- The year is 1980. Charles and Catherine Romer
checked into this hotel room here at Holiday Inn in Brunswick, Georgia, where they vanished. Them and their 1978 Lincoln Continental have never been seen or
heard from ever again. (ominous music) Charles Romer, 74 years old, a retired Sinclair Oil executive, was married to Catherine
Romer for five years. They actually just celebrated
their fifth year anniversary. Now, what brings us to Brunswick, Georgia, to this Holiday Inn specifically? Well they lived in New York, and they spent their
spring and summer months down in Miami, which is typical. I guess a lot of people
would refer to them as snowbirds down in Florida. Now, they always stopped at this hotel as their first stop back home. Now remind you, Charles is an extremely
meticulous individual. He kept a journal of
everything that he did on his daily routine, tomorrow,
projecting, you name it. He was very meticulous and methodical. He left a lot of
information in his journal. However, the last entry in
their journal was April 7th. The one thing Charles
could not account for in his journal was April 8th, 1980, the day him and Catherine
vanished forever. (ominous music) (calm music) (calm music continues) (calm music swells) (calm music continues) (calm music continues) (calm music continues) (ominous music) Catherine and Charles
checked in at 3:51 PM after an extremely long day of driving. They took all of their
most valuable possessions out of their 1978 Lincoln Continental, brought 'em into this hotel room, laid them out where they stayed. Amongst some of the belongings
that they left behind in their hotel room was
Catherine's jewelry, which today would be worth an estimated half a million dollars. Catherine was also known
to wear about $150,000 worth of jewelry on her
pretty much at all times. What happened to Charles
and Catherine Romer that fateful evening they disappeared from here at Holiday Inn? Is it foul play? I think it's safe to say
that we can rule out robbery as all of the jewelry was left here and their belongings undisturbed. Is it foul play possibly connected to Charles being a retired oil executive? It's possible. But I think the most probable reasoning behind their 42-year-old disappearance is that they left this hotel
room after they checked in. They took a drive to go
get something to eat. And they've ended up
in a waterway concealed for the past 42 years. Is today the day that
"Adventures With Purpose" solves one of the oldest
cold cases we've taken on? (ominous music continues) - These islands are all connected with all these little
canals and everything. This is Jekyll Island, it's state owned. And this is St. Simons Island. People with a lot of money would
normally go there to visit, especially if they're, like
you say, have money and stuff. They would go here, because
there's a lot of old money. - Three or four people
here, that work here, have lived their entire life. We're getting a lot of good information as far as the lay of the land, the way things used to be back in 1980. That's rare. We're talking about a
case that's 42 years old. And we're getting insight
on everything here locally from people who have lived
here their entire life. It's powerful. Not only are we getting
a good lay of the land, but in talking to them about
Charles and Catherine Romer, you know Charles was an oil executive. He disappeared here from this
town on his way to New York. We've uncovered another case. On Sea Island, just a
few miles away from here, where another oil executive
and his wife was murdered. So we're talking about two
different oil executives that have been murdered here in this area within a three-year span. Is this a coincidence? I don't know, but it's
definitely a huge red flag. Huge red flag. So this was built in like, you know, 2005, where we're at right now. So the hotel that they stayed
in was either right here, off of this clover off
of 95, here, or downtown. They were from New York. Obviously extremely wealthy
couple, elderly, 74 and 76. They're snowbirds. They spent three months of
the year in Miami every year. They left at the same time. And on their route, every
time they left Miami, Brunswick was their very first stop. They stayed at the same hotel, never switched up their
routine whatsoever. If you were on a long day's drive, and you were here at four o'clock, you put all your stuff in the car, I mean, put all your stuff in the room, and then you leave to
go get something to eat. would you suspect that it
would have to be downtown? - {Hotel Employee] Not necessarily. - No?
