Any of you involved in this?

[Chris H]

This is copied directly from



Answer to cold case may rise from lake
BRENDA INGERSOLL bingersoll@madison.com
Dane County sheriff's divers hope that in the next few days, the mucky bottom of Lake Waubesa will finally surrender the remains of two young men who vanished on a late-winter night 45 years ago.

They are looking for Ronald Wick who were reported missing to Madison police on Feb. 22, 1961. Wick was 20 and Stolz 23 at the time. The break in the very cold case came when a recreational diver happened upon Wick's gray, 1950 Ford coupe in 35 feet of water on July 22.

Police believe the find will confirm the long-held theory that Wick and Stolz were driving on the ice, possibly to go ice fishing, when the car broke through and sank.

The car is upside down and buried in silt on the west end of Lake Waubesa, about 600 yards from shore about halfway between Lake Farm Park and Goodland Park in the town of Dunn, sheriff's spokeswoman Elise Schaffer said. "We did locate a license plate that helped confirm this was the missing vehicle," Madison police spokesman Mike Hanson said at a lakeside news conference announcing the discovery.

After consulting with a Milwaukee marine salvage company about how to proceed, the sheriff's dive team began carefully excavating the car Tuesday morning. "At this point, we're just clearing away debris from the vehicle," Schaffer said.

In a day or two, divers hope to get into the passenger compartment. A team of seven divers are working in pairs in one-hour shifts. The car likely would break apart if authorities tried to lift it from the lake bed, Sheriff's Capt. Ron Boylan said.

Larry Stolz of Cheyenne, Wyo., Carl Stolz' older brother and only sibling, hopes that the salvage operation will answer once and for all the question of what happened to his brother.

"For 45 years, I've wondered if we'd ever find out where they are," he said. "I'm very relieved. Hopefully we can find something further in the contents that would identify them.

"We knew they spent a lot of time out on the lakes. It's good news that they found the car. My father, who was a blacksmith in Danbury, Iowa, died in '64 not knowing for sure what happened to them."

Stolz' mother is still living, but has dementia and hasn't been told about the car, he said.

It was not known if Wick still has relatives in the Madison area.

The nearly half-century-old mystery began the night of Feb. 21, 1961, with the two young men visiting a few taverns after work, according to newspaper reports at the time.

At the Shuffle Inn, Wick ran into an old girlfriend and invited her to come with them for a drive on the lake ice. They spoke of ice fishing, but she refused to go along. The two men took her home, and Wick made a date with her for the next night.

Later, two women who sold bait on Commercial Avenue told police they were awakened early in the morning by two men who wanted to buy bait. One of the women reported that the man who bought the $2 worth of mayflies said, "Aren't we crazy to go on the lake fishing at this hour in the morning?"

Wick's sister, Janice Hall, called police and reported the men missing after they didn't show up for their jobs at Wisco Hardware the next day.

The report set off an intensive hunt involving hundreds of hours of work over several years by sheriff's and police personnel and even the FBI.

Early efforts included a Feb. 28 dragging operation on Lake Waubesa where the ice was open, and on March 1, Madison Detective Robert Ferris went up in an Air Force helicopter to search Madison-area lakes. UW-Madison loaned police its sonar equipment, but the technology failed to turn up anything.

In 1963, Madison police even brought in psychic Peter Hurkos, who was unable to find the men. Hurkos identified a large metal object in Lake Monona as a car, but the finding proved false. Hurkos later was charged with impersonating an FBI agent.

Some police theorized that the two men wanted to disappear. But they had only about $5 between them when last seen, Stolz's two checking accounts were never touched and their Social Security numbers were never used again. Moreover, Stolz was married, had a son and his wife was expecting another baby. Both men were said to enjoy their jobs at Wisco Hardware.

Larry Stolz said Tuesday that Stolz's wife, Nancy, waited for several years before marrying again. The man she married adopted her two sons. "They have asked to keep their privacy. It was a very sad time in her life," he said. "She does live in the area and so do the two boys, who never really knew (Carl)."

"They'd talked about going ice fishing that night," Larry Stolz said. His brother "loved to fish and trap. I feel badly about what happened. Carl was a wonderful, nice guy. . . . He enjoyed life, the outdoors. He liked to have a good time."

A few years ago, Larry Stolz said, he put a marker for his brother next to their father's grave in Iowa.

"I'd like to say we're appreciative of the effort of the Police Department and the Sheriff's Office, not just now, but over the years," he said.

A Stolz cousin, Rodney Witte, said it will be good to have the mystery solved. "I'm happiest for Lawrence (Stolz). He just needed to have some kind of knowing where his brother was. I feel amazement. This is sort of an unexpected finding. We're sort of overwhelmed."

[schalge]

This was also on the WBAY Green Bay station this morning. How would you like that job going inside in near zero vis.

[moneysavr]

This is a link to WUAA and a read by a guy that found the car in Lake Waubesa on a off the shelf side scan fish locator ,

dive safe,
Brad