Dad searching for son, pals nearly 30 years after they vanished

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One guy on this diving trip managed to make a life-saving swim to a communications tower in Florida’s Gulf of Mexico.

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The other three just vanished in the gulf.

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Sometimes the longer that mysteries remain unsolved, the more mysterious they become.

While Nov. 4 will mark 30 years since three 25-year-old professionals from Mississauga strangely disappeared during a diving trip to pal David Madott’s place in Florida, Bill Madott thinks about it each day.

“It’s always there,” said Madott, who will turn 80 a month after the 30^th anniversary of the disappearance.

As a father, he never stopped looking for his son and his friends. And, he added, he never will stop trying to solve the mystery.

Three decades have flown by in a flash. If David Madott, Omar Shearer and Kent Munro are still alive, they are now 55. While the circumstances indicate they are liking not coming back after all this time, I don’t rule out that they could be alive.

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I have seen no physical evidence that they are dead.

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It’s easy to brush this off and assume they simply drowned, but there are many loose ends and unresolved questions. The biggest is one is why did they not try to swim to that naval tower like their friend?

“It is strange because these were young men who would have found a way,” said Madott. “In all the searching, we found everything to do with that boat, but we never found them or anything they had on them – tanks and fins, wetsuits.”

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Nov. 4^, 1994 still seems like yesterday for some. Bill Clinton was president. Jean Chretien was prime minister. There was no social media or cameras on cellphones. Times have changed.

But they have stayed the same for Madott, a retired computer executive who vowed to never stop searching for his son, his friends and just how this tragedy unfolded.

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It’s a riddle.

What we do know comes from lone survivor Jeff Wandich, who owned the 25-foot Sea Esta boat with two 225 horsepower motors on the back. He said the boat took on water and capsized in the Gulf of Mexico, some 95 kilometres from Marco Island.

The fact that Wandich, 27 at the time and also of Mississauga, was rescued at the 23-metre tower which, on a clear day, can be seen from above the Second World War wreck, Baja California — a supply ship torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1942 — offered hope that the other three would be found, too.

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As Wandich told it, he became concerned after several hours of waiting by the sinking boat as the sun set and waves swelled up to more than one metre high.

“They wanted me to stay with them and hold each other and just float toward the tower,” Wandich explained from the hospital where he was being treated for sunburn and dehydration. “Something told me that wasn’t a good idea … I panicked and wanted to swim to this boat I saw.”

However “30 seconds” later, he said, he “regained composure” and changed his mind and swam back to them.

“But I never found them again — I couldn’t believe it.”

He said he managed to swim for four hours to the tower and hoped he’d see them there. In the 36 hours before being rescued, he never saw them. Did they drown? Attacked by sharks? Drift away? All theories.

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“We consider them to be missing,” said Madott. “We are still searching for them.”

There is also still a reward of $100,000 for each missing man if someone can find them alive.

The reason I am doing this column now is I dropped by to see Bill who is downsizing from his house to an apartment and he offered me “a couple of boxes of books” that he won’t have room for anymore.

I wrote this book with Bill as my partner in 1995 and while it sold well here in the GTA, it seems the ones in the United States didn’t, and eventually made their way back to Bill’s garage.

I have a bunch now to hand out and, with a view of trying to help solve this case, I’m thinking about the possibility of holding a special event to provide people with copies of the book and to kick around some theories, too.

The book offers all the clues that could help someone solve this. It’s as puzzle, missing one piece.

“I don’t give up hope,” said Madott.

When one guy survives, you can’t.

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