The Strange Disappearance of Charles and Catherine Romer
The Romers' decades-old cold case finally had a huge development in 2024
The Romers: A Baffling Tragedy
Charles and Catherine Romer, a wealthy couple from New York, checked into a Holiday Inn in Brunswick, Georgia, on April 8th, 1980, and vanished. The efforts to locate them culminated in what one officer later described as “the biggest all-out search in the history of southern Georgia.”
What happened to the Romers?
Charles Robert Romer
Charles Robert Romer was born on August 27th, 1906, to parents John and Mabel. He was the oldest of four children. Though he was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, he grew up in New York, where he would reside for the rest of his life.
Described as intelligent, hardworking, and determined, Charles went on to have a successful career in the oil industry, eventually becoming an executive for the Sinclair Oil Corporation—a company founded by American industrialist Harry F. Sinclair in 1916.
Charles married Jane O’Shea on May 7th, 1929, in New Rochelle, New York. The couple had two sons together, Charles Jr. and Richard.
Charles and Jane enjoyed attending equestrian events and hosting parties. They also owned property in Miami and, following Charles’ retirement, often spent the winter down there.
Sadly, Jane passed away in 1973, at the age of 65.
Catherine Blanchfield Heller Romer
Catherine Blanchfield was born on July 20th, 1902, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to parents Thomas and Mary. She was the second of six children.
While working as a stenographer in 1925, she met Frank Heller, who was 13 years her senior. The wealthy and successful Frank was the president of Raymond & Heller, a carpet manufacturer in Auburn, New York, as well as the chairman of several real estate firms.
The pair married on March 29th, 1926, after which they took up residence together in Scarsdale, New York. Frank was said to be polite, kind, and smart, and the couple appeared to be happy. They had one child together, a son named Frank Jr.
Catherine was active in many clubs and, much like the Romers (with whom they were friends), the Hellers loved horses and throwing parties.
Frank passed away on May 10th, 1965, leaving behind a heartbroken wife and son.
Despite her grief, the shrewd and bright Catherine managed her late husband’s estate well.
Charles and Catherine Reconnect
The recently widowed Charles reconnected with his old friend Catherine Heller and the two soon fell in love. On December 3rd, 1974, they were married. Afterward, the newlyweds moved to Scarsdale, New York, where they lived in an apartment building owned by Catherine.
Annual Winter Vacation
Charles and Catherine loved to escape the harsh New York winters each year by traveling down to Florida and staying at their Miami home for a few months. The winter of 1980 was no exception to this annual ritual.
By April 1980, with the weather finally warming up again, the Romers were ready to make their return trip to Scarsdale. Creatures of habit, they took the same route every year, even staying at the same hotels along the way.
The Romers' Disappearance
Driving their 1979 black Lincoln Continental, the Romers reached Brunswick, Georgia, on the afternoon of April 8th and checked into a local Holiday Inn at 3:51 p.m. The last substantiated sighting of the couple was when they carried their belongings into their hotel room.
Charles and Catherine Romer would never be seen or heard from again.
When the housekeeper knocked on the door of the Romers’ room the following morning, she received no response. She let herself in to tidy up. Though Charles and Catherine were absent, everything appeared to be in order.
Their clothes were hanging in the closet and their luggage was stacked in a corner of the hotel room. A bottle of scotch and two empty glasses lay on one of the nightstands; a novel and a pair of glasses rested on the other.
Several potted plants, which Catherine wished to bring back to New York, were on the floor. Charles’ small travel journal, as well as the couple’s tax forms, were spread out on the desk.
Unaware that anything was amiss with the Romers, the housekeeper finished up with her work and left the room.
Interestingly, it took a few days for the hotel staff to realize that Charles and Catherine were missing. This is especially strange given the fact that they’d only made a reservation for one day and never checked out.
When the same housekeeper who’d cleaned the Romers’ room on the 9th was tasked with the job again two days later, she found that the room looked exactly the same as it had before, and the Romers were still nowhere to be found.
This time she knew that something was off and immediately notified the Holiday Inn’s management. They in turn called the Glynn County Police Department to report the couple missing.