- Not downtown. There's not a whole lot downtown. I mean, I would venture out to say, "No." Back in the eighties, there
was a steakhouse right here. It's right over here,
but it's no longer there. - Okay-
- Bunch of steakhouses- - So you wouldn't have to go far if you wanted something to eat. - No, you wouldn't have to go far. - All right. The son has stated publicly
that he did not think that after a long day's drive his dad and his stepmom would be
leaving all of their belongings, checking out. I mean, leaving the hotel room and just going somewhere far away. They're tired. If they're leaving, they're
gonna go somewhere immediate. And mind you, the son said that the hotel had a restaurant back
in the day in the hotel. So why would they leave the hotel? He didn't suspect that they
would ever leave the hotel. They're gonna grab something
to eat, go right to bed. They're trying to make it back
to their home in New York. They're focused on driving. This is their first stop
after a long day of driving. They're not gonna go out for a night on the town
or anything like that. After all, we're talking
about 1980, very small town. There's not a whole lot for them to do. And I think, and the realm
of possibilities is vast, but we have to deal in
the realm of probability. And that being, they're not far. They didn't leave far. And what happened to them? Did something horrible happen
to Charles and Catherine? I don't know. We don't know that. It's possible. Is their vehicle just
simply end up underwater because of an accident? I think it's highly probable, and that's the route we're going to take. I think, where the hotel was, they're going to be
right in here somewhere, or along this area here, or downtown in this canal right
here, right here locally. - This road right here is off of 341. They shoot fireworks off
right here every year. And there's little trails
that lead off into this which, in turn, leads you to all of that. - [Host] Okay. - That big bridge I showed you
goes right across right here. - [Host] Okay. - It's Highway 17. That's where I was telling you where you'll see all the
marshes and stuff like that. And there's really no
water and water access. Well, that Highway 17 rolls down and comes right over where
the city Lamir Bridge is. But back then it was a draw bridge. That's here, but that
leads all the way back up to Mary Ross Park, which
is where I was telling you they did the fireworks,
which East River keeps going on around until it turns into Turtle River which is going under 303
where I told you about. So it all connects. - [Host] Okay. - If that makes sense. - No, no, that makes a lot of sense. - [Hotel Employee] You can have all this. - Thank you so much for
all of the information. - [Hotel Employee] Hope it helps you. - Oh, it helps.
- You're welcome. - We have a lot of very good
information to go off of on this case as far as
the lay of the land. And we're talking about a
case that's 42 years old. Where did they go? Were they hungry? I think it's safe to say
that they were hungry. They just wanted to go
out, grab a bite to eat, and whatever took place that evening, whether it was an accident
or something horrible, I don't know. But that's what we need to figure out. That's where we come in. We don't know the why,
but we find out the where. You know, we have a lot
of area here with water, and what I'm most concerned about is water nearest the hotel obviously, and then around the downtown area. And that's where we're
gonna focus our efforts. When we start to take this
any further than that, it really opens up a lot of
waterways that are gonna be out of our control with the
timeframe we have to search for this case. So we're gonna jump
right over right now to right here. We're going to the Turtle River boat ramp. Four miles away. - [Navigation App] Head
east on Gateway Circle then turn right Gateway Center Boulevard. (dramatic music) In a quarter mile, your
destination will be on the right. - We can't even search this. The boat ramp is right here. It's flooded. The road doesn't exist anymore but we can't make it onto this water. Really bummed. You know, this front
that's coming in right now is only supposed to last an hour. However, it is now evolving into a huge, huge storm that's gonna
last the entire day. Unexpected, we can't even hold
the camera still right now, let alone put a boat in safely
and able to scan accurately. I'm just bummed, absolutely bummed. This sucks. I really, really want to search
hard today to find Charles and Catherine, and just Mother Nature, something in the universe
right now is not letting us. Makes me feel as though we're close. 'Cause when things get tough like this, the only thing that defines
people who create results are the people who push through
and the people who give up. (upbeat music) What a beautiful day compared to yesterday when it was just 40 to 60 mile an hour winds at times, hail, tornadoes in the area, and there's not a cloud
in sight, not one cloud. (upbeat music continues) And just to give you guys a
accurate idea of where we're at, why it makes sense, is
we're right off of 341. 341 is just down from the
hotel they checked into. So did they check into the hotel and go out to get something to eat? That's the theory we're
basing it on right now. This is really our only main target area in this search is the peninsula
that surrounds Brunswick. So knock on wood, today we will discover the Lincoln Continental that
Charles and Catherine Romer disappeared in all those years ago. Where did they go after
driving all day long? The general consensus of anybody
we discussed this case with would be you're hungry, after
a long day's drive from Miami all the way to Brunswick, Georgia. There's two things that you are. A is tired, and B is hungry. So they obviously chose
not to go to sleep, so they were hungry. We have to rule our investigation basis' on the probability of someone's actions after they go missing, think
it's probable they were hungry. Where did they go? The family and their friends
and others close to the case seemed to think that they would've never left the hotel. There was a restaurant in the hotel. However, we know they left the hotel. They were seen talking to
another young couple with a dog and that was the last
they were absolutely seen. So did they decide to come into Brunswick, downtown in the area we're at right now? Check out the water, the
waterfront, you know, I mean, who knows what a couple might do when they're in downtown
