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in: New York, New Jersey, 1974,
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John DeMars

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John demars1

John DeMars

Real Name: John A. DeMars
Nicknames: No known nicknames
Location: Manhattan, New York
Date: December 20, 1974

Bio[]

Occupation: Assistant Corporate Loan Officer
Date of Birth: 1944
Height: 6'3"
Weight: 210 lbs.
Marital Status: Married
Characteristics: White male with dark blond hair (slightly gray at the temples) and brown eyes. He has an appendix scar and a false front tooth. He was wearing a dark gray business suit, white shirt, and gray tweed topcoat. He was carrying a brown plastic briefcase.

Case[]

Details: Thirty-year-old John DeMars of Nutley, New Jersey, was happily married with two young sons. He had worked for five years as the assistant corporate loan officer at the Canal Street branch of the Chemical Bank of New York. He was considered one of the most highly regarded and honest officers.
John graduated from Rutgers University in 1966 and served in Vietnam as a first lieutenant in U.S. Army Intelligence. He was also a member of the Knights of Columbus. Friends and family described him as warm, moral, and responsible.
On the morning of Friday, December 20, 1974, John called his wife, Elaine, and told her that he was going to have lunch with two friends and would be leaving work early. At lunch, he told his friends he was going bowling that night. At 4:45pm, he left his Manhattan office, telling his secretary that he was going home to play with his children.
John left the office with a bank teller. At around 5pm, the two parted ways as John walked towards the Port Authority Terminal at the World Trade Center. He normally took a PATH train to Hoboken and then took the 5:20pm Erie-Lackawanna train to the Delawanna Station in Clifton, New Jersey, where he parked his car.
John habitually called Elaine if he was going to be even five minutes late. But on this day, when his train stopped in Clifton, he was not on board. He had simply vanished. When he did not return home that evening, his family called the police. Detectives checked hospitals, morgues, and arrest reports. However, they could find no trace of him.
A few days later, a cab driver came forward, claiming he drove someone matching John's description to Newark International Airport on the night John disappeared. However, he was not certain the man was John, as the man's clothes did not match what John was wearing.
According to Detective Sal Lubertazzi of the Nutley Police Department, detectives first theorized that John had embezzled money. However, they did not find anything wrong with the bank. They then theorized that he may have run off with another woman. But they found out that that was not true either.
Detectives determined John was a model husband and father with a perfect work record. He had no serious debt. He had little cash on him when he disappeared. And his credit cards had not been used since then.
Elaine wondered if John had "seen something" that made him get off the train. She believed he was "not in control of himself" that afternoon. His family theorized that he was suffering from amnesia, possibly related to his military service.
When the police were unable to find any trace of John, Elaine asked psychic Dorothy Allison to help. Detective Lubertazzi went to see Dorothy. He only told her he was looking for an adult male who had been missing for more than twenty-four hours.
Dorothy's first words to Detective Lubertazzi were, "He drowned." She told him that John had fallen off the train and ended up in a river. Detective Lubertazzi could not understand how that could have happened. But she was insistent that that was what happened.
Detective Lubertazzi asked Dorothy if she could give him any other clues as to John's whereabouts. She said she saw a burned-out building, "two guys", an ice pond, a row of tires, a little park where children go down a hill on their sleds, a fire engine that children play on, and the numbers 166 and 222.
Dorothy saw John in the water and said the area smelled like fish. Finally, she saw a bow and an arrow. At first, Detective Lubertazzi thought she was crazy. He searched various places based on her clues but was unable to find John.
Suspects: None known
Extra Notes:

  • This case first aired on the May 6, 1988 Special #6 episode of Unsolved Mysteries focusing on psychic Dorothy Allison.
  • It was solved prior to the broadcast.
  • Some sources state: John was thirty-six; his last name was spelled "De Mars"; he was a commercial accounts manager; his office was on Church Street; he normally got off the train in Nutley; and Dorothy said she believed he had taken the wrong train and might be found in the Hudson River around January 30.
  • The train conductor initially told the police that after the train left Lyndhurst station, John asked them to stop and let him off. This led the police to believe that John vanished voluntarily. However, a few weeks later, it was determined that the man who asked for the train to be stopped was not John.

Results: Solved - On February 22, 1975, two months after John's disappearance, a father and his teenage son went target shooting with a bow and arrow on a bluff overlooking the Passaic River near Bergen Avenue in Kearny, New Jersey. One of the arrows missed the target and landed a few feet from John's decomposed body, which was floating face down in the river. He was fully clothed, his watch was on his wrist, and his wallet and other personal items were in his pockets. He was identified through fingerprints.
John's body was found on February 22; Dorothy had mentioned the number 222. Next to the archery range was a Two Guys discount store. On the other side of the river was a burned-out factory. Nearby was a park where rows of tires had been arranged to make a sled run. And a nearby river barge had the number "166" on it.
The question remained: how did John, a train passenger, end up in the Passaic River? The police theorize that he dozed off on the way home. At 5:40pm, the train made an unscheduled stop on the Passaic River Railroad Bridge near Lyndhurst, New Jersey. The conductor opened the doors to let another passenger off the back of the train. John, still half asleep, thought he had reached his station. He stepped out into space and fell into the river below.
It was noted that there were no lights on the bridge, and there was less than two feet between the train and the edge of the bridge. Another passenger said he had almost stepped off the train until he realized there was nothing in front of him. He said there was no warning given to tell them not to approach the doors.
In May 1975, John's death was ruled an accidental drowning. Detective Lubertazzi said he felt chills go up and down his spine when he realized that everything Dorothy had said about the case had come true. He had previously been skeptical of her but now believes she is legitimate.
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