| Welcome to PorchlightUSA. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| 1994 Shearer, Omar K. November 4,1994; Marco Island 25 YO | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 3 2006, 07:32 PM (452 Views) | |
| PorchlightUSA | Dec 3 2006, 07:32 PM Post #1 |
|
Administrator
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/s/shearer_omar.html Omar Kahlil Shearer Left and Center: Shearer, circa 1994; Right: Age-progression at an unknown age Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance Missing Since: November 4, 1994 from Marco Island, Florida Classification: Endangered Missing Date Of Birth: May 20, 1969 Age: 25 years old Height and Weight: 5'5, 160 pounds Distinguishing Characteristics: African-American male. Black hair, brown eyes. Shearer had a moustache at the time of his 1994 disappearance. He was born in Jamaica. Details of Disappearance Shearer was visiting Marco Island, Florida from his hometown of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada in November 1994. He arrived with his friends Kent Munro and David Madott on November 3. The group planned to spend the weekend at their friend Jeffrey Wandich's family's condominium on the island. A photo of Wandich is posted below this case summary. Madott, Munro and Shearer planned to return to Ontario on November 7. Shearer was employed at Ottawa Civic Hospital in Ottawa, Ontario in 1994. The four men departed from Marco River Marina in Wandich's pleasure boat, the Sea Esta, at approximately 8:00 a.m. on November 4. All four were licensed scuba divers and planned to spend the day fishing and diving at the wreck of the Baja California, which was located approximately 55 miles southwest of Marco Island in the Gulf Of Mexico. Wandich turned the Sea Esta back to the marina shortly after they departed when it appeared one of his outboard motors was overheating. He purchased two thermostats as emergency replacements and continued the trip. Wandich stated that they stopped to catch bait at the wreck of Ben's Barge later in the morning. The wreck is approximately four miles in the Gulf from Marco Island. The group decided that weather conditions were good and travled on to the Baja California wreck that afternoon. They fished at the site for approximately one hour before Munro became queasy due to the increasing surf. The group decided to dive at the wreck and left the Sea Esta unattended during their 15 minutes underwater. When the men surfaced, Wandich stated that they saw approximately three feet of the boat's bow out of the water. The rest of the vessel had submerged during their dive at approximately 3:30 p.m. All the men wore wetsuits and fully inflated buoyancy compensators (BCs). They held on to the anchor rope together as the Sea Esta remained partially submerged until approximately 7:00 p.m. According to Wandich, Shearer was the first to realize that the boat was sinking completely into the water and the rope was torn from the group's hands at that time. They began swimming together towards a light tower operated by the United States Department Of Defense. The tower was located approximately three miles east of the Baja California wreck. The seas swelled to six feet by that point in the evening. Wandich said that he was briefly overcome by fear as the men swam to the tower and he turned away from the group. Wandich stated that Shearer encouraged him to rejoin them and called out to him several times. Wandich said he replied that he was not going off on his own, but he could no longer see his three friends when he turned back. Wandich said he looked over the surf for signs of Madott, Munro and Shearer for a period of time before swimming to the tower by himself. Wandich climbed the tower at approximately 11:00 p.m. on November 4 and remained at the location until the morning of November 6, when he was rescued by the United States Coast Guard. He learned that his three friends had not been located at that time. A search had been deployed for the four men during the evening hours of November 4, when Wandich's loved ones realized the Sea Esta had not returned to port. There has been no sign of Madott, Munro or Shearer since November 4. Many rumors have surfaced throughout the proceeding years regarding their cases. The theories have ranged from voluntary disappearances to a drug deal gone awry. None of the rumors have been proven to be accurate. A group of divers searched the wreck of the Sea Esta shortly after it went down and discovered the boat may not have been equipped to handle the weight of its load on November 4, thereby causing the vessel to sink. The Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) was involved in the case of the missing men for a short time in 1994, but ruled the incident was an accident and that Madott, Munro and Shearer were most likely lost at sea as a result. Their families continue to search for answers as to the men's whereabouts. Above: Wandich, circa 1994 Investigating Agency If you have any information concerning this case, please contact: Vanished info@vanished.org Source Information Vanished Million Dollar Mysteries Charley Project Home |
