Remains of Long-Missing Woman Found Near Disney World
What looks like a horror story involving a Disney Park is actually a reassuring end to what is still a tragic story. According to WESH 2 News (via WDW News Today), the body of a woman who’d been missing since 2012 was found today near Disney World. The woman’s name was Sandra Lemire, who disappeared one night in 2012 after leaving for a date with a man she met online and driving a red minivan; she left behind a son, Timothy Lemire Jr. The case went cold until a year and a half ago, when Sunshine State Sonar, a volunteer dive group led by Mike Sullivan, took up the case. According to Sullivan, they had little hope of finding Lemire until two weeks ago, when police gave them “the location of her last cell phone tower.” This led the divers to her red minivan, which had crashed into a retention pond near World Drive, the roadway that connects Interstate 4 with The Magic Kingdom. Long assumed to be a murder or kidnapping victim, Sandra Lemire appears to have died of a tragic car accident, and though the medical examiner hasn’t identified the remains yet, everyone is confident that this is Sandra Lemire.
Remains of Woman Missing for 12 Years Found Just Outside of Walt Disney World Propertyhttps://t.co/W4bUw93WBQ
— WDW News Today (@WDWNT) January 2, 2024
That’s quite a story, and while I hesitate to call this a happy ending, it must be a relief for Timothy Lemire Jr. to finally know what happened to his mother. The heroes of the story are Mike Sullivan and the other divers of Sunshine State Sonar, who work with police and grieving families to locate missing persons and charge no fee for their services. The group has recovered the remains of seven missing people over the past two years, and they worked doggedly to find Sandra Lemire, searching 63 bodies of water for her. Sullivan said of Lemire, “Of all the cases we were working… this was the case I was least optimistic about;” when he realized the van they found near Disney World was hers, Sullivan immediately called her son. The connection to Disney World seems to mostly be happenstance, just a car crash near the road leading to the entrance of the park; the sliver of happiness in this story is in the family that can finally let go of their fears and uncertainties.
