For nearly 15 years, the waters off Cedar Beach in Mount Sinai held a secret. This October, that silence was broken.
On a quiet Monday evening, a team of volunteer divers from Adventures with Purpose and Explorers with a Mission scanned the harbor near the boat ramp using side-scan sonar. What they found wasn’t driftwood or debris—it was a submerged PT Cruiser, coated in algae and resting in 19 feet of water, just 55 yards from shore
Inside the vehicle: human remains.
By Tuesday, Suffolk County Police confirmed what many had feared and hoped for—closure. The remains belonged to Robert Long, a 62-year-old man from Miller Place who vanished in December 2010 after a routine drive to a local liquor store. His disappearance had haunted the community, entered into national missing persons databases, and left a family without answers.
The discovery was made possible not by official agencies, but by civilian divers—people who travel the country to help solve cold cases. Their work here in Mount Sinai turned sonar blips into resolution. The vehicle was hoisted from the water by Murphy’s Marine Services, and the case is now in the hands of the Suffolk County Homicide Squad and the Medical Examiner’s Office.
🕯️ What This Means for Our Community
Cedar Beach is a place of sunsets and summer memories. But this month, it became a place of reckoning. The discovery reminds us that even in quiet towns, stories linger beneath the surface—waiting to be heard, waiting to be honored.
