(upbeat music) - We're almost 20 years, an Iowa family has dealt with a mystery. The disappearance of a
Dubuque man and his car, both seeming to vanish without a trace. (upbeat music) - [Narrator] It was November of 1990 and Paul Knockel of Dubuque, didn't show up for Thanksgiving
dinner with his family. Now that wasn't like him. Knockel who never married and never had any children of his own, lived for spending time with his family. (upbeat music) Investigators believe Knockel may have wound up in
the Mississippi river, either by accident or as
a suicide or a homicide, but that's just a theory. (upbeat music) - [Doug] I don't know
if that's (indistinct) - [Jared] Okay, that makes sense. (gentle music) (water bubbling) - We're here on the bank
of the Mississippi river in East Dubuque, Illinois. Back behind us is Dubuque, Iowa. We're here in the search
for Paul Joseph Knockel, who is 53 years old and went missing officially
November 26, 1990. - 1990. - 1990.
- That's when he was actually reported missing. But he's believed he had
gotten missing on the 13th, also seen on the 14th
and again on the 17th. - Yeah. - Car that we're looking
for is very unique. It's a 1981 Mercury Zephyr. - Yeah.
The only Zephyr I've ever heard of is in Disneyland. - Yeah. - That's like a flying Zephyr. - Yeah. - I never even saw this car and car's been popping
up on screen right here. Maroon in color. Paul was 53 at the time, 265, same height as me, five 10, so a little bit on the larger side. When his car was spotted
on November 13th, 14th, one of those days, it was on the 151 bridge up here, the green bridge up here. Then a few days later, supposedly, no credible, like it's not like a, "Hey, we have license plates or anything, like we pulled this car
over that I know of, seen in Grant County
in the Wisconsin side." - Yeah.
- We're really in a tri-state area right now, to where we have Wisconsin up
river from here on this side. We're in Illinois right now and then, Iowa is right on the other side. A nice little tri-state area. We're coming back to a story that has become really more of a, the more we do these, the more this is an identical story. - Right. - We have an older gentlemen
who was very quiet, kept to himself, didn't have family, didn't have any children. - Yeah. - Worked minuscule jobs, but he was getting together
with his family for Thanksgiving and it wasn't until two weeks later-- - Yeah. - Or two or three weeks later, when the family finally said, "He didn't show up for Thanksgiving, we should probably--" - Yeah.
- "At this point, report him missing." - They thought that that
was really suspicious because when there are family
events such as Thanksgiving, he had always showed up. - Yeah, it was uncle Paul.
- Yeah, and even in his job was like, "Hey, this is not him, something's wrong." - We're always grateful for everybody that gives us those tips as to where we should be going next, such as the fishermen that
put us in on the spot, says he located two vehicles under here, which is why we're here. But also additional
volunteers that come out to help us as we're out
here on these missions. We're gonna introduce
you to them right now by bringing you back in time right now. - Well, even at that, the river channel has to be
maintained a minimum of 10 foot for the (indistinct). And it's deeper than that. Don't get me wrong. But with all of the boats on this river, somebody would fall in the back. I have no doubt in my mind. It's a big walleye tournament area, big bird station tournament area. I've spent countless
hours with this water. I used to work for a local
barge company years ago, went up and down this river. - Right. - There's some cools and pockets and then we've got lots
of wind dams and eddies. But you'd have to get a car way out to get to the most part. - We have Paul that was
spotted on September 3rd or last spoke with his
family on September 3rd, vehicle was spot... I'm sorry, November. - [Doug] Yeah. - [Anderson] Yeah. - 'Cause it was before Thanksgiving. - [Anderson] Yeah. - Then he was last seen on this bridge, for some reason he was parked up here. Then four days later, he was spotted over in Grant County and then he never showed up at work. - [Anderson] Oops, I
never heard of that one. - Yeah.
- Then he never showed up to work and he never showed up for Thanksgiving. - Right, and a family member said that they thought they saw what was his car on the bridge or just over the bridge. I know they did an extensive search of all the timber around that area. But there's no way to get a car, if somebody has to push it
over the edge, to go down, it end up in a ravine at the bottom. It would never make the water, so they would've found it. If it made it far enough,
it would hit the tracks. - Right, yeah, yeah. Like this boat ramp too, I'll examine that. Boats in and out of there all day long. Sometimes it's too shallow for you to get the boat in.
- Right now, if you get out far enough and
I noticed when I drove in, there's the big island that sticks out. - Yeah. - Done screening every year
when the water's low enough. - Yeah, since yeah. This boat ramp was off the radar. Let me take a look at my email. I'll see if I can find out when their boat ramp was off.
