Okla. cold cases similar to Hall Co.'s 'Lady in the Lake'

FOSS, Okla. (AP) -- An Oklahoma sheriff says the families of six people who have been missing for more than 40 years should be able to gain some closure with the discovery of cars and bones believed to be connected to the cases. The case is eerily similar to one that was a mystery in the Gainesville area which was finally solved in 1990.

What still lingers, though, are questions about how the skeletal remains and two vehicles ended up submerged in Custer County's Foss Lake, said Sheriff Bruce Peoples. He's hopeful the answers will come, helping solve a pair of mysteries that have haunted residents for more than a generation.

"Now the family will know, and that's what we look at as an important part of our job," Peoples said. "It's going to close a very unhappy chapter in their lives, but nothing any worse than having those lingering questions and wondering what happened."

Were the victims in the two separate cold cases murdered and dumped in the lake about 100 miles west of Oklahoma City? Or did they take a wrong turn, drive off the edge of the boat ramp and end up submerged?

"It's way too early to tell at this point," Peoples said. "We'll treat it as a crime until we're able to determine it's a simple car wreck."

Divers conducting a training exercise with sonar equipment found the 1969 Camaro and early 1950s Chevrolet at the bottom of Foss Lake on Tuesday. The vehicles were in about 12 feet of water - about 50 feet from the end of a boat ramp. Remains were inside both cars. (See earlier story. Link below.)

HALL COUNTY'S 'LADY IN THE LAKE'

The Hall County case case involved two Gainesville women - Susie Roberts and Delia Mae Parker Young - who were returning home from Dawsonville one night in 1958.

Not long after they were reported missing, a body believed to be Young's was recovered from Lake Lanier near Jerry Jackson Bridge on Dawsonville Highway just west of Gainesville Marina. The body was never positively identified, however. Divers searched the lake bottom for the car the women were in and for Roberts' body, but to no avail.

But 32 years later in November 1990 their car was found on the muddy lake bottom by construction crews who were building a new bridge. Inside were human remains which a medical examiner concluded were those of Susie Roberts, who was 38 at the time she and Young disappeared. The tag on the car matched the one linked to the missing persons case.

(AccessNorthGa.com's Ken Stanford contributed to this story.)