Human remains found in Florida have been identified as an Upstate New York woman who was reported missing by her parents 41 years ago.
According to the Cape Coral Police Department, the remains were discovered in May 2024 by kayakers in a canal in Cape Coral, Florida. Two years later, the department’s Violent Crimes Unit used DNA to confirm the remains belonged to Rose Marie Gayhart.
Gayhart, of Dansville, N.Y., was 23 years old when she disappeared in 1985. She was known to be living and working in the Cape Coral/North Ft Myers area at the time, cops said.
Gayhart’s sister, Laurie Travis, told WINK in 2017 that Gayhart moved to a trailer park in North Fort Myers on Christmas Day in 1984. She was living with her boyfriend and his mother while working at a restaurant known as Big Howie’s Hot Dogs, Travis said.
“For more than forty years, Rose Marie Gayhart’s family has carried the weight of not knowing what happened to her. While this identification brings long-awaited answers, it also strengthens our resolve. No matter how much time passes, even after four decades, our investigations do not stop, and our pursuit of justice does not end,” Cape Coral Police Chief Anthony Sizemore said in a statement. “This is now considered an active homicide investigation, and we are committed to following every lead. We are deeply grateful to our law enforcement partners and the Medical Examiner’s Office for helping us reach this point, and we ask anyone with information to come forward so we can help bring accountability and closure to this case and to the family.”
The Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in New York played an integral role and secured the familial DNA used to confirm the identity of the remains, according to a press release Friday.
The case is an open homicide investigation. Additional details, including a cause of death, have not been disclosed.
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Neighbors believed Gayhart was murdered, Travis told WINK in 2017. Some witnesses believed Gayhart was pregnant and wanted to go home but her boyfriend would not let her leave; others suspected wrongdoing by the boyfriend’s mother.
“She was really happy, she was really happy. She wanted me to come down and visit her, seemed like everything was good. Then within two weeks everything went sour,” Travis said.
Anyone with information about the case is asked to call the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office at (585) 243-7100, email Investigator James Merrick at jamesmerrick@livingstoncountyny.gov, or contact the Cape Coral Police Department at 239-574-3223.
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