- The (indistinct) is right up here. right out preparing and straight up north. That drops off into a
little bit deeper water because you have a split where the main channel comes down and just the channel cuts off, so there's a big cut off in there. It's a solid limestone dirt
bank on the south side,. Yeah, on the south side. That would be where I would think 'cause it's deep enough and it's gonna either catch the current and go one of two ways. It's gonna go down the channel or it's gonna roll around
and come into the Peosta cut. And that's what they want out the ramp. - In looking at the boat ramps here, this one we already looked at it's too far into the cove that I would write that off. I would also write this one off. If this is something
that's gonna do on its own, because it's not putting
them far enough out. - Right. - The East Dubuque one, I think that's where we
need to start our day because it's puts you... If you are in a state of mind where you're gonna be
doing this on your own, then that's the one that's
gonna put you farther south into the river for chances of being gone. We also have sonar images
from another fishermen. All right. Well, I say we start the day over there. You guys wanna hang out for the day? You're welcome to follow us. That green bridge over there, that's the a 151 bridge. That's the bridge that we were just parked
out over by the park. We just crossed over the 20 bridge, coming over to the East Dubuque boat ramp, is where we're going to right
now on the Mississippi river. (gentle music) (metal cracking) - All these (indistinct) will
just slide down on earth. (gentle music) This particular case was brought to us by Misty Whitlatch as well as a fishermen who was out here with sonar. I believe it's the second piling that we're actually going
to be heading out here today because he spotted two vehicles. He said that the local fire department went down on a vehicle out here, but it's not very clear whether they actually made it out there. It's almost like there was
some stories as to reasons why they could never go out
to one of those two vehicles. Like the current was too strong or it was too deep or for whatever reason. - Yeah. - There's no confirmation that I know of that either one of those
two vehicles have been, eyes have been put on them. We nee to find them. We need to go mark them. We're also gonna go
down river even further, 'cause as we've learned, you know what, we need to go further than
we even think we need to go. - Yeah.
- Then do we need to go even further than that. - Yeah, yeah.
- We continue to learn. We appreciate you being here. We're getting in the water right now and see if we could bring Paul home today. (upbeat music) (boat engine revving) (water bubbling) (indistinct chatter) - All right. (gentle music) (boat engine revving) - As we start every one of our episodes where we get in the water, if you've never been here before, we'd like to give you a little
stone art education overview. So you can follow along as to what it is that we're looking at. We have two different
companies, manufacturers here. We have Hummingbird over here and we love using the down
imaging and the side imaging. The way that you read this one is it's more of a picture in time, so you're looking at a
picture that has happened and it's recording that. Like back here there is a fish and this is recording
we're going over right now. You can see our depth on here, 17 feet and anything from the top of
the boat here, water column, this black is the water and then there is the river bottom. Now with side imaging, we found that she casting
75 feet to the left and 75 feet to the right is best. Here's our boat and anything from the boat to
the bottom is a water column. Again, you can fall along with the grids and tell how deep the water is. Now, this one over here is Garmin. This is a Garmin live
scope that we're using for that transducer and this is in real time. Any if like a fish swim by, you're gonna that happening in real time. Picture in time, real time, and the readings are very similar. One might be down an
extra few inches or so. Anyway, so that's a sonar overview and we're going to get out here and we're actually gonna
return back to the boat ramp, so that way we can do a proper perimeter. We're going to go next to
the shore out about 35 feet and we're gonna run it down. Probably let's do this one
four or 500 yards, Doug. - [Doug] Yeah. - Then we'll move in
and we'll come back up. Now our speed that we're looking for also is 1.9 to 2.5 miles an hour is best. Because the current in here so slow, we can actually do sonar
down river and up river. In some other rivers that we're in, is gonna be pushing along at four to six miles an hour or knots. With that, that's just way too fast and so with those higher current rivers, you will always see us moving
up river for a proper scan. - [Doug] It's a drop-off (indistinct). That means we've gotta
