In 1963, George Carroll, a 30-year-old army corporal who’d served in the Korean War, disappeared without a trace. His wife, Dorothy, told their four young children that he’d abandoned them, leaving to purchase cigarettes and never coming back home.
Dorothy eventually passed away in 1998, and the couple’s kids never knew what truly happened to their father. That was until the children spoke to a psychic medium, who claimed George was actually buried under the house, and the clairvoyant turned out to be right.
One of George’s sons, Michael Carroll, purchased his late mother’s home and proceeded to spend years searching for his father’s remains.
Apparently, the psychic, whom he met with in 2010, said his father had been murdered, with his cause of death being blunt force trauma, and had been buried in the basement of their family home.
The shocking vision prompted Michael to call his older brother, Steven Carroll, who recalled, “This woman described exactly where Dad was and something that used to be on the wall. I remembered that, but nobody else would know.”
After serving in the Korean War, George and Dorothy settled down on Long Island to raise their four children: Jean, Patricia, Steven, and Michael. Later, Richard Darress, a live-in handyman, was also hired to assist George with a construction project.
Once George vanished, and Dorothy told the kids that he’d walked out on their family, she eventually got remarried to Richard. But while they had one son together, named Rich, their tumultuous marriage ultimately ended in divorce. This was a welcome outcome for George’s children, who alleged Richard had been abusive.
Still, even after Dorothy’s split from her second husband, she always pushed off questions about George’s disappearance and told her kids that their father was not “a good guy.” Moreover, she never actually filed a missing person report, meaning authorities never investigated his disappearance.
Over the years, speculation in the Carroll family gave rise to theories. For instance, some thought that perhaps George had gone to raise a family with a woman he met during the war.
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However, the theories grew darker following a mid-2000s visit to George’s brother in the hospital, during which Michael learned his dad’s side of the family always thought George had been murdered and buried beneath the home. He also discovered that his grandmother had hired a detective during the 1960s.
Then, in 2010, Michael and his sister, Jean, went to a psychic reading. After she echoed the same idea, they literally started digging.
It was the night before Halloween in 2018 when Michael’s sons, Chris and Mike Jr., finally uncovered George’s skeletal remains in the basement.
“I thought maybe it was a root or a dog bone. Then I looked again and realized, yeah, that’s definitely a pelvis bone,” Michael said.
To this day, the Carroll kids deny speculation that their late mother was involved in George’s death, with Rich claiming, “I know who she was, and if she had any part in this, she definitely had a good reason.”
Instead, many of George’s relatives think the handyman, Richard Darress, was actually his killer. The Suffolk County Police are investigating, and the murderer’s identity has not been confirmed.
In the meantime, George was finally laid to rest on October 25, 2019, at Calverton National Cemetery in Riverhead, New York. During the ceremony, Jean shared her belief that no one would ever find out what truly happened.
“We’ve had the gift of finding our father before we leave the earth. I prayed to the Lord every day to answer my prayer about where he could be. I’m happy that it’s over. It’s another chapter in our lives,” she stated.
Now, a new documentary entitled “The Secrets We Bury” is set to tell the Carroll family’s story. On December 16, it will premiere on ID at 9:00 p.m. EST and be available for streaming on HBO Max.
By Katharina Buczek
Katharina Buczek graduated from Stony Brook University with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Digital Arts. Specializing in... More about Katharina Buczek
