What to Know
- A father whose remains were found in a Long Island basement more than 50 years after he went missing was murdered, police say
- The man's sons stumbled upon a skeleton they believed to be their long-missing father in the basement of their childhood home in October
- On Wednesday, police confirmed the bones belonged to their father, the late George Carroll. His death is being investigated as a murder
A father whose remains were found in a Long Island basement more than 50 years after he went missing was most likely murdered, police say.
Steven Carroll and his brother Michael stumbled upon a skeleton they believed to be their long-missing father in the basement of their childhood home in Lake Grove this past October.
On Wednesday, Suffolk County police confirmed the bones belonged to their father, the late George Carroll. His death is being investigated as a murder, police said.
Authorities say they got a call from the Carroll family on Oct. 31. When they got to the home on Olive Street, Michael Carroll met them to report human remains in the basement.
The brothers told police they believed the bones belonged to their father, who disappeared in 1961.
The family never knew what happened to him. But police say for reasons that weren't clear at the time of the discovery of the bones, the family had always thought he might be buried in the home.
It was that hunch that led the missing man's grandsons to start digging. They excavated the basement over several months, police say. And coincidentally, they hit the remains — which sat below concrete — on Halloween.
Steven Carroll said his mother told him and his siblings very little about what had happened to their father until just before her death in 1998. The family never filed any missing persons report and there is "no record" of police involvements in his disappearance, Suffolk County police said.
He and his siblings all had different theories about their father's disappearance, Carroll told News 4 after the bones were discovered, though he declined to share some of the differences in speculation.
"We felt abandoned as kids but he was here the whole time," Steven Carroll, who was just 5 when his father George disappeared, told News 4 shortly after making the discovery.
Polie said that for reasons that remain unclear, the family had always thought he might be buried in the home, which is now owned by Michael Carroll.
The sons had hoped to give their father, a Korean War veteran, a burial at Calverton National Cemetery if the bones turned out to be his.
