 but didn’t show up. It was soon discovered she also didn’t report to work.
The whereabouts of Moore and her Saturn remained unknown – until the day of the dive. Soon later, Moore’s daughter, Christina Baber, got the call she’d been hoping would come for nearly 23 years. From her work in Indianapolis, police confirmed the car and human remains inside belonged to her mom.
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“It was surreal this was actually happening,” said Baber, now 30. Her life had been marked by questions about where her mom may have gone.
From what she remembered and was told, Moore was kind, caring and often took trips to the children’s museum. She recently found an address book where her mother jotted down every one of her friend’s birthdays.
“Everybody was well taken care of,” Baber recalled.
A few years after her mother’s disappearance, Baber moved to the Indianapolis area where she stayed. For the following two decades, she continued to follow her mother’s case and felt flickers of hope when a news story circulated in Florida about a vehicle being found in water. But each time proved a disappointment.
“After 22 years, you don’t lose hope, but you don’t get worked up every time something little happens,” Baber said about the case. That made the phone call from Davie police even more striking, she said.
The discovery allowed Baber and her family to return to the pond and hold a memorial.
“It was a bittersweet day,” Baber said. “Everybody was so happy to have peace and closure knowing she was home and no longer missing.”
The investigation into how her car with her inside became submerged remains ongoing, according to USA Today.
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Contact Sarah Nelson at 317-503-7514 or sarah.nelson@indystar.com
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: The 'surreal' discovery of an Indy woman's mother, missing since 2001