![]() |
|
| PorchlightUSA | Dec 3 2006, 07:33 PM Post #2 |
|
Administrator
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
http://z10.invisionfree.com/usedtobedoe/in...topic=9937&st=0 |
![]() |
|
| ELL | Jul 31 2013, 07:03 PM Post #3 |
|
Advanced Member
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
What happened to 3 Canadians? by Geoffrey Stevens SUN TIMES OF CANADA Fort Myers, Fla. THIS is a mystery story. It begins on Nov. 4, 1994. On that date, three young Canadian men, all 25 and all from Mississauga, Ont., joined a fourth Canadian, Jeff Wandich, whose parents have a place on Marco Island, south of Naples, for a day of fishing and diving in the Gulf of Mexico. They set out from Marco Island in a 25 -foot boat belonging to Wandich, heading for the wreck of the Baja California, a freighter that was sunk by a German U-boat in 1942 in 129 feet of water about 60 miles southwest of Marco. The four Canadians apparently reached the wreck in early afternoon. The weather was starting to break up, with winds of 15 to 20 knots and waves of four to six feet buffeting Wandich’s boat. They decided to make one quick dive to the wreck, then head back to Marco Island before the weather got too bad. That much is known - or is thought to be known. When the four men did not return, they were reported overdue. The U.S. Coast Guard began to search. Thirty-six hours after they would have been diving to the Baja California, Wandich was found clinging to a signal tower in the Gulf of Mexico, about four miles from the site. No trace was found of Dave Madott, Omar Shearer or Kent Munro. All three were good swimmers. All were wearing wetsuits and buoyancy compensators - flotation devices that would keep them afloat in the worst weather. The water temperature was a warm 77 degrees. They could have survived for days. If they had died of exposure, their bodies would have floated. The shark population in the area has been depleted and those that are left are not, for the most part, mammal-eaters. But even if the three men were attacked by sharks, there would be remains and the buoyancy compensators to be found. The current would have carried them southwest, then either east around the tip of Florida or west away from the Florida peninsula. But no sign was found of Madott, Shearer and Munro. No bodies, no remains, no debris. As baffled as everyone else, the coast guard mounted one of the most massive searches ever conducted in the region. Using boats, aircraft and helicopters with state-of-the-art infrared technology, the coast guard scoured 23,000 square miles of sea over the course of six days before calling off the search. When the coast guard gave up, the men’s families carried on, spending tens of thousands of dollars to hire boats, planes, guides, divers, private detectives and even psychics. The Federal Bureau of Investigation got into the act. But nothing was ever found of Madott, Shearer or Munro. --------------------------------------------------------- What happened to the three friends from Canada? All the families and the authorities have to go on is the account given by the survivor, Jeff Wandich, a property manager from Toronto. As Wandich tells it, the four reached the site of the Baja California wreck where they anchored their boat, the Sea Esta. Violating one of the cardinal rules of diving, they left the boat untended. They split in pairs - Wandich with Madott, Shearer with Munro - and headed down to the wreck. At the 30-foot depth, Munro signalled that he was having trouble equalizing the pressure in his ears. He and Shearer returned to the surface while Madott and Wandich continued down to the wreck, remaining there for perhaps 15 minutes. Munro and Shearer, meanwhile, reached the surface and hoisted themselves into the Sea Esta, only to find it was taking on water over the transom. Suddenly the boat began to tip sideways and Munro and Shearer jumped out. By the time Wandich and Madott returned to the surface, the boat was stern-down with only about three feet of bow sticking out of the water. The four hung to the anchor rope for four hours before the boat sank. They decided they had no choice but to try to swim about four miles to the signal tower, which had a beacon that flashed brightly every few seconds. They set off together, but Wandich says he became frightened - so frightened that he moved off a short distance from the others while he regained his composure. When he tried to rejoin his three friends, he could not find them. “I wasn’t far away from them, maybe 10 feet, two waves away, and then I took a look to my left and ... I