Woman's Body Found After 12 Years

For the last 12 years, Gail Schoening's family wondered what happened to her. She disappeared in April 1997 from her Plantation, Fla., apartment and police have searched Broward County and chased leads around the state ever since.

Turns out her body was submerged in a lake just 100 yards from her home all along. According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel , Plantation police found Schoening's body encased in her car at the bottom of a lake.

Her family is relieved to finally have closure.

"We're happy she was found, but sad about the circumstances," said her mother, Arlene Schoening. "We'd been going through all the possibilities."

Schoening, 35 at the time of her disappearance, was reportedly dependent on anti-depressants after recently being divorced. Her family suspected she might have driven her car, which was also missing, into a nearby lake.

Police checked that possibility and sent dive teams to dredge several bodies of water, Detective Robert Rettig, a Plantation police spokesman, told the Sun-Sentinel.

"It's hard to deal with a lake that's got a lot of silt and mud in it," Rettig said. "Visibility was a problem, but we eventually acquired technology that could help us deal with that."

Plantation police used more advanced sonar equipment to search the water again in July, and Schoening was found inside her car 12 feet underwater in August.

In April, Bavarian police found the bones of a missing man 29 years after he disappeared.