Nine feet under water in a canal along West Broward Boulevard in Plantation, a diver reached his hand in through a small hole in the roof of the corroded car and pulled out an object resting on the backseat.
Mike Sullivan, one of the founders of Sunshine State Sonar, an independent organization that uses sonar technology to find missing people and cars in South Florida, surfaced with the object, brought it to shore and searched on Google to find out what it was.
The relic was a Fisher Price School Days Desk toy, made in the early 1970s. Inside the car were more baby toys, a little girl’s clothes and human remains.
Sullivan and volunteers with Sunshine State Sonar, along with Plantation Police detectives and Broward Sheriff’s Office divers, found a 1960s model Chevrolet Impala in a canal in the 10100 block of West Broward Boulevard on Saturday. Bones were found inside, believed to be those of an adult and a small child, police department spokesperson Det. Robert Rettig said in a news release Monday.
Sullivan said all signs point to the remains being those of Doris Wurst and her 3-year-old daughter, Caren, who were reported missing from Plantation in November 1974. Rettig said he could not confirm whose remains were recovered until they are identified through DNA and dental records.
Wurst and Caren were last seen in 1974 a few miles away from where the car was found Saturday. The car in the canal was confirmed to be a 1961 Chevrolet Impala based on the taillights, the car they were known to be traveling in when they were last seen. Wurst was from Pennsylvania, where the car was registered, and snow tires were still on the car. And then the vintage baby toys and little girl’s clothes inside.
With all of the clues adding up, Sullivan said, “you just knew.”
“This was the little girl saying to us, ‘You found me. You got me,'” Sullivan said of surfacing with the Fisher Price toy.
Plantation Police were notified on Nov. 12, 1974, that a 35-year-old mother and her 3-year-old daughter were reported missing from their home in the 13400 block of Northwest Second Street, which was then the Sunshine City Trailer Park, Rettig said in the news release. Wurst and Caren were not named in the release.
Sullivan said he was relieved once they found the car with windows still sealed, increasing the chances that any possible remains could be found. In some cases where windows have been busted and cars have turned upside down, any remains may no longer be inside, he said.
“We were praying that they were still going to be inside the vehicle,” Sullivan said.
Law enforcement combed the vehicle methodically, Sullivan said, to recover any bone fragments, the toys, the clothes. It was a painstaking process to recover the car. The decades under water made the car so brittle that his “finger went right through it” any time he touched it, Sullivan said.
“It was inch by inch by inch with the tow truck,” Sullivan said. “They just moved it so slowly for hours.”
Little information is publicly available about the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Wurst and her daughter.
A Florida Department of Law Enforcement missing person flyer says Caren was last seen with Wurst in the Plantation area on Nov. 7, 1974, and that they may have been traveling in a red 1961 Chevrolet Impala. Wurst’s case profile in NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, says only that she disappeared with her daughter. A photo of Caren was published in Baltimore’s now-defunct The Evening Sun on July 29, 1987, which said she disappeared on Oct. 20, 1974, from Warminster, Pennsylvania, an area outside of Philadelphia.
The case became cold in 1975, and detectives continued follow-up investigations as the years passed. Three years after they were missing detectives still investigated. Then 14 years later. Two decades later. Throughout the 2010s, investigations continued, most recently in 2018, but the woman, her child and the car were never found. Sunshine State Sonar began working with detectives to search for Wurst and Caren in June 2023.
Rettig did not provide further details about the circumstances of their disappearance.
Sullivan said he doesn’t know much about the case. Longtime residents in the area where the car was found told Sullivan there were no guardrails in that section of West Broward Boulevard in the ’70s.
“I don’t think anybody’s ever going to be able to know why,” Sullivan said.
