Divers find car linked to 37-year-old cold case in Quebec river

A vehicle believed to be linked to a Laval man’s disappearance 37 years ago is being fished out of the Mille-Îles River in Deux-Montagnes, Que.

A vehicle belonging to a Laval man who disappeared 37 years ago was pulled out of the Mille-Îles River in Deux-Montagnes, Que.

Australian and American divers from Exploring With a Mission said they found a vehicle believed to belong to Robert St-Louis who went missing in 1988 on Sunday.

Diver William McIntosh told CTV News he and his crew found “five or six cars” in the river, one of them matching the description St-Louis’s daughter had given of her father’s Jeep Cherokee Chief.

He said the divers found bones inside the vehicle.

Laval police confirmed Monday evening that the Jeep was the one driven by St-Louis before he disappeared. The remains will be formally identified by the coroner`s office.

McIntosh said St-Louis’s daughter contacted the Exploring With a Mission team for help solving her father’s disappearance — she had been the last person to see him when he went missing on Father’s Day in 1988.

“We decided to get right in the river,” he said. “We came across a big stone that was about 70 feet long, and then it dropped straight off into from from five feet of water, directly down to 50 feet. And at 50 feet, we found one car, and then we came back around on it. We found three more, but we found one that was the shape of a Jeep Cherokee with square back with a square window, which is a very unique car.”

Using a sonar and magnets, the divers were able to pull the car by its rim.

“I got the chills immediately. I knew that we had him,” said McIntosh. “[My colleague] Dan put his hand in in the rocks under the driver’s side door, and the first bone that he touched was a U-shaped bone.”

St-Louis lived very close to the spot in the river where the vehicles were found.

According to McIntosh, at least 11 people are missing in the area, including Lucie Bouchard who went missing in 1996. Though there were at least five cars in the river, McIntosh and his team were focused on St-Louis.

“They’ve been waiting 37 years, and currently they might be waiting 37 hours to be able to get this vehicle out and to get all the remains out so they finally can bury their father,” McIntosh said of his family.

McIntosh said the depth of the water just off the boat ramp can make it a hotspot for “nefarious activity” and “self-harm scenarios.”

“None of these are accident-related,” he told CTV News.

Police have taped off the area and are working to corroborate the divers’ findings.

“The divers from the ‘Exploring with a Mission’ group will meet with investigators, and an examination of the vehicle and its contents will be carried out once it has been removed from the Mille-Îles River in order to confirm the information obtained,” the Lac des Deux-Montagnes police service said in a news release on Sunday.

“The assistance of divers from the Sûreté du Québec was requested on site, as certain information leads us to believe that the vehicle may be linked to a missing persons case in Laval,” the police force added.

The group of divers has been on a North American tour searching for missing people.

On July 11, they found a car belonging to Yvon Guévin, who had been missing for 11 years, in the Saint-François River.

With files from The Canadian Press