SPRINGDALE — A junkyard of stolen cars, toppled backhoes, stripped-out helicopters and abandoned school buses lies scattered in the waters of Beaver Lake.
That’s why detectives were relieved last week to pick the sport-utility vehicle they sought from among the vehicles beneath the surface.
Police dove near the U.S. 412 bridge looking for a GMC Jimmy belonging to Kelly Lockhart of Springdale, who was reported missing in 2008. Detectives now believe she was killed, and say her body was placed in her truck before it was dumped in the lake. Remains were found in the vehicle, but a positive identification hasn’t been made.
Police divers knew what kind of truck they were seeking but had to feel blindly each time sonar located a possible vehicle, said Capt. Dallas McClellan of the Washington County sheriff’s office. Previous searches of the area had turned up numerous cars or trucks sunk nearby.
“We weren’t positive we had the right vehicle until it broke the surface,” McClellan said. “We knew there were acouple around, but we were looking specifically for that one. We even talked about taking the divers to a used-car lot, blindfolding them and letting them feel a similar truck so they’d know what it felt like when they found it.”
Alan Bland, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ranger forthe lake, said there’s no way to tell how many vehicles litter the lake bottom.
“I’m sure there are a lot we don’t know anything about,” he said. “Lakes have long been a convenient place to ditch cars, and once they’re in, they generally stay there. There could easily be a hundred ormore around the lake.”
Mike Whitehouse, owner of Hickory Creek Marina near Lowell, said he has heard rumors of a railcar on the bottom somewhere nearby but he doesn’t know exactly where or how deep it is.
“I have no idea how theboxcar would have gotten there, but I’ve seen news accounts where the backhoe fell off a bluff some years back,” he said. “It’s so deep, I have to believe it’d be pretty hard to find.”
The school bus, which recreational divers found, may have been left behind in a valley that was submerged when the lake was filled in 1964, Bland said.
Without a focused search, vehicles in many parts of the lake will likely stay hidden for good, said Jim Butler, owner of C&J Sports, a dive shop near Eureka Springs. Butler sunk the shell of a two-seat helicopter and part of an airplane in a northern arm of the lake about five years ago to help train scuba divers.
“Those are in shallow water up here on the north side where the visibility is good,” Butler said. “Down south, the visibility is so low you’d bump into something almost before you saw it.”
Bland took part in a dive to a submerged car to retrieve a suicide victim several years ago but doesn’t think there are bodies in most of the underwater vehicles.
“I’d guess 80 percent of them were stolen and dumped,” he said. “The gas and oil leaks out pretty quick, so that damage is done, and the insurance companies don’t want to pay to bring anything up, so generally nobody bothers.”
Police don’t think the other vehicles near Lockhart’s have any connection to her case.
“Some of them have been down there 30 years or more,” McClellan said. “Unless we’ve got a good reason, we’re not going to spend the time and manpower trying to get them all out.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 10/25/2010