The case of a Pennsylvania father who disappeared without a trace 18 years ago may finally be solved, thanks to a group of YouTubers.
Divers from a volunteer rescue team, Adventures With Purpose, discovered the body of the man that they believe is James Amabile inside a submerged car Saturday night near the Ridley Township Marina.
"We discovered a vehicle 24 feet deep underwater down Darby Creek," diver Doug Bishop said in a video. "We believe and the family believes that we have definitely closed this case for them."
Amabile disappeared on Dec. 4, 2003. That evening, he called the babysitter to tell her say he was running late to pick up his two daughters, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Amabile never arrived and was never seen again.
Bishop said the team ended up at the marina, about 16 miles southwest of Philadelphia, after retracing Amabile's steps from the day he went missing. They located the car using specialized sonar equipment, dove in the water to double check the sonar and then notified police.
The Ridley Township Police Department sent a dive team to the marina to verify the group's discovery.
"Divers recovered a license plate from the vehicle along with human remains. The vehicle registration plate removed from the vehicle matched a Ridley Township missing person entry from December of 2003," police said in a statement, without naming Amabile.
The Delaware County Medical Examiner's Office is examining the remains for positive identification.
Bishop said the case may have been solved earlier if the marina was searched, adding that a pylon for a nearby dock had been "drilled right through" the front end of the vehicle.
"I had never seen anything like this. Completely blew my mind," he said. "You would think that before you drilled something into the ground, you would have to do some type of assessment of the land you're putting something into."
Bishop added that he wasn't placing any blame, just that it was "striking" to find a vehicle with a pylon through it.
Stephen Amabile told The Inquirer the family is just fortunate to finally have some closure.
"It's my brother," Amabile said. "They found him."
Adventures With Purpose is a volunteer search and recovery dive team dedicated to helping families of missing loved ones. The group provides their services completely free of charge and has so far helped solve 28 cold cases, CBS Philadelphia reported. The Adventures With Purpose YouTube channel has over 2 million subscribers.
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