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Carolyn Parr kept one hand on her aunt and the other on her phone as the two of them stood on the riverbank, their attention focused on the tow truck pulling a long-submerged Ford pickup out of the Ohio River.
“We’re not sure it’s my uncle’s truck, but we’re praying it is and that we can get some answers,” Parr had said minutes earlier, with her aunt, Ethel Stevens, nodding agreement. “We still have a lot of unanswered questions. Hopefully, this will help us find out what did happen.”
Parr’s uncle, Charlie Hanlon, was last seen 23 years ago -- on Oct. 27, 1999 -- when he left his home in his 1999 black Ford extended cab pickup. Hanlon, then 58, reportedly was on his way to pick up a motorcycle in Florida.
On Monday, the Chaos Divers of Southern Illinois were back in Jefferson County to take another stab at closing the book on some decades-old mysteries -- the Ford extended cab they believe belonged to Hanlon being one of them.
They’re also on the lookout for a 2005 Suzuki Forenza that was driven by Karen Adams, a teacher’s aide and department store cashier from Independence, Pennsylvania, who disappeared March 11, 2007 after a night of bingo at Mountaineer.
“We’ve been working on her case about eight months now,” Chaos diver Jacob Grubbs said. “With the information we received, her last phone ping was down in south Steubenville, so with this being an area of concern, this being a very rural area, she could possibly be in this area. Phone pinging 15 years ago isn’t (as precise) as it is now.”
But if they don’t find Adams’ car at the marina, Grubbs said they’ll move to a reservoir by her house.
We’ll search that Thursday, we’ve already got permission,” he said.
Grubbs said they had five vehicles marked and were “going to dive on them, make sure they’re not Karen’s.” They pulled two of them out -- a Lincoln Navigator and the Ford pickup -- and Grubbs said they would search all of them to make sure there were no human remains in them.
Grubbs said they identified “six or eight vehicles further down” with new equipment they have.
“We want to do this diligently, so if one of these vehicles are Karen’s, it was 15 years ago - the car could be silted out because of the river flowing, so we want to make sure we cover all of our bases,” he said.
Chaos are search and recovery divers who travel across thecountry, helping solve cold cases and bring closure to families of victims. Funded by Facebook and YouTube, their services are provided free of charge.
“In the past five months we’ve brought nine people home,” Grubbs said. “Hopefully, we can bring Karen home. I think this is a really humbling and beautiful thing we are doing as a whole–there’s other teams across the country that are doing the same thing, Adventures With Purpose is the founder of this, but we’ve teamed up together and brought several people home and I’ve but we’ve teamed up together and brought several people home, and I’ve branched off and I’ve brought several home myself. It’s a beautiful feeling to help these families out.”
Sheriff Fred Abdalla said they’re “just fortunate to have the divers from Chaos coming in to help us.”
“They’re a force multiplier,” he said. “They have access to tools that we don’t have. We wouldn’t be able to do anything like this on our own, we don’t have the manpower and we have so much going on on a day-to-day basis that we can’t do it. But them coming in to assist us and offer their resources, it’s a huge deal for us.”
He said they could be in the tri-state area throughout the week.
In addition to Abdalla, assisting Chaos with the day’s search were Toronto Fire Chief Bill Sheel and firefighter Ryan Boyd.
Steubenville Police Chief Bill McCafferty, Brooke County Sheriff Richard Beatty and Weirton Police Chief Charlie Kush.