Naman Shrestha
George Carroll suddenly vanished from his house in Lake Grove, New York, in 1963, but it didn’t result in police intervention as he was never reported missing. Several decades later, his children and grandchildren played crucial roles in the discovery of his remains, which uncovered suspicions against two individuals. In Investigation Discovery’s ‘The Secrets We Bury,’ the primary focus is on the mysterious case and the potential motives of the suspected killers involved in the murder of George. It also features exclusive interviews with George’s loved ones and the suspects’ family members, who shed light on the life of the deceased man.
George Carroll’s Remains Were Found More Than Five Decades After His Disappearance
George Gaffney Carroll was welcomed into the world on February 21, 1933. Born in Brooklyn in Kings County, New York, he was a determined individual who went on to serve in the US Army during the Korean War. According to reports, he served as Marilyn Monroe’s driver on her whirlwind United Service Organizations tour in the early 1950s. After the war, the veteran returned to his home state. On the personal front, George was married to Dorothy Ethel Fabian Carroll Darress. Together, they were proud parents to four children — daughters Jean and Patricia and sons Steven and Michael. His family and friends described him as a kindhearted and hardworking man who built a stable life for his family in Long Island, New York. The Carrolls reportedly led a fulfilling life in their close-knit community until George vanished without a trace in 1963.
According to the kids, most of whom were quite young at the time, Dorothy informed them that their father had gone out to get cigarettes and “just never came back.” While they never stopped wondering about their father’s whereabouts, the kids also lost their mother, Dorothy, in 1998. It wasn’t until over five decades, on October 31, 2018, that the case saw a significant development when Michael, AKA Mike, and his sons found human remains in the basement of their family home in Lake Grove. Mike immediately contacted the police, but they reportedly believed it was a Halloween prank and initially allegedly dismissed the incident. Eventually, Mike persuaded the authorities to rush to the scene, where they identified the remains as George’s and determined that he died of blunt force trauma to the head.
George Carroll’s Grandsons Spent Months Digging Into the Basement of the Carroll Residence
In the years following George Carroll’s disappearance, his wife, Dorothy, didn’t file a missing persons report. It was also alleged that he had fled to Korea to begin a new life with a woman he had met during the war in Korea. According to George’s son, Mike, George’s parents hired a private investigator in the 1960s to find some answers behind his sudden disappearance. In the mid-2000s, Mike also allegedly crossed paths with George’s brother at a hospital and learned that he and other members of his family believed that George was killed and buried under the house. Around the time George went missing, he had hired a handyman named Richard Darress Sr. for a house construction project and allowed him to stay in the house until the project was completed.
Not long after George’s disappearance, Dorothy tied the knot with Richard, and the couple gave birth to a son named Richard Darress Jr. However, their marriage soon deteriorated, and they ultimately divorced in 1983. As per the show, Dorothy alleged that George was abusive towards her after returning home from the war. However, the Carroll kids alleged it was Richard Sr. who was physically and sexually abusive towards them. Per reports, nobody dug deeper into the mystery behind it until several decades later, when a couple of his children, Mike and Jean, took it upon themselves to solve his disappearance. In 2010, Jean got in touch with a psychic and convinced her brother, Mike, to give it a shot, despite both of them being non-believers in the supernatural.
The psychic told the siblings that George had been killed and buried in the basement of the Carroll house in Lake Grove, New York, which Mike had purchased from his mother in 1993. Although Mike’s digging didn’t yield any results, his sons, Chris and Mike Jr., also tried digging a particular area of the basement when Mike suffered a critical stroke and was told to rest in order to recover. On Halloween Eve 2018, Chris and Mike Jr. discovered George’s remains under the basement and informed Mike about them. It has been alleged that Richard Sr. and Dorothy collectively killed George in the basement due to the alleged abuse that he inflicted on his wife. However, Dorothy’s son continues to defend her and claims that only Richard was allegedly involved in the murder.
Dorothy Carroll and Richard Darress Sr. Passed Away Before the Discovery of George Carroll’s Remains
More than three decades after George Carroll’s tragic demise, Dorothy Carroll passed away on April 17, 1998, after battling cancer. Around the time, her children hoped that she would reveal something about their father’s disappearance, but she took the secrets with her, that is, if she knew about George’s murder at all. On the other hand, a few months before George’s remains were found in the basement, the second suspect, Richard Darress Sr., died in June 2018 at the age of 77. At the time, he had been residing in Mexico, near Laredo, Texas. Since neither suspect is alive anymore, the mystery surrounding the death of George Carroll remains unsolved.
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