Jeff Klee--missing/1977--body found/2008--CORAL SPRINGS, Fla.

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Police Identify Body Found Inside Van Pulled From Canal
Owner Of Van Reported Missing Decades Agohttp://www.nbc6.net/headlinesonly/15720935/detail.html
UPDATED: 9:12 am EDT March 28, 2008

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. -- A cleanup at a South Florida canal turned into a forensic investigation after a body was found inside a car pulled from the water.

Police have been conducting a cleanup effort to pull cars from a Coral Springs canal for two days. On Wednesday, authorities found a 1970s-era van with human remains inside.
"It is not a full skeleton right now," said Sgt. Joe McHugh of the Coral Springs Police Department. "They're still looking for additional bones inside the vehicle but several bones were discovered.

Police revealed the identity of the man whose bones were found.

Jeffrey Walter Klee had been missing for more than 30 years. He would've been 49 years old.

Klee went missing in June of 1977 when he was 18 years old.

His friend was at the scene near the Coral Springs canal where the van was discovered.

"When he disappeared, a lot of people were wondering what happened to him," Klee's friend said. "It really always stuck with me. What the hell happened to Jeff Klee? I never thought he'd be in our own back yard."

Klee's sister is a sergeant at the Coral Springs Police Department.

"He was reported missing through the city of Coral Springs," McHugh previously said. "However, we're not going to disclose what year he was reported missing, only due to the fact is we're not going to take out foul play at this point. And because it is an ongoing investigation, we don't want to alert the suspect that we did actually locate the van with the person inside."

McHugh said Klee's death could have been accidental or by homicide.

"We're not going to rule anything out at this point until the medical examiner made a determination on the cause of death," he said.

Forensic investigators are working to put together the puzzle. The cause of death might never be known.

"Obviously, the family wants to know exactly what happened to their loved one," McHugh said. "If the ME cannot determine the cause of death, then they always go with this empty feeling of what exactly happened."

Although police have pulled several cars from the canal, the van with the human remains inside is the only one they have found that could solve a missing persons case.

An anthropologist will extract DNA from the bones found to confirm that the remains belong to Klee.

Anyone who attended Coral Springs High School around 1975 and might have a yearbook picture of Klee should e-mail us at WTVJDesk@nbc.com.

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INFORMATIONAL BOX:

DRIVERS FOUND MOST RECENTLY IN WATERWAYS
Dec. 4, 2007: Sheriff's divers from Broward and Palm Beach counties, searching for stolen and abandoned vehicles, recovered a silver Mercedes-Benz coupe from the bottom of the Hillsboro Canal, near the Broward-Palm Beach county line. Inside the car were the remains of Barry Fish, who was 42 and lived west of Boca Raton when he vanished Nov. 11, 1992.

Feb. 8, 2007: A fisherman found an SUV along Florida's Turnpike in southwest Miami-Dade County. The driver, Jose Miguel Pasquariello, 26, of west Miami-Dade, vanished in July 2006.

March 9, 2006: A Water Management District maintenance crew found a 55-foot semitrailer in a canal along U.S. 27 just south of South Bay. The driver, Kenneth Conceicao, 35, of New Jersey, disappeared Jan. 20, 2006.

OTHERS FOUND IN SOUTH FLORIDA CANALS

Jan. 13, 2006: A pedestrian saw a pickup in the Boynton Canal

off Hagen Ranch Road, west of Boynton Beach. Inside the truck were the bodies of Randy Kolessa, 26, and his girlfriend, Bethannie Bennett, 21.

July 15, 2003: Bridge maintenance divers found a car submerged in a canal in the 3700 block of Northwest 52nd Avenue in Lauderdale Lakes. Inside the car, investigators found Seres Morency, 38, of Pompano Beach. He had been missing since Dec. 15, 2002.

April 9, 2001: Divers working for the South Florida Water Management District found a Mercedes-Benz at the bottom of the C-9 canal that runs along Southwest 148th Avenue in Miramar. The body of John Tammaro, 75, of Pembroke Pines, was inside. The well-known horse trainer was last seen Feb. 25, 2001.

Feb. 22, 2001: Miami-Dade police, on a routine operation to remove cars from an Everglades canal, found the remains of Robert Steward Hall, 50, in a mud-filled car at the bottom of the canal. Hall, who lived on a five-acre estate in the Everglades, disappeared in October 1979.

Feb. 22, 1997: The remains of five teens who disappeared in 1979 from Miami-Dade and Broward counties were found when investigators pulled a van from the Boca Rio canal, west of Boca Raton.

SOURCE: SUN-SENTINEL ARCHIVES
http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100020825&docId=l:767281275&start=1

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Missing St. Amant man, car found in New River Canal

March 29, 2008
State Police discovered that a St. Amant man who had been missing since March 22 was involved in a fatal crash along New River Canal Friday.

The Ascension Parish Coroner's Office pronounced Jody P. Bourgeois, 19, dead at the scene after sustaning fatal injuries, Trooper Johnnie Brown said Saturday.

At 9:01 PM, on Friday, March 28, 2008, troopers began investigating a crash, where a 1995 Nissan Maxima traveled south on Hwy. 935 north of Hwy. 22 and entered a curve in the road. The car left the roadway to the right and began rotating to the left, striking several rocks before rolling over and landing upside down in New River Canal.

