ALTON -- The treacherous, muddy waters of the Mississippi River finally gave up the car and remains of retired teacher Wilma Jean Bricker on Friday, ending a three-year wait for her family and the community.
At 11:55 a.m., a large crane mounted on a Chub Morris barge from Mike’s Inc. of South Roxana, guided by a professional dive team, slowly pulled the maroon Dodge Intrepid up and out of its former, watery resting place about 25 feet below the surface.
"It’s a red car," one man said quietly as it slowly became visible above the choppy waves of the river.
The man was among a contingent of police officers, city employees, two aldermen, two men from the U.S. Coast Guard and Bricker’s sister, nephew and friends. The group was viewing the recovery from the adjacent loading barge of the former Anastasia excursion boat, which is 36 yards from where the car was located.
The general public was not allowed on the loading barge.
As the car became recognizable, Bricker’s sister, Georgia Jenkins of Godfrey, began sobbing. Jenkins’ son, Doug Jenkins, and friends Gil and Kimberly Moody comforted her as the long mystery of the whereabouts of her sister finally came to a conclusion. Bricker, whom Gil Moody was friends with for 15 years, was the godmother of the Moodys’ son, Jon Mikel, 29.
Advertisement
A firefighter said Bricker’s body was seated behind the wheel of the car, just as it had been on the day that she disappeared March 19, 2002. Only those within a few feet of the car could actually see the body.
The front end, front windshield and driver’s side window of the car were smashed, and both airbags had deployed. As the car was lifted out of the river, soupy brown water thickened with sand, and river mud poured onto the barge.
The car had taken on a quantity of mud inside; windows that were not broken were black with the muck.
Officials had called off the latest round of searches Tuesday, saying they could not precisely locate the car and that conditions on the river were too dangerous to continue.
But Dennis Watters of Moro never gave up the hunt. It was his wife, Tammy, who first spotted the image of the car on April 26 while using their new, $2,000 state-of-the-art Humminbird sonar and ultrasound equipment during planning for a catfish tournament.
"Without this new, amazing technology, this car would still be down there, because it was in a hole," Watters said. "It was pure luck that we passed over it that day, and we passed over it at high speed (5.6 mph)."
Watters led authorities on several days of searches, but the inconclusive nature of the images had him frustrated -- and in regular contact with the sonar manufacturer, which twice sent him new software that improved the sharpness of the images and allowed him to set a global positioning location.
"I went out (Thursday) about 3 o’clock. I was actually able to capture a silhouette image that clearly showed the car with all four tires, so clear that you could see the spokes of the wheel," he said.
Members of a professional dive team from Three Rivers Diving of St. Louis had told Alton police last week that they wanted to go into the water Friday. When they saw Watters’ images, he said, they said they needed no further proof. They located the car within minutes of diving Friday.
Alton Police Chief Chris Sullivan said the divers did not charge for their services. A spokesman for Three Rivers said its divers rarely get involved in search or recovery efforts but had been asked by someone to help look for the submerged car. The spokesman declined to give his name or those of the divers.
The divers brought a small, blue boat to the Alton riverfront Friday morning. Also on the river was a U.S. Coast Guard vessel and Marine 1, the Alton Fire Department’s fire and rescue boat. The Watterses parked their boat on the nearby parking lot.
Within minutes of going into the water, a diver was able to touch the vehicle, feel its sides and make out an outline of figures on the license plate to verify it was Bricker’s car.
"They couldn’t see it; they felt it," Sullivan said.
Officials then ordered a 90-foot barge and crane be brought up the river to the site next to the boarding barge for the former Anastasia.
A diver connected a hook and cable to the car then used tow straps to secure the vehicle underwater.
Owner Mike Marko said the crane is capable of pulling a weight of 65 tons. He said pulling a heavy car out of the river is not difficult. What can be hard is "getting something tied to it," he said.
Marko had told the crew that once the car got to the surface of the water, they should stop pulling it up briefly so it could drain off water it had taken on.
"It was a shame what happened," Marko said about Bricker.
The Jenkinses arrived about 10 minutes before the car was raised to the surface.
At 11:51 a.m., a diver surfaced and gave a hand signal to the crane operator.
The car then was on its way up, evidenced by the taut cable lines on the crane.
The car hung in the air briefly, swinging a bit and with a rush of water and mud pouring out. A few pieces of the Dodge fell off on the barge; eventually, its rear fender crashed down from the weight of water and mud that appeared to have filled it.
At 12:04 p.m., the car had been righted on the barge, and authorities quickly covered it. An unidentifiable authority radioed on a police scanner, "There is a body in the car."
Sullivan later said the remains were Bricker’s.
The barge with the crane and car then headed toward the locks and dam to get to Mike’s marina in Wood River. Sullivan said Alton police conducted a forensic investigation of the mud-filled car and removed any of Bricker’s personal belongings.
The Madison County Coroner’s Office then took possession of the body and planned an autopsy Friday night at the Madison County Morgue in Wood River.
Sullivan said police are "very relieved to have finally recovered her. It has concerned the community for a long time.
"We had people from all over try all the technology that is available," he said. "Dennis and Tammy Watters, we are very grateful to them for following what they believed was a vehicle under water. We are thankful to them."
"It finally turned out good," Alton Fire Chief Tim Spaulding said.
Doug Jenkins said the family was too upset to say much and would issue a statement later.
"We’re grateful the community didn’t give up hope," he said. "We appreciate all the help from everybody."
Of all the recent searches, Friday’s probably had the roughest water with the most whitecaps and heaviest winds.
Sullivan said it was not known whether the autopsy would reveal if Bricker had suffered a heart attack or stroke, which could have caused her to drive into the river, or whether she drowned or died of other causes.
"We may never know what happened," Sullivan said.
"It was pretty much in the hole where I said it was," Dennis Watters told Bricker’s relatives and close friends after the car was recovered. Tammy Watters had said the image on their equipment showed the car’s front wheels were turned, which they still were when the car was pulled up.
"They hit it right away," Spaulding said about the divers.
Bricker, 66, of Godfrey, had retired in 2000 after teaching business courses at Alton High for 42 years. She was known as a dedicated, no-nonsense teacher. She devoted much time to preparing her students for careers through the Future Business Leaders of America at local and state levels.
For undetermined reasons, Bricker’s car had plunged off the Riverfront Park parking lot about 100 yards from where it was recovered. Paid and volunteer search and rescue crews, including divers, conducted three, multi-day searches for the vehicle in 2002.
The crews eventually gave up the search of the dark waters, at times encountering poor weather and also having no real idea as to where the car might be.
The divers also were hindered by dangerous currents and a treacherous underwater landscape littered with junk and logs, as well as sharp concrete chunks and metal reinforcement bars from the old locks and dam that was blown up after the new Melvin Price Locks and Dam 26 opened.
The Watterses’ discovery of a form that appeared to be a car lying on its side against the channel of the old locks touched off another round of searchers’ excursions to the river May 5. Alton police, firefighters on Marine 1, Illinois Secretary of State Police Underwater Investigation Unit divers, U.S. Coast Guard employees and the Gateway Search Dogs canine unit took part.
During the process Friday, news helicopters from St. Louis television stations buzzed overhead, and a crowd of onlookers lined up against a perimeter police set up with yellow crime scene tape.
As the barge made its way down the river, a caravan of cars followed it on a road along the river side of the levee.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14527217&BRD=1719&PAG=461&dept_id=25271&rfi=6