50-Year Cold Case: Bodies Pulled From Vehicle in Plantation Canal

The half-century-old cold case of a missing mother and daughter from Plantation, Florida, has finally been cracked open.

A mystery that haunted Plantation for decades had a heartbreaking development on Saturday, August 10, when authorities discovered what are believed to be the two family members' remains submerged in a Broward Boulevard canal.

Doris Wurst, 35, and her 3-year-old daughter Caren vanished without a trace from their home on NW Second Street in Plantation, a residence in the now-defunct Sunshine City Trailer Park. Their disappearance in November 1974 left the community and law enforcement baffled for 50 years. Despite follow-up investigations in 1977, 1988, 1992, 1994, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2017, and 2018, the case remained cold, with no sign of the mother, child, or their red and white 1961 Chevrolet Impala.

According to the Plantation Police Department (PPD), the breakthrough came during an operation by Sunshine State Sonar, an organization that conducts volunteer searches for vehicles tied to missing person cases in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, using state-of-the-art sonar equipment. The group began working on the Wursts' case in June 2023.
"Usually, when someone goes missing, a car is found on the side of the highway, it's abandoned in a parking lot, or it'll show up somewhere in a junkyard at some point. So, we get involved with these cases where the vehicle is never found," Mike Sullivan, founder of Sunshine State Sonar, tells New Times.

Sullivan deploys sonar imaging devices to scan through as many water bodies as possible in the search field, which typically encompasses a radius of several miles around the last known location of a missing person.

"Here's the problem with South Florida. There are so many waterways, so many canals — hundreds of them, and it's like finding a needle in a haystack. These waters are just endless," Sullivan says.

On August 10, the team zeroed in on the canal in the 10100 block of West Broward Boulevard, near where the Wursts were last seen. Sonar detected something unusual beneath the water's surface around 11:17 a.m.

The sonar image matched the description of the classic car the mother was driving before she and her daughter vanished. The PPD and the Broward Sheriff's Office (BSO) were immediately notified of the discovery. Sunshine State Sonar says a scuba dive search revealed the submerged vehicle was indeed the Wursts' Chevy Impala. Inside the car, BSO divers found two sets of skeletal remains, one unmistakably belonging to a small child.

Photos from the scene show the rusted-out frame of the vehicle being pulled from the water behind a residential community with pool enclosures and manicured lawns. Clothing, a small saxophone, and toy cars were recovered from the wreckage and laid out on a sheet near the site during the recovery operation.

The next of kin have been contacted regarding the likelihood that their long-lost loved ones have been found, but official identification of the deceased is pending verification through DNA results or dental records.

The finding provides some hope that, after five decades, the Wursts' family and the Broward community can finally have some closure.

"The investigation was a result of a 14-month collaboration with the Plantation Police Department. The dedication of the detectives involved in the case was incredible, as they never gave up on finding a resolution, even 50 years later," Sunshine State Sonar said in a statement.