As family members were traveling through the parish to retrace Bourgeois' last known movements, they came upon the crash scene, Brown said. A family member entered the canal, confirmed a vehicle was in the water and notified the police. Troopers later confirmed the vehicle to be that of Bourgeois and that Bourgeois was driving at the time of the accident.

http://www.ascensioncitizen.com/articles/2008/03/29/breaking_news/breaking01.txt

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Regarding the above posting, this guy was found not in Florida but in Louisiana just yesterday.  I also remember several recent bodies found in Maine in waterways.........seems an all to frequent occurrence.

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No charges in death of man rolled into canal 30 years ago

CORAL SPRINGS, Florida (CNN) -- Authorities solved a 31-year-old disappearance this year when they found the remains of Jeff Klee, missing since 1977, in a van in a canal.

But prosecutors have announced that no charges would be filed against the man who, authorities say, admits that he put Klee's body in the van three decades earlier.

"Today is a sad day for our family," Klee's sister, Laurel Steele, told reporters Thursday. "It tests my family's faith to its very core."

Klee's remains were found in March during a routine police sweep for stolen vehicles in the C-14 canal in Coral Springs, Florida. The van was in neutral when police discovered it.

DNA confirmed Klee's identity, but authorities say there was not enough evidence to determine how he died -- and whether he had been killed.  Watch Klee's sister react to the decision »

The Broward County State Attorney's Office said the statute of limitations on possible manslaughter charges expired in 1980. As for a more serious charge such as first-degree murder to which statue of limitations would not apply, prosecutors said they don't have any evidence of premeditation or that the death was caused by a criminal act.

Police had long thought Klee's best friend, David Cusanelli, was the last person to see him alive June 21, 1977.

According to a memorandum released Thursday by the Broward County State Attorney's Office, Cusanelli told authorities this July 28 that he put Klee's body inside his black Chevy van after he was dead and that his brother, Carl Cusanelli, helped shove the van into the canal.

But Cusanelli denied involvement in Klee's death, prosecutors said.

Mitch Polay, the defense attorney for the Cusanelli brothers, reiterated that denial.

He says the brothers' statements "were taken out of context, and they were posed as hypotheticals to drum up potential memories of the event."

"My clients, for 31 years, have denied any involvement," Polay told CNN. "They had no involvement with pushing any van into the water, nor did they have any involvement with the death of Jeff Klee."

According to the prosecution memorandum, Cusanelli told police that he and Klee had an argument over a former girlfriend. Cusanelli said Klee began to chase him out at the canal that night, the document alleges.

Cusanelli says that "all he remembers is, he turned around and saw that Jeff had fallen and was on the ground, and his head was split open, and there was a lot of blood," according to the document.

"There was definitely a confrontation that night, which resulted in Jeff Klee's death," lead Detective David Weissman said Thursday.

Cusanelli told police that he ran away from Klee because he was in fear of his life and that he has no idea how Klee fell. Cusanelli concedes that he may have thrown a rock at Klee, according to the prosecution memo.

Cusanelli, according to the memo, says he panicked and put Klee's body inside his van. He then called his brother Carl, who helped push the vehicle into the canal, the memo alleges.

In the state attorney's memorandum, Cusanelli said Klee was bleeding from a serious head wound and was not breathing. He told authorities he would never have put Klee's body into the van and rolled it into the canal if Klee wasn't dead, the memo says.

Carl Cusanelli told police he helped push the van into the canal, the memo says, but denied any knowledge that Klee may have been in the van at the time.

David Cusanelli also told police that he thinks he blocked the whole incident from his memory and that only recently did some details begin to materialize, according to the prosecution memo.

"It's turned their worlds upside down. They are very upset," said Polay, the defense attorney. "Thirty-one years ago, David was best friends with Jeff Klee."

Coral Springs Police Chief Duncan Foster expressed frustration that no charges are being brought.

"Jeff Klee was a loved member of someone's family, and that has no time limits," Foster said. "It's just very, very frustrating for us."

Steele, Klee's sister, said, "Victimized by the loss of Jeff so many years ago, we are victimized once again."

Klee's mother, Florence Klee, clutched a framed photo of her son but did not speak during Thursday's news conference. Klee's father died about two years ago.

Authorities say the case remains open.

The family and the police are asking for the public to help them find any possible evidence of what happened that summer night in 1977 at the canal.

"Justice has been denied," Steele said.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/24/florida.mystery.death/index.html?eref=rss_us

Jeff Klee had been missing since 1977; his remains were found this year.

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January 19, 2010

Lawmakers give initial nod to Jeffrey Klee bill

The sister of Jeffrey Klee, the 18-year-old from Coral Springs who mysteriously disappeared more than 30 years ago, asked lawmakers today to pass a bill named in his honor.

The legislation (SB92 and HB1) would eliminate the statute of limitations on civil wrongful death claims in cases of murder.

Klee disappeared in 1977 but authorities discovered his body in a van at the bottom of a canal and identified the suspect in 2008.

"Unfortunately they'll never see the inside of a courtroom," said Cyndy Klee, now a sergeant at the Coral Springs Police Department, told lawmakers this story before the committee approved the bill unanimously.


Under a state law that was on the books at the time of Klee's death, too much time had passed for prosecutors to pursue a criminal case and the family to file a civil lawsuit.Though the Legislature already has removed the time limit for filing criminal cases in homicides, the limit on civil cases remains at two years.

Similar legislation swiftly passed the House in 2009 but died in the Senate because of its estimated fiscal impact.

http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2010/01/lawmakers-give-initial-nod-to-jeffrey-klee-bill.html