Missing Jewelry
By this point, Charles and Catherine’s children also began to worry. The last time anyone in the family heard from the couple was on April 6th, when Charles spoke to Charles Jr. on the phone and wished him a happy Easter. It wasn’t like them to go this long without contacting one of their kids.
Phone records also showed that Charles had phoned their residence in Scarsdale at 4:17 p.m. and had spoken to their housekeeper, letting her know that they’d be home in two days.
A police officer examined the hotel room and found what was later determined to be roughly $500,000 worth of jewelry inside. Some jewelry was missing, however, including a platinum ring with an emerald-cut diamond and three pairs of earrings, valued at $150,000 in total.
It was believed that Catherine was likely wearing at least some of the missing jewelry, as it was her habit to wear many expensive pieces.
The only other items that appeared to be missing were Charles' wallet (thought to have contained $400-$500, the amount he usually carried), Catherine's purse, and their Lincoln Continental.
Sightings
Several sightings of the missing couple were reported following their disappearance.
A Georgia State Trooper stated that he’d spotted a black Lincoln moving south towards Florida on the highway around 5 p.m. on April 8th. The car's New York license plate read "CRR-CBR," the initials of Charles and Catherine. The vehicle was roughly 40 miles south of the Holiday Inn.
In another sighting, a state trooper noticed the Lincoln parked near a strip mall south of Brunswick after 5 p.m. The exact location of the sighting was never released to the public.
A local contractor named Jim Wilson also came forward to report having spoken to the Romers on the afternoon of April 8th. According to him, they were sightseeing on nearby Jekyll Island (around 20 miles away from the hotel). The three of them discussed fishing.
He said they were also talking to another couple a bit later. While he didn’t remember much about the unidentified pair, he believed that they were from New York, too.
Charles Jr., for his part, was dubious about the veracity of the contractor’s story.
“They’d be tired after driving that long. They weren’t the type that went sightseeing. Usually they'd just check into a hotel, have a drink in their room, go down to dinner in a hotel restaurant and go to bed. It’s very unusual that they’d go out again. My gut feeling is that something happened here at the hotel. Not in the hotel but possibly in the parking lot.”
A female hotel guest reportedly saw the Romers standing in the doorway of their hotel room at approximately 6 p.m. on the day in question, conversing with another couple—said to be in their early to mid-40s—who had a small dog with them.
Search and Investigation
Through the combined efforts of the Glynn County Police Department and the FBI, every square mile of Glynn Country was searched.
Brunswick—named after the ancestral home of George III and the British House of Hanover—is surrounded by water and located on a peninsula.
When someone goes missing along with their vehicle, it sometimes means that they ended up in the water somehow. With this in mind, the extensive search was not only carried out on land and by air but also in each body of water and on every island within a 20-mile radius of the hotel.
The scuba divers, much like all of the other searchers, ultimately came up with nothing.
The complete lack of evidence left investigators baffled.
What Happened to the Romers?
Their best guess was that the Romers had been victims of foul play. The authorities theorized that someone could have followed them from Miami, gained access to their hotel room, and abducted them for the purpose of robbing them.
Captain F.D. Andrews stated:
“The only thing we can think of—and it’s only speculation—is that jewelry thieves surprised them in their room … It’s a known fact that in the Miami area these people hang around resorts and watch tourists.”
However, the fact that so much expensive jewelry was left behind—and that the room bore no signs of either a struggle or ransacking—seemed to contradict this idea.
Captain Andrews had this to say about the focus of their investigation:
“We’ve got over 400 square miles of coastline, marshland, and timber in this county. We’ve used four-wheel drive vehicles, helicopters, airplanes ... All we can do is look for the car. That’s the key, from our point of view.”
In the absence of any clues, suspects, or anything else that might have shed light on what became of Charles and Catherine, the case quickly went cold.
“We have not a shred of evidence. We’re still looking for something to open a case file. There’s just no evidence of any crime. As far as having an active investigation, well, we don’t have enough information to continue any sort of investigation,” said Captain Andrews three months later.
On the bizarre nature of the case, Glynn County Police Lieutenant R.J. Smiley stated:
“I’ve never seen anything like this. All we have is two missing people, and there is no law against being missing.”
