BURNSVILLE, Minn. — Someone with a drone spotted it first. It appeared to be a car, submerged in a pond in Burnsville.
After hearing about the discovery, the Dakota County Sheriff's Office decided to go get the car. They pulled it out of the tree-fringed pond, located in Neill Park between a baseball diamond and Burnsville Parkway, last week.
Likely considering this was an interesting tidbit to report to the public, the sheriff's office posted a photo of the recovery to Facebook on Monday, April 22.
"Great job by our dive team," sheriff's office personnel wrote in the post. "The vehicle became more visible due to the lower water levels. It's a 1983 BMW and is believed to have been in the pond for 20+ years."
The post went up at 10 a.m. They likely didn't expect what happened next.
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The comment section on the post quickly filled up with jokes, but also speculation — questions about whether the car might have been involved in a crime, whether bodies or evidence might have been found in the car.
"Wow. Ok, now am I the only one who wants to know if this is going to unravel some unsolved mystery or disappearance or something?" Read the most-liked reply, posted 12 minutes after the photo went live on the sheriff's office page.
Some insisted the car was, in fact, visible in the satellite view of the park on Google Maps.
Sheriff Joe Leko took to the comment section himself the next morning to calm the public.
"The Sheriff’s Office processed the vehicle and nothing suspicious was found nor does it appear to be attached to a crime," he wrote. "With today’s technology, drones and fish/depth finders, the public finding vehicles underwater is not uncommon."
He posted a photo of another car pulled out of the Mississippi in September 2022 after a fisherman spotted it on his sonar.
This apparently did not stop the questions.
On Tuesday afternoon, the sheriff's office put up another (somewhat exasperated) post, hoping to finally squash the guessing games.
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Sheriff's deputies had found registration paperwork in the car, and had tracked down the owner, an elderly man, the sheriff's office announced. He believed the car had been sold or traded, but didn't recall the details now, years later. The sheriff's office suspected the car had simply been dumped.
"We've received tons of questions about this vehicle with lots of speculation about ties to another crime. It appears that the mystery stops here. There were no bodies or anything suspicious found in the car," the post read. "Sorry to disappoint, but we don't think this story will be covered in your favorite true crime podcast. It's just a car in a pond."
That seemed to satisfy some people, but not everyone. Wrote one commenter:
"There has to be more to this story. Cold case file?"
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