A vintage 1960s Buick retrieved from the waters of the Mississippi River recently may provide crucial insights into one of Minnesota’s most mysterious disappearances.
Roy George Benn, aged 59, disappeared without a trace 58 years ago after having breakfast at a gas station cafe in Sartell, within the St. Cloud Metropolitan area.
The tycoon last seen leaving the King’s Supper Club, which was attached to a Shell station on Highway 10, around 4am on September 25th, 1967.
He drove off in a metallic blue four-door 1963 Buick Electra bearing Minnesota license plates. He and the car were never seen again.
Mr. Benn, who was a widower, owned an apartment building and an appliance service business. He was reputed to carry significant amounts of cash, with investigators suspecting he might have had thousands of dollars on him at the time he vanished.
Benn was declared legally dead eight years after his disappearance, but his loved ones never stopped searching for answers.
The family might finally find closure after divers extracted Benn’s Buick from the river on Wednesday evening, according to confirmation from the Stearns-Benton County Sheriff’s office.
The vehicle was taken to the nearby Sartell Police Department for processing, where investigators confirmed there were human remains inside.
Roy Benn’s Buick was dragged from the Mississippi River in Sartell, Minnesota, on Wednesday – 58 years after he vanished
Investigators believe the remains are likely that of Benn, but have been sent to the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office for identification.
The coroner will also work to determine a cause of death, the sheriff’s office said in a press release obtained by Daily Mail.
While officials are not expecting autopsy results for several weeks, they did collect familial DNA from one of Benn’s relatives seven years ago, as reported by The Star Tribune.
That sample will likely be tested as officials work to confirm the identity of the remains.
Sartell police say the car was ‘severely deteriorated’ after spending decades underwater and becoming ‘filled with river sediment’.
Moreover, authorities successfully verified the Vehicle Identification Number of the car extracted from the river, confirming it matches the 1963 Buick registered to Benn.
Divers first searched the water for Benn in October 1967, focusing their search on the granite quarries in Sauk Rapids, roughly four miles from the town on Sartell.
The following spring, officials searched for a quarry in Stearns County in hopes of finding the missing businessman. That search led to the recovery of two cars but neither were connected to Benn.
Human remains were found inside the car belonging to the property tycoon, pictured, sparking hopes one of the Midwest’s most disturbing missing persons cases may finally be solved
Officials also searched a channel on Little Rock Lake near the King’s Supper Club, but that too did not yield any results.
Benn’s Buick Electra was only found this week thanks to the efforts of 22-year-old fisherman Brody Loch.
Loch was experimenting with new sonar fish locating equipment on Saturday night when he noticed a vehicle located about 24ft below the surface of the river.
The fisherman says he was initially ‘skeptical’, suspecting he had probably stumbled upon a large ‘rock’.
‘But when we came around the other side … it just made that perfect vehicle cab and frame shape. It was definitely very spooky, to say the least,’ Loch told the newspaper.
He returned to the spot the next morning to confirm what he saw before reporting the discovery to police. Three days later, divers and a tow crew recovered the Buick from the bottom of the river.
‘We thank the Stearns/Benton County Dive Team and Collins Brothers Towing for their work in executing the recovery and raising the vehicle carefully to preserve its structure and potential evidence, as well as the Sartell Fire Department for their support in operations through out the day and into the night,’ Sartell police said in a statement obtained by Daily Mail.
‘A unified command is overseeing the investigation. Updates will be issued by the lead investigative agency as new information becomes available.’