stay as close as we can, scan out before we move out. - So what Doug is touching on there is some of the things that we've learned. Because of the way that sonar works, think of it as being in a dark room when you are shining a flashlight here. You'll see like the shadow behind of the silhouette of your object. Well, if your object
happens to be up close to, yeah, like a riverbank here, it's not giving it time
to have the shadow. So your target, your object is gonna blend into that back area. For that, we've learned that our first pass that we wanna do, it used to be 50 to 70 feet out, so we can cover more area right away. But we've learned that
because of the banks and how they come down, we
might be missing something. Now we've changed some of our procedures and we scanned right
about 25 to 35 feet out for our first pass. (boat engine revving) - I see it's coming up quick, it's coming up to two feet. Watch to make sure we don't bottom out and that was just like right here. - [Doug] Yeah. - Now it's gonna beep again, like it just went boo and then back down. Now we're back down to 11 feet now. - [Doug] I said, they
probably just came up, pushed a bunch of sand in here. - [Jared] Well, the other
thing could be as well, like that could be a newer bridge maybe and there could have been an
older bridge back in the day. So that we could have had
some older pilings over here. - [Doug] I've seen that
quite a bit as well. - [Jared] So with this piling here that we're passing right now, that's what we see right here. We can not see anything
behind that piling right now and if anything is right
here, pushed up against it, we're not, maybe we'll
see that very good either. So real quick, since
we're on this side of it. - [Doug] Live scan, down. - [Jared] We'll do live scan
and we'll do down imaging and then potentially get a
better side scan of it as well. Coming over next to our piling. - I know that you explain this so that those of you who
do not know what sonar is, like you said, you can follow along or you can understand what
it is we're looking at. But also it's a way of
letting other people who wanna know how to do this, to get out there and do it and demonstrate what it is and what it takes to actually
find something underwater. - [Jared] This got a lot of rocks there. - [Doug] They're are clean or-- - [Jared] Yeah, I it's clean. A lot of rocks. It's clean rocks. Okay, all right. So we know that that's clear, so we'll stay on this side. We'll keep running the 25 to 35 foot out and let's go run in a couple
of hundred yards down. - [Doug] I think that's probably safe. No matter what the current
is, if it's a river, we just go down. 'Cause we don't know what may have been going on at the time. - If there's a big flood
happening at the time, that vehicle could be a
lot further down for sure. - [Doug] The Mississippi is
not a small river either. It's a very large river and if there's any significant
weather force in the region, everything's gonna feed
into the Mississippi. - [Jared] When something like
this pops up on the screen, I can tell this is not a car, it's probably a log. But what I wanna do is I'm gonna take you back over that and help you read this even better. Is that I know that it's
roughly 36 feet to my right and that we just passed over it. We're gonna turn the boat around. We're going to look for some of the, like that water track
that we just came down, knowing that I'm moving over 36 feet. I'm gonna head back up and then what I'm gonna try to do, is pinpoint us right
over it with live scope as well as with down imaging
and side imaging again. We can really get a good reading on it and tell exactly what it
is from multiple angles. (water bubbling) (boat engine revving) Then as we're, since I
moved over 36 feet now, you can see that path
that we just came down. As soon as we come over it, the other thing I like to do is take a mark on the shore so I know roughly where it is in relation to horizontal in the river, and then also try to pay attention how far out we are as well. All right, so here it is right here. Now it's off to the right, so it's right off those big brushes right
there and that tree. Yes, a tree is what it is. But now we're gonna circle back around and it's roughly 18 feet long. A log that's laying in the river. Now we're gonna see if we can get it and this is how we identify
objects underwater. Now two miles an hour and
there it is, there's the log. You can tell it. One foot tall and it's
still off to the right, just barely a little bit,. All right. That's how we find things and I say that if you can
find a 18 foot long log, that's one foot tall, you gonna find yourself a car if this is what you wanna do. (gentle music) - I'm Linda Thomson, this is my husband, Joe. Say hello, Joe. - Hello (indistinct). - We're along mighty Mississippi river and it used to be
(indistinct), my hometown. His hometown's across the crack. We call the river crack not a river. Out on the water on Mississippi, he's scanning for cars or
other items of interest, possibly that might be out there. Hopefully he'll find Paul Joseph Knockel. - Yeah.