didn’t see them anymore,” Wandich says. “They were gone.” Struggling into the teeth of the 20 knot wind, Wandich swam toward the signal tower. It took four hours before he reached it and pulled himself out of the waves to await rescue. --------------------------------------------------------- There is no reason not to accept Wandich’s account of the tragic events of Nov. 4,1994. The police have probed him closely. He has passed a polygraph test. A private salvager went to the wreck site a few days after the tragedy and found the Sea Esta exactly where Wandich said it would be - lying on top of the Baja California. The salvager brought the Sea Esta to port; it showed no evidence of foul play. Divers hired by Dave Madott’s father, Bill, an IBM Canada executive based in Markham, Ont., found fishing rods, air tanks and other paraphernalia on the bottom, just where they should have been from Wandich’s description of events. Floating debris from the Sea Esta was located 21 miles southwest of the wreck site, just where searchers expected to find it. But no trace, no hint, was found there - or anywhere - of Dave Madott, Omar Shearer and Kent Munro. --------------------------------------------------------- Bill Madott is a determined, don’t-let-go kind of man - just the sort of terrier any family would want orchestrating the search and keeping pressure on the authorities if one of it’s children disappeared mysteriously. He has been back and forth repeatedly since November 1994, organizing search efforts that were made possible by a fund started by the missing men’s employers. The fund grew to $95,000, of which $10,000 remains. Constantly seeking to bring his search to a wider audience, Madott arranged for the publication of a book, Vanished in the Gulf, by Toronto Sun reporter Joe Warmington. And everywhere he goes, Bill Madott distributes leaflets in which the families offer a reward of $300,000 (US) for information leading to the safe return of the three men, or $45,000 for the recovery of their remains. The leaflets bear photos of the three as they were in 1994 and, courtesy of the Metropolitan Toronto police, computer-enhanced likenesses of how they would appear today with longer hair and beards. But still nothing, not a word, not a sighting. --------------------------------------------------------- Bill Madott accepts Jeff Wandich’s account, but he feels someone is holding something back. “I think one of three things happened,” Madott said in an interview with The Sun Times. “one, we missed them somehow. Two, someone picked them up. Three, they were never there.” He finds it hard to credit the first scenario. The Coast Guard and private searches were so intense and so thorough that if there were anything to find, something would have been found. Madott also has trouble with the third scenario - that the three missing men were never at the wreck of the Baja California. This scenario implies that the Canadians got mixed up, knowingly or unknowingly, in drug smuggling or some other illegal activity and were murdered to prevent them from talking. In this scenario, the diving trip to the Baja California would be an elaborate cover story to enable the guilty to escape detection. But there is no suggestion that any of the three was ever involved in illicit activity. Like the other parents, Bill Madott believes his son was clean. “But if I’m wrong, I’ll have to live with it. Once I know what really happened to Dave, I can handle the rest.” He leans to the second scenario. He thinks that the Sea Esta went down as Wandich described it. He thinks the young men tried to swim to the signal tower and that Madott, Shearer and Munro became separated from Wandich pretty much as Wandich said they did. But he suspects that his son, Omar Shearer and Kent Munro were picked up by a boat operated by criminals - smugglers, perhaps, of drugs, arms or illegal immigrants - who were surprised in their criminal act when the three Canadians swam or floated onto the scene. To rid themselves of witnesses, the criminals either murdered the three men and buried their bodies ashore somewhere - or they kidnapped them and are holding them as prisoners, hostages or slaves in Central or South America. For Bill Madott and the other parents, after 15 anguished months, a ransom call in the middle of the night would be cause for relief and celebration. Anyone with information about Dave Madott, Omar Shearer or Kent Munro is asked to contact Bill Madott at P.O. Box 334, Mississauga “A”, Mississauga, Ont. L5A 3A1. Joe Warmington’s book Vanished in the Gulf, published by Battle Books of Toronto, is available at bookstores in Canada and Florida. http://www.vanished.org/html/mystery_in_gulf.html |
![]() |
|
| « Previous Topic · Missing Persons 1990 to 1999 · Next Topic » |





![]](http://z2.ifrm.com/static/1/pip_r.png)



a.jpg (10.95 KB)
8:04 PM Jul 10