There’s a car down there, deep in the muck of the Hillsborough River. Maybe a motorcycle.

They found it the other day, out on their little boat with their fancy fish finder: a shadow on the sonar with a golden blob in the center.

Now, on a warm winter afternoon, they’re wriggling into wetsuits below the 40th Street bridge, about to dive for a license plate.

“Could be stolen,” says John Martin, 55.

“Could be a homicide,” says Mike Sullivan, 44. “You never know. There could be a body in the trunk.”

In the last two years, the halfbrothers who own Sunshine State Sonar have found more than 350 cars in canals, ponds and waterways across Florida.

Weekend fishermen turned amateur underwater detectives, the truecrime junkies dive into cold cases, searching for the disappeared. Sometimes, they choose the cases themselves, following threads online. Other times, law enforcement asks for their help.

Read more: https://www.tampabay.com/news/crime/2...


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