- You say the K. - Chris Anderson, I'm
originally from Dubuque. I saw one of the posts where he mentioned where they were gonna be and I thought, "Well, that's my own town." It's been what, 1990 I believe it was. 30 and some years, roughly 31. Yeah, it'd be nice to
give closure to a family. (gentle music) (birds chirping) - Okay, this one has now
completely been wrapped up. We were talking about this
one back on the Iowa side, because he lived on the Iowa side. Even though he was seen
over here a few days later, we don't know if he really was taking that out of the equation. I think what we need to do
is find these 2100 block, 2100 Washington street, where he lived. That's gonna take us right here. We know this is his location, so 2100 Washington street now. From there, what is the closest, most likely boat ramp from there? It really is where-- - Where we were this morning. - Where we were this morning. Technically I ruled that out. - Yeah, with that close. - It comes back to Jared, you don't rule things out. (Doug chuckles) It's obviously the closest. Is there any other body of water that is the closest to that as well? We also have this little
slew here that comes in and that comes in, is an entire slew. I think that was actually
dry this morning. Well, it's showing on here as water right now from that image. But if this was taken in the summertime, you're gonna have water there. - Yeah, that's what we were
looking at this morning, that doesn't even exist really. All right. Then we were out on the little island here with the boat ramp. What if we put it in the boat ramp? We scan the boat ramp. - In the cove there that we saw? - Yeah, then we can just take
the boat from right there and come into this cove just to clear it. Well, no, you can't get through there. There's no tunnel to get through there and you would have to say,
have to hike over the road. I don't know if this is
public or this is private. Oh, we have a parking area here. - I'm not from here, but I'm
sure everyone in Dubuque, the major waterway, the most prominent waterway
forefront on everybody's minds is gonna be the Mississippi, nothing else. At least in the immediate area. - Right, we do have this
road that goes back here. This is closest to his house. - We'll have to check to see
if that was there 30 years ago. - Yeah, I can pull it up on my computer. Oh man, I think it is. But that's where I would go next, is let's just go to
this little parking lot and I'll double-check it on the computer before we roll over here. But it's quiet, it's out of the way. It may not be deep enough. It may be deep enough. - But let's just go there and see and if it's not deep enough... If it's not deep enough, then it just moves us
quicker to the next point and one step closer to find him. - [Female 1] (indistinct) boat ramp road, either you--
- (indistinct). Let's go hit it. (truck engine roaring) (gentle music) This takes the closest body
of water out of the equation, so then it comes back to Doug. The every older gentleman
that we've ever dealt with has always been a find the
biggest, swiftest body of water. That's why we ended up on the
East Dubuque boat ramp first, because that was the most swift
just closest to his house. - Yeah. - Well now, this boat ramp right here that we're gonna head to, is the closest to his house, but it's in the cove. Again we don't want
overrule anything else. Let's go and knock that
one out real quick. (gentle music) (Jared conversing indistinctly) (gentle music) (birds chirping) - A vehicle that's been
in here for 30 years is gonna be two to three feet
already buried, at least. You gotta take a consideration this old car is probably only about five and a 1/2 feet
tall, sitting on land. If that is really small Mercury Zephyr, so take two to three feet away from that. You only need three, four
feet of water to bury the car. Another variable to this as well is, Mississippi, which we're on right now, is the only major body
of water to the area. He went missing in 1990. But in 1993, there was a major flood
here in this region. The locks were all over flooding and it could have been buried. Very well could have been buried, but we can't rely on that, so we're gonna check no matter what. (gentle music) So far, very clean, just that stump and the log and a lot of fish, which we knew this was very
shallow on average six feet. But we are talking about
this being as low as it gets. (gentle music) (boat engine revving) - Well, mark this one off the list. - Four feet deep the entire way. - Six and a 1/2 to eight
feet the entire way. - Oh, I mean eight.
- Which is enough. - Eight is enough, yeah. - If you take into consideration 30 years, the car is probably, you can take two to
three feet away from it, being buried.
- Right. - Definitely as possible because
there's no current in this. I scanned it up and I scanned it across and all I found was a stump and the log. Other than that, there's nothing in here. - Hilarious, if want some fish, which I pointed out on
the map, is above the dam, above the flood wall. They cut a channel in there for boats to get to the boat ramp. - Yeah.
- Otherwise, you can walk across. I can walk from where the boat ramp is. I can walk all the way
across to the far shore by the railroad tracks,
which is probably a mile. - They keep the boat ramp nice and clean and they have for 30 plus years. - No, that's something
they started probably maybe 20 years ago. - No, that's what I'm saying though. Then it wasn't even there 30 years ago.
- No, there was a boat ramp on the up. There was, but it was-- - [Female 2] (indistinct) - It was treacherous. - Right.