and decide to do something. It's completely spontaneous. Did they accidentally put
their car into drive or reverse instead of park, end up here in the water near the waterway over here? It's possible, very possible. Which is why we are down
here where we're at. We're gonna work this whole peninsula for the rest of this search and hopefully, hopefully we'll discover
Charles and Catherine. That's what we're doing this for. We're not out here just to tell stories. Anybody can tell a story but can you tell a story
and actually attempt to really methodically
try to find someone? And that's our purpose here
at "Adventures with Purpose." Water temperature is 70 degrees. We're working with a temperature
of 85 degrees outside. (calm music) So these docks that we're
surrounding right now weren't here at the time they went missing. This was all Shoreline Park area. So we are looking for a big car, old school Lincoln Continental, big body car. Basically a boat. So let me bring you guys into
the world of sonar Humminbird. There's a boat right there. That's a boat by the way. We have 18.3 feet of depth up here. This top portion of our screen
is gonna be down imaging and the yellow surface
here is the riverbed. This is the bottom of the river here showing water column black in area 17.5. Now this is a picture in time. It's showing everything
that we've gone over. It's feeding it left like
that as we go over it. Now I can scroll back and look back at what we've been over and so forth. That's down imaging. Down here on the bottom
portion of the screen is side imaging. We're casting a hundred
feet in either direction and this boat icon represents the boat in the line of travel. And again, like up here, the yellow line surface is
the riverbed to either side. This is water column from
the bottom of the boat to the riverbed. And we're casting side. And again, like up here,
this is a picture in time. We can go back, we can look at anything we've
gone over and review it. So it captures a picture in time as we're going over it
showing what we have scanned. Now, this moves top to bottom. As we go over it, it's feeding the images
in nice and smooth. Now over here, we have
Garmin LiveScope System. Now Garmin represents an actual picture of what's under the boat in live time. This is LiveScope. It shows up here, 16 foot
or so, right here deep. It shows our water temperature
at about 68 degrees. And again, this yellow surface
is the bottom of the river. All this black is from the
bottom of the boat here to the bottom of the river bed there. And it'll show fish swimming by. That's a fish there. These are, these are fish. Those are all fish. And that's a fish there. It'll show everything
that's under the boat. And those two systems
represent what it is we read when we're reading sonar. Typically I will use the side scan imaging and if I'm unsure of
what I have on side scan, I'll target it, get over it in real time and look at it right here on LiveScope so I can kind of see what I'm
looking at, if it makes sense. Now as we get down here and
you can see the buildings down there on the end,
that's kind of where 341 almost parallels this
little water area over here. Give me a car. Any car we find today
is gonna be their car. Absolutely, there's no
other car that's made it into the water in 43
years but their car here. There's something right over here. I'm sure it's a old boat. And should be coming over it right about now. What is it? It's a little dinghy. It's a little dinghy. (suspenseful music) (suspenseful music continues) You see the manatee? So right now we are right at the Mary Ross Waterfront Park. This would've been a
location that, you know, maybe they didn't want to leave
the hotel, come down here, do a little bit of
sightseeing at the waterfront before they had something
to eat that evening. (suspenseful music continues) (suspenseful music continues) (suspenseful music continues) (suspenseful music continues) All right, here. Nope, it's not a vehicle. It's a pile of some type of debris. Now to me, I know I'm
looking for a vehicle that's 42 years old underwater. So I'm potentially looking for just a part of a vehicle that's exposed. And if that fit the scenario
and my search vision of a car that could have
possibly been majority of it buried and part of it sticking up. However, it's just some,
a couple of like boulders and then maybe a cinder block
from the parking lot up here. All right, let's get the boat back over, head back over to the
other side of the peninsula to where Back River, McKay River joins. We're gonna search over there. It's probably gonna be
one of our last locations as that pretty much marks off this entire peninsula
where they disappeared. This search is a little bit different than anything that we've done in the past because they disappeared from
here in Brunswick, Georgia. However, they were mid transit
from Miami to New York. So once we search right here in Brunswick, it's really all we have off of, as far as probable locations to search, for Charles and Catherine. Now, if we end up putting this
episode out, which we will, and get clues and tips from
you guys, our supporters, the public that is credible
enough to bring us back here and search again,
absolutely we'll be back. And if we aren't able to find
what we're looking for today, hopefully that's what happens. I mean, you guys have a lot of power in what it is that you do through watching and seeing what we do and
critiquing it and it's great. I love to hear all of the
feedback from the searches we do. And you guys are looking at your maps, and local people here that
are gonna watch it are gonna have so many tips and clues for us. You know, we'll be back
if we get that information that draws us into a better search area or information regarding
their disappearance. We'll see. (sad music) (birds chirping) (sad music continues) (sad music continues) The question still lingers,
what happened to Charles and Catherine Romer April 8th, 1980? That's the mystery. Unfortunately, today that's
gonna remain unsolved. I'd like to take a second to
encourage each and every one of you who are watching
this right now to make sure that you're subscribed,
hit that bell notification so you know when a new
episode is coming out. Leave a comment, let us know
what you think about this video and share our stories as we're out here, boots on the ground, attempting
to bring answers to families and assisting law enforcement
all across the nation. (sad music continues) (sad music continues) (sad music continues) (sad music continues)
