KISSIMMEE, Fla. – The body of a mother in Florida who vanished in 2012 was found in a pond near Disney World on New Year’s Eve, according to her family and a volunteer search team.
The remains of Sandra Lemire — who was 47 when she disappeared — were found submerged in vehicle in a pond on Interstate 4 near the Disney World exit in Kissimmee, authorities announced on social media.
“We located her vehicle submerged in a retention pond on the side of I4 near the Disney World exit in Kissimmee Florida. Sandra’s remains and personal belongings were recovered today, December 31, 2023,” Sunshine State Sonar posted to Facebook on Sunday – along with a photo of the automobile she was driving, which was also recovered.
“Lemire left her grandmother’s home near I4 and John Young Parkway in Orlando, Florida on May 8, 2012. She was driving her grandmother’s red 2004 Ford Freestar minivan with the Florida license plate number J36-8ZE. Sandra, along with the vehicle were never seen again,” Sunshine State Sonar said in the announcement.
“Lemire was headed to Kissimmee, Florida to meet a man she’d been communicating with through an online dating service. She called her grandmother to say she’d arrived in Kissimmee, and promised to call again before she began the journey home, but she never did. She was last seen leaving a Denny’s restaurant in Kissimmee, driving the minivan.”
The news brought some answers to her grieving son, Timothy Lemire, of Michigan, the New York Post reported.
“They found my mom’s van yesterday after all these years of not knowing what happened to her!” he posted on Facebook. “The guys from Sunshine State Sonar made all of this possible…these guys brought this long mysterious case to an end.”
Nevertheless, Timothy said he was still left with the grief of lingering questions that have yet to be answered.
“It looks like she took an exit ramp a little too quick and went straight into the water,” he wrote. “What hurts the most is me thinking about if she suffered… or if she knew that she was trapped and couldn’t get out!”
“It kills me to even think that she knew she was gonna pass,” the woman’s son continued. “I just don’t know how to take it….I just wish I could [have] had the chance to say goodbye to her.”
The Orlando Police Department confirmed with the Post that “a volunteer civilian dive group reported a vehicle submerged in a body of water on World Drive.”
Authorities did not officially confirm the body was that of the long-missing woman, referring to the remains as “unidentified.”
According to law enforcement authorities, the Florida Highway Patrol is handling the traffic collision investigation.
Investigators determined that the man Sandra had visited was not involved in her disappearance, WKMG reported at the time.
During an interview, the man said he met up with Sandra at the McDonald’s where he worked before they parted ways, according to the news outlet. Police said they had no reason to doubt his account of the events.
“In a collaborative effort with detectives from Orlando Police Department, a total of 63 bodies of water were searched over the last 17 months,” Sunshine State Sonar said, while recounting the discovery.
Shortly after Sandra’s disappearance in 2012, her grandmother Pauline Varner told WKMG, “It’s very difficult because you just don’t know, and it’s not a good thing. I just hope she’s all right. She told me she would call me when she got down there and she did, then she said she’d call me when she got ready to come back and I said, ‘OK, fine,’ but that never happened.”
Sandra was a mother of three, and never known to disappear for an extended period of time without telling her grandmother.
“It’s just not like her because if she goes to the store, she says, ‘I’ll be back in an hour’ and she’s back in an hour,” Varner said.