- [Female 2] Yeah. - This is a new ramp like this, nice. - Okay. - Then in O'Leary's lake itself, the deepest I've ever
seen that is nine feet. It wasn't this shallow and that was a higher pool. - Right. - With the fish shallow,
I'll bet at any one six feet. - [Female 2] Yeah. - I'm 100%, they would have
known if something was in there. Because in the wintertime, even with my graph in the wintertime, I can scan 10 feet out either side of me and you just keep whole hopping. - Right. - They would have found
something in there. - Really that just brings us
down to Hawthorne only then and then we're out of locations
to search in the area. - In my opinion, I think so. - Okay. - Okay, I wanna see you leave, but... - Well, fingers crossed. Let's go up, put the boat in over there and see if we can find Paul over that one. (gentle music) (truck door cracking) (indistinct chatter) - I just happened to cruise over here and he says that those
guardrails have always been there since like the 80s. He says that from time to time, they would replace that. But this is where people come to light fireworks and everything. He says that... Yeah, he says that there's
no reason to scan them. - What we know is just
because there's a guardrail, doesn't mean anything. We're gonna scan it anyway. - It's not (indistinct) but
we just learned a few things. I'm not saying that Paul
isn't really not there, I'm saying we've learned
not to (indistinct) here. (gentle music) (water bubbling) - All right. It's going to be second
cruising up, (indistinct). We have the concrete one. We have the big round one, and then you have the bush. (indistinct chatter) - [Jared] All right. I'm gonna park this right over there and I just got 10 more feet. There it is, right there. That's my interest there. You looking at the length. (water bubbling) It's two, four, six, eight, 10, 12. The thing almost looks like a little boat. There, thanks. That is two, four feet tall. - [Doug] I wanna know
if that's metal or not. - [Jared] Okay, that makes
sense to four feet tall. - And buried. Yeah, you're gonna have
to expect two to three or more feet of it to be buried already. - [Jared] Yeah. (metal cracking) (water bubbling) All right. It's you going out there. Put down another four feet there. - [Doug] Okay, up there. - [Jared] Okay, right. Pull off like two feet. - [Doug] You see my magnet? - [Jared] No, I don't
see your magnet anywhere. - Yeah, okay. I see your magnet. Okay, keep it there. I'm gonna bring it right into that ear. Like four feet right from that. You kick it forward. Your magnet is behind this. I'm coming up on it and now you just drew a bright color, like you were right at the front of it. - [Doug] I found something. - [Jared] Yeah, so you're
right at the front of it and it's 12 feet. I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, I found something because now my magnet is dropped down." Yeah, now I'm gonna take you forward over to the (indistinct). You should be dragging
right across it right now. (gentle music) (water bubbling) You found it? - [Doug] No. (gentle music) Now I am. Now it's just bouncing off. Bouncing off, you see it? - [Jared] Well now it's behind me. Your magnet is behind us. And now... (indistinct chatter) Now your magnet is on. Now your magnet is on the back of it. (conversing indistinctly) - Then let it back up and then drop again. And that was straight down. I feel it, I feel... - [Jared] You're right on top of it. (gentle music) - [Doug] Now I don't feel, I got to take it back (indistinct). (gentle music) (water bubbling) - [Jared] Okay, now, but
you're just not latching on it and it's not... - [Doug] I can feel it. - [Jared] On top of it. Okay, you're directly over it. Bounce your magnet (indistinct) and you're bouncing all over it. (gentle music) (water bubbling) - [Doug] I think it's a boat. - [Jared] Think so? - [Doug] I guess. - [Jared] It look to
me, like curved front, like a pointed front in one image, but... (gentle music) (water bubbling) - Like you made the comment, yes, but the guardrail and
all of that up there. The only time that's ever been changed, where I've ever seen nothing there was when they redid this part. - Right. - They took out the old guardrail, I think right now it's just wire. - Where's the guardrail over there? - Even up here in the grass area. - Oh no, in the grass area, yes. - I think it's just wire. - Yeah. - But all of that up along the road, that's been there forever. - The end of the day. - The end of the day. - That wraps this one. - I'll speak with you, there's nowhere else can look. Our biggest thing asking you the viewer who's coming out today and you guys come out as well. Our entire show in the purpose and our ability to come out here has been because of you guys. If you happen to have a case that you know of where a person is involved, where they're in their vehicle
suspected to be underwater, please get ahold of us at
support@adventurepurpose.com. This is how we find what
missions we go on next. We don't solve them all. Fortunate, we were able
to solve one yesterday and we hope right now,
everyone will be going on. We think that we're going
to be able to solve it. Tomorrow work-- - Sandra Agra. - Sandra Agra. - Sandra Agra, Franklin, Wisconsin. - We're heading over to that one tomorrow and fingers crossed,
we will solve that one. - Yeah. - You guys can (indistinct)
track of this though. For 11 of them? - Yeah, 11. - This particular one, we we've ruled out all
the areas within vicinity. That makes sense. With the knowledge of
three to four major floods over the last 30 years, there's a potential with it, that he's here, he's just buried. - I'm not sure. - Yeah. - Chris, thank you very much. - You're very welcome, good. - Thank you to everybody
that was here with us today. Like I said, we could not
be doing this without you. If you have not already
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appreciate you being here and we'll see you on the next one. Hopefully will get it solved. (gentle music)
