Updated

Updated · Fox News · Aug 1

Florida Police Identify 1985 Missing Woman Rose Marie Gayhart, Open Homicide Probe After 40 Years

Updated

Updated · Fox News · Aug 1

Florida Police Identify 1985 Missing Woman Rose Marie Gayhart, Open Homicide Probe After 40 Years

Q: How did a chance discovery in a Cape Coral canal turn a 1985 missing persons cold case into an active homicide investigation?

A kayaker’s discovery of a human skull in a Cape Coral canal in May 2024 gave investigators the physical evidence they had lacked for nearly four decades and allowed them to identify the remains as Rose Marie Gayhart, who disappeared in 1985. Police recovered additional remains from the canal area near Northeast 19th Place and Kismet Parkway. Cape Coral detectives then worked with the District 21 Medical Examiner, the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in New York, and a Texas lab to compare the remains against DNA from Gayhart’s relatives. That familial DNA, some of it secured years earlier by New York investigators, confirmed the remains were Gayhart’s. That identification transformed the case. What had long been a missing-person cold case now involved confirmed human remains tied to a woman who vanished under suspicious circumstances. Investigators had already documented troubling witness accounts from 1985: Gayhart had reportedly been forced out of the trailer she shared with her boyfriend and his mother, said she was pregnant and wanted to keep the baby, and was later seen leaving work with an unidentified white man in a red pickup truck. With the remains identified, police reclassified the matter as an active homicide investigation. The discovery also prompted renewed searches at the canal site and a fresh push for tips, as detectives revisit old leads and seek accountability for Gayhart’s death.

3 articles · Updated · Fox News · Aug 1

Cape Coral police identified remains found in a canal in May 2024 as Rose Marie Gayhart, a 23-year-old New York woman who vanished from southwest Florida in March 1985.
DNA from Gayhart’s family, obtained with help from a New York agency, matched a skull discovered by a kayaker after roughly two years of testing.
The identification has turned the long-cold disappearance into an active homicide investigation, with police seeking tips to find Gayhart’s killer.
Detectives say Gayhart had been living with boyfriend Robert Paddock and his mother, was later seen leaving with a man in a red pickup truck, and had told a neighbor she was pregnant and wanted to keep the baby.
Police say solving who was driving that red pickup could be critical as they pursue accountability more than 40 years after Gayhart’s family lost contact with her.