Man in the US finds missing dad’s skeleton in basement of childhood home

A man found the remains of his father in his childhood home 50 years after he went missing when a psychic claimed he was in the basement.

The skeletal remains found buried in the basement of a home by a man searching for his long-lost father were positively identified as his missing father, US officials said.

The bones discovered by Mike Carroll and his two adult sons inside their Long Island, New York, home on Halloween belong to family patriarch George Carroll, authorities have determined.

“It’s unusually not shocking,” Carroll told the New York Post.

“Of course, it’s emotional, but we can handle it.”

The Long Island home where Mike Carroll found the skeleton of his father in the basement. Picture: ABC News 7

Carroll grew up wondering what happened to his dad, who vanished without a trace in 1961 when Carroll was just eight months old.

“I’m happy to learn that that is my dad. This is a deep and very emotional thing and everybody is dealing with this in different ways. This has broken up my family,” Carroll told Newsday.

Carroll bought the home from his mother before her death in 1998, and spent years digging around for his father’s remains, spurred on by a hunch and a psychic who purportedly got a hit in the basement, he said.

And the body’s location wasn’t the only thing the clairvoyant got right, Carroll revealed.

Mike Carroll and his sons found the skeleton in a basement. Picture: ABC News 7

“I was told by the psychic it was blunt force trauma,” he said. “She actually said to me that it was a pipe, that he got hit in the head by a pipe and he was buried alive.”

Investigators ruled last month that the then-unidentified body’s skull had been cracked open by “blunt force trauma.”

Now, the death is being probed as a homicide, but Carroll said that finding his dad’s body is closure enough for him.

“There will be no justice,” he said. “The justice happened when we dug him up because we just interrupted the perfect crime — they almost got away with this.”

Richard Daress moved into the home not long after George Carroll died. Picture: Facebook

Richard Daress died in 2017. Picture: Facebook

Carroll also said that his former stepfather, Richard Darress, his mother’s second husband who moved in not long after George Carroll died, might have known something about the disappearance.

However Darress later moved to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and died in June at the age of 77. “I’m trying to avoid pointing a finger at this point,” Carroll said.

Mike Carroll’s mum, centre, died in 1998. Picture: Facebook

According to records, Dorothy divorced Darress in 1983 after she suspected him of cheating on her and threw him out of the house four years earlier.

The family is working to arrange a proper military burial of the remains.

“I tell my sons … we hit a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth, two outs,” Carroll said. “We found our dad, so we win.”

Mike Carroll grew up wondering what happened to his dad, who vanished without a trace in 1961. Picture: ABC News 7

— with the New York Post

Originally published as Man in the US finds missing dad’s skeleton in basement of childhood home