Pinellas County Sonar Experts Specialize In Helping Law Enforcement Solve Cold Cases

PALM HARBOR, FL — On May 22, 2006, a 34-year-old Robert Helphrey of Palm Harbor walked out of Peggy O'Neill's Irish Pub & Eatery in Oldsmar and was never seen again.

Now, due to the efforts of an all-volunteer nonprofit team based in Pinellas County that specializes in underwater sonar technology, Helphrey's two daughters now know what happened to their father 17 years ago.

The Pinellas sheriff announced Friday that the medical examiner's office has positively identified the human remains recovered from a blue-gray Mitsubishi Outlander hatchback found submerged in a Palm Harbor retention pond on April 14 as those of Robert Helphrey. The medical examiner is still attempting to determine the cause of death.

For the Sunshine State Sonar Search Team, the discovery of Helphrey's SUV ended brought a resolution to a cold case they'd been working on for a year and a half.

The sonar team first partnered with Pinellas County Sheriff's Office cold case Detective Ron Chalmers in June 2021 to try to find Helphrey, lending their expertise and pricey equipment that is able to photograph objects up to 50 meters (164 feet) on the ocean floor.

The team uses down imaging sonar, which emits high-frequency, thin sonar waves to produce an incredibly detailed picture of what lies beneath the surface of Florida's ocean, bays, rivers, lakes and ponds.

The team's website shows a sampling of some of the previously invisible but easily recognizable objects the team photographed with sonar technology beneath the water, including bikes, boats, planes and, unfortunately, several bodies.

Since partnering with Chalmers, the sonar team has searched more than 150 bodies of water in Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough counties for Helphrey.

They say this cold case is special not only because it was their first official invitation to work with law enforcement but because Helphrey was a military veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm. They felt he deserved to have a proper burial and his family deserved to have answers.

At the time he disappeared in 2006, Helphrey was working two jobs t0 support his family, including managing the Thirsty Marlin seafood restaurant in Palm Harbor.

Although, Helphrey no longer lived with his two daughters, his family said he was devoted to the girls and determined to support them.

On May 22, 2006, Heplhrey closed the Thirsty Marlin around 12:30 a.m. and then joined some friends for a beer at O'Neill's before heading home around 1:30 a.m. in his 2005 Mitsubishi Outlander to meet a friend back at his apartment on U.S. 19 in Palm Harbor.

When he didn't show up, family and friends knew there was something terribly wrong. Helphrey's stint in the military had instilled in him a self-regimented sense of duty. He was unfailingly dependable and visited his daughters as frequently as possible. His family was certain he would never leave without letting them know where he was going.

But repeated searches of ponds and wooded areas yielded no results, and the case was officially declared cold.

Determined to close this case, the sonar experts who have since partnered with Recon Dive Recovery, a team of volunteer professional divers who specialize in cold case investigations in conjunction with law enforcement, decided to try searching the retention pond in Palm Harbor once again.

Around 7:30 p.m. on April 13, "we finally got the hit on sonar we have all been praying for," said the team. Helphrey's SUV was submerged in about 10 feet of water in the retention pond located directly east of the intersection of Old Oak Circle and Belcher Road in Palm Harbor, just a few miles from his home.

The Recon Dive Recovery team dove to confirm the license plate on the SUV was a match for Helphrey's Mitsubishi. Then they contacted the Pinellas sheriff's office, which sent its underwater search and recovery team to the pond the next day.

The SUV they pulled out of the retention pond bore little resemblance to the year-old vehicle Helphrey was driving when he disappeared. In addition to being covered in layers of silt, making it nearly invisible on the floor of the pond, over 17 years, dozens of snails had fastened their shells to the vehicle's exterior.

"Our hearts are broken for Bob’s friends and family," the team wrote on its Facebook page after watching as the SUV was pulled out of the pond. "This has been an emotional 48 hours for everyone. We are praying for them."

Another Tragic Discovery

Since initially partnering with the Pinellas sheriff's office, word of the sonar team's work has spread with law enforcement agencies around the state enlisting its help.

Not all the team's investigations are cold cases, however.

On Friday, the team partnered with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office and We Are The Essentials, a volunteer group of former law enforcement and military service members based in Lakeland, to search for 38-year-old Sarah Elizabeth Dreyer.

On the morning of April 10, Dreyer dropped her kids off at a private school and returned to her home in a neighborhood off McMullen Road in Riverview. A Ring camera captured her walking alone at 2:01 p.m., carrying her cell phone, near the entrance to the county-owned Bell Creek Nature Preserve at 10940 McMullen Road.

Then she seemingly vanished.

Determined to find her, the sonar team, We Are The Essentials and sheriff's investigators met up at Dreyer's home around 3:30 p.m. Wednesday where they spoke with her family and friends to get a sense of where she might have gone.

"We sonar-searched the lake behind her home. When that search turned up nothing, we decided to search the heavily wooded nature preserve at the end of her street," said the sonar team. "Two hours into that ground search and approximately 2 miles deep in the woods, we were able to locate Sarah. Unfortunately, she was deceased. Please pray for Sarah's children. Lots of tears tonight. This is a heartbreaking situation."

Including Dreyer and Helphrey, the team has helped law enforcement recover the bodies of four missing persons in just the first four months of 2023.

However, they said finding Dreyer after just a few hours of searching is the exception.

Most searches, like the search for Helphrey, take months and years.

Such was the case with Robert Heikka, a teacher who went missing three years ago. Working with Port Orange law enforcement, they found Heikka and his car on April 8.

The Davie Police Department had been searching for Karen Moore for 22 years when the sonar team found her in her submerged car on Jan. 6.

Most recently, the team has been actively searching for Zephyrhills native Carlton McCarthy Ireland, who went missing on May 1. 2007.

On Friday, the team got a sonar hit on a vehicle in a lake just outside MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa and called the Tampa police, which promptly dispatched its marine unit and dive team.

It was a difficult search not only because of the murky water that hindered visibility but the lake was home to several large alligators that began circling around the dive team. The sonar search team had to launch one of its boats to distract the gators so the dive team could continue their work undisturbed.

Unfortunately, the car the dive team pulled out of the lake wasn't Ireland's 1997 red Toyota Tercel. A tag search revealed it was a vehicle stolen out of Ruskin.

"Post inspection of the vehicle showed someone had put a motorcycle battery on the gas pedal and the keys were in the ignition," reported the sonar search team.

Nevertheless, the team vowed to keep on searching.