💔 He vanished after leaving a liquor store in 2010. For 15 years, his family searched. Last month, divers finally found the truth — hidden 19 feet underwater.

On a cold December evening in 2010, Robert Long, a 62-year-old man from Miller Place, Long Island, walked out of a neighborhood liquor store — and into history.
He never came home.

His white 2007 Chrysler PT Cruiser vanished along with him. Flyers were printed. Volunteers searched beaches, woods, and highways. But as the years passed, hope began to fade.

For fifteen years, his wife left the porch light on every night. Detectives kept the file open, but leads went cold. It was as if the earth itself had swallowed Robert whole.

Then, in early 2025, two volunteer divers — Bill Macintosh and Dan Pritchard from the nonprofit Exploring With a Mission and Adventures With Purpose — decided to search the waters of Miller Place one more time.
What they found would bring heartbreak and closure to a mystery that had haunted a community for over a decade.

🧭 Mapping the Past

Before diving, Bill studied Google Maps, tracing Robert’s last known movements.
The liquor store — still there, next to a Stop & Shop — sat just minutes from the shoreline.

“If he left the store that night and drove straight toward the water,” Bill explained, “it would’ve taken him no more than four minutes to reach the Cedar Beach boat ramp.”

The theory was grim: maybe Robert, struggling emotionally, drove to a familiar, peaceful spot — the quiet dock at Miller Place — to think, to drink, to escape.

🌊 Into the Deep

The team launched their sonar boat.
“Eighteen feet right off the boat ramp,” Bill narrated as the screen flickered. The sonar image revealed strange shapes — shadows of something big beneath the water’s surface.

At first, it looked like rocks or concrete blocks, maybe construction debris. But then, unmistakably, the outline of a car appeared.
“Dude, that’s a car,” Dan said, eyes widening. “And it’s in the exact shape of a PT Cruiser.”

They marked the coordinates with a buoy. The divers suited up.

The current was strong, the water cold, visibility near zero. But as their flashlights swept across the silt, the unmistakable curve of a white car appeared beneath years of barnacles and sea growth.

“White PT Cruiser. Windows down. Back windows up,” Bill radioed.
Then, silence.
Moments later, his voice cracked through the comms:

“We’ve found remains.”

When the divers resurfaced, the air was heavy with disbelief.
Robert Long’s vehicle — the same one missing since 2010 — had been sitting 19 feet underwater, just yards from the Cedar Beach dock.

The team immediately called Suffolk County Police. Within minutes, patrol cars and dive units surrounded the site. It was now an official crime scene.

Bill, visibly shaken, recounted the moment:

“We reached into the driver’s side. I felt bone fragments. It’s one of those moments that stop your heart. You realize you’re touching someone’s story — someone’s ending.”

Inside the PT Cruiser, investigators later confirmed the presence of human remains and personal items belonging to Robert Long.

He had been there all along — just four minutes from where he was last seen.

Police divers, forensic experts, and volunteers worked through the night.
The vehicle was fragile — 15 years in saltwater had turned its frame into paper-thin metal. A local barge company offered their crane and crew free of charge to lift it gently from the harbor.

“This is delicate,” Bill explained. “The car’s basically glued to the seabed. We’re lifting it inch by inch to avoid tearing it apart.”

Under floodlights, the crowd watched in silence as the crane cables tightened. The water began to churn — bubbles, silt, and then the haunting white roof of a PT Cruiser broke the surface for the first time since 2010.

Even the police officers stopped talking.

A volunteer whispered, “We brought him home.”

Robert Long wasn’t just a case file. He was a husband, a father, a man who once laughed loudly at family barbecues and spent weekends fixing cars in his driveway.

Friends said he’d battled depression, but “he never seemed like the type to give up,” one neighbor recalled. “We thought maybe he left town to start over.”

Instead, his story ended in quiet tragedy — alone, in his car, beneath the water.

For fifteen years, his wife had lived with unanswered questions.
Now she finally had one answer — and one impossible goodbye.

“It’s always mixed emotions,” Bill said in an interview. “We’re giving a family closure, but it’s the worst kind of closure imaginable.”

Adventures With Purpose began as a small YouTube channel helping locate lost vehicles. Over time, it evolved into a nationwide volunteer movement that’s helped solve over 30 missing person cases — people who had disappeared without a trace, often ending up in lakes and rivers near where they were last seen.

The team doesn’t charge families. They travel, self-funded, using advanced sonar equipment to do what no one else can — find the forgotten.

Bill’s message to the public was simple yet powerful:

“If you’re out boating, turn on your sonar. You might see something. You could be the reason a family finally gets answers.”

Their work has sparked a new wave of citizen-led searches across the U.S., proving that sometimes, closure comes not from the system — but from the people who care enough to look.

As dawn broke over Miller Place, the PT Cruiser sat on the dock, dripping saltwater, barnacles still clinging to its sides.

The crowd stood quietly — police, divers, locals, all united by a single emotion: respect.

After fifteen years, Robert Long’s journey was finally over.
His family could lay him to rest.

But for the team that found him, the mission continues.
Each recovery brings both grief and grace — a reminder that behind every missing person’s poster is a story waiting beneath the surface.

And sometimes, all it takes is a few brave souls, a sonar screen, and a belief that no one truly disappears forever.

In a world where news moves fast and stories fade, the case of Robert Long reminds us why we search — not for glory, not for views, but for closure, compassion, and truth.

He was lost for fifteen years.
Now, finally, he is found.