Donald Flynn of New Rochelle’s FBI office added: “This mysterious disappearance has been of concern to us because they are predictable, responsible people, and it all just doesn’t make sense unless you assume there was some foul play.”
Another logical theory is that while they were out that evening, they accidentally drove into a body of water and were simply missed in the search.
The Search Goes On
The children of Charles and Catherine struggled to come to terms with the loss of their parents, a tragedy made even more difficult by the lack of closure. However, they didn’t give up.
Charles Jr. described the family's efforts:
“Last year, we even hired the Wackenhut Detective Agency of Coral Gables, Florida—they’re known all over the world—to look into it. They made a three-month investigation, they interviewed everyone that was possibly connected with it and they, too, were stumped.”
The private investigator did learn that a male hotel guest had claimed to see the Romers leaving at approximately 7 p.m. on April 8th, 1980. They were alone. Unfortunately, efforts to locate this man for further questioning went nowhere. They only knew that he lived somewhere in Pennsylvania.
Charles Jr., Frank Jr., and Richard continued to be haunted by the disappearance. They made a point to return to Georgia each year in the hope of finding the answers that had eluded them for so long.
“I think about it daily. I think the whole family thinks about it ... We just hope that someday, someone will find a clue,” said Charles Jr.
25 Years Later
Volunteer rescue diver George Baker of Glynn County was part of the original search for the Romers and continued thinking about the case for over two decades. While some believed the Romers' death was a freak accident, Baker had always felt there was foul play involved.
In 2004, he resumed his efforts to solve the mystery and give the Romers' children and grandchildren closure.
Baker and other rescue divers searched an undisclosed body of water based on a tip from a woman who said that on the night of the Romers' disappearance, her husband was run off the road by a black Lincoln Town Car. The tipster even provided a delivery ticket proving her husband's location.
Unfortunately, it does not appear that his search produced any discoveries.
Aftermath
Charles and Catherine Romer were declared legally dead in 1985.
Sadly, Richard, Frank Jr., and Charles Jr. have all since passed away—in 1992, 2001, and 2007, respectively.
Each year on the anniversary of the disappearance, the Romer's seven granddaughters light a candle and say a prayer for their grandparents.
In early 2023, “Adventures With Purpose,” a private Oregon-based search and recovery dive team, conducted their own search for the Romers without success. You can view footage from their investigation in the video above.
What happened to Charles and Catherine after they checked into their hotel room on that fateful afternoon in April 1980 remains a mystery.
2024 Update - The Romers Have Been Found
In late November 2024, a long-awaited update on the Romers' case was released.
The missing couple has finally been found.
Based on a tip, Sunshine State Sonar located their car and skeletal remains at the bottom of a retention pond near the hotel they had been staying at when they vanished. Inside, they found items that bore the couple's initials, as well as jewelry and other belongings.
The pond had to be drained in order to retrieve the Lincoln Continental, which was deteriorating.
Mike Sullivan, who runs Sunshine State Sonar with his brother John Martin, had this to say about the resolution of this 44-year-old mystery:
"It looks as if they were parking at the diner and he accidentally stepped on the gas pedal when he was parking and backed into the lake. He must have had the car in reverse, and he stepped on the gas because the headlights are facing the shore. He backed into the lake accidentally."
What many believed was foul play now appears to have been a tragic accident.
Sullivan went on:
"The pond has been checked many, many times throughout the years, because it was literally a hundred yards from their hotel room. The problem is the sonar technology was not available in 1980."
The Romer family's public statement:
"We are deeply saddened and equally relieved that our grandparents Charles and Catherine Romer's 44-year mystery disappearance has been solved. While this discovery brings closure, it still has been very emotional. Sadly, Charles Romer Jr., Jim Romer and Frank Heller are not with us to share this momentous turn of events and to know their parents will finally be laid to rest in peace. We want to express our gratitude to Glynn County Police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Sunshine State Sonar for their time, dedication and expertise. A special appreciation and thanks goes out to Jason Souhrada Myrtle Beach, SC. Jason pinpointed the exact location of the vehicle and shared his findings with all the agencies involved."