Two Minnesota anglers may have accidentally solved a decades-old cold case while trying to catch walleye. Brody Loch of Watkins, Minnesota, and a friend were floating the Mississippi River on Aug. 9, looking for Walters on their Garmin LiveScope. When Loch’s buddy hooked a big one, he noticed something unusual on the screen.
"When he caught the fish, I turned the transducer around and boom, there it was just sitting on the bottom," Loch told CBS News.
What Loch spotted wasn’t a giant walleye, but a 1960s-era car on the bottom of the river. He returned to the area with his family the following day to check again before alerting law enforcement. After running the VIN, police confirmed that the sunken car belonged to Roy Benn, a Sauk Rapids resident who went missing in September 1967.
He was last seen driving a 1963 metallic blue Buick Electra, according to a missing persons report filed at the time. Divers later discovered human remains in the car.
Loch called the discovery “100 percent luck.”
“If my buddy wouldn’t have caught that walleye, we would have kept on floating down the river and never would have found it,” he told CNN.
And as many anglers know, sometimes a little tech is all you need to land a little luck.
Forward-facing sonar (FFS), the very kind of gadget some bass tournament purists grumble about, was the tool that helped Loch and his buddy locate the Buick that went missing decades ago. FFS can stir up some hot debates in the angling world, especially in competition circles. Critics argue it creates an unfair edge, allowing them to spot fish and structure that anglers would otherwise miss.
But in this case, there was no leaderboard to dominate. Instead of helping win a prize purse, Loch’s FFS uncovered a six-decade-old mystery and could help provide closure for a long-grieving family.
Roy Benn was 59 when he vanished. The St. Cloud Daily Times archives show he was last seen dining at King’s Supper Club north of Sartell, driving his Buick Electra, and reportedly carrying a large sum of money. His wife had died the year before, and Benn was running St. Cloud Appliance Repair Service. Family and authorities searched for him extensively at the time, but after decades with no leads, the case went cold. Authorities declared Benn legally dead in 1975.
Remarkably intact after decades underwater, Benn’s Buick instantly reignited interest in a case that had been gathering dust for nearly 60 years. Investigators, working with a local towing company, pulled the car from the river without it breaking apart. The remains inside have been sent to a medical examiner’s office. Authorities have also reached out to surviving family members for familial DNA testing.
Benton County Sheriff Troy Heck, whose department is leading the investigation, cautioned that some of the usual identification techniques may be less effective given how long Benn’s body has been underwater. Still, all signs point to Benn, and authorities are grateful for the long-awaited break in a case that had confounded them for decades.
While some tournament anglers might still grumble about FFS giving “too much” information, there’s little debate that, in this case, the technology may have helped a family find closure after all these years.
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