After a week of searching there is still no sign of a New Jersey
couple who rode off on their ATVs and vanished...
Their mail is being delivered but Gary and Lorraine Parker still aren't here to get it...
Extensive and exhaustive searches over two days last week turned up no sign of The Parkers.
At this point in time we do have more questions and answers.
Police say the last time anyone saw the couple was on Wednesday November 17th.
A neighbor spoke with them the following Sunday.
One of their daughters reported them missing late the next day which was a week ago.
One of the couple's ATV quads found with a shotgun attached to it near the back of their property.
Police tell me they found the couple's cell phones and credit cards inside their house.
They were last used on Sunday November 21st.
Which was also the last time anyone heard from The Parkers.
Some more breaking news right now police confirming they found the bodies of a
husband and wife who disappeared from their home in Ocean County.
NBC 10 Jersey Shore Bureau reporter Ted Greenberg is joining us live near that
scene in Stafford Township with what was discovered today, Ted?
Yeah certainly a sad outcome here in Stafford Township this afternoon, Jim.
Since we last talked with you at four o'clock,
law enforcement authorities have left the area of the couple's home.
There's still many unanswered questions about what happened to them and how they died.
But police say there are no signs of Foul Play!
The couple was reported missing just over a week ago...
Massive searches on the ground over two days last week turned up no sign of The Parkers.
But authorities did find a quad belonging to them.
Police say the bodies were discovered in that same area.
Seems funny they found them today.
They walked shoulder to shoulder with bloodhounds
and didn't find him and all of a sudden they're here today
They say there were no obvious signs of trauma...
The Pine Barrens, New Jersey is the largest remaining example of the Atlantic coastal pine
barrens ecosystem, stretching across more than seven counties of New Jersey, United States.
The Pine Barrens remains mostly rural and undisturbed despite its proximity to the
sprawling metropolitan cities of Philadelphia and New York City - In the center of the very
densely populated Boston-Washington Corridor on the Eastern Seaboard.
The heavily traveled Garden State Parkway and Atlantic City Expressway
transverse sections of the eastern and southern Pine Barrens, respectively.
The protected wilderness covers more than one million acres of land.
The Pine Barrens or Pines as it’s sometimes called is also a place of much local legend and lore.
From alleged mob dumping sites to the Jersey Devil himself, there is so much
mystery in this area of the Garden State, we could never know the truth of it all.
Today we are going to discuss one more mystery in a long line of many.
One that, admittedly, may never be solved.
The circumstances surrounding the disappearance and death of a
couple local to this area are very strange indeed.
Here is what we know so far.
Here is the story of the strange and suspicious
disappearance and death of Gary and Lorraine Parker.
On November 23rd, 2021 Gary and Lorraine Parker’s daughter sent
out a Facebook message and notified the local authorities that her parents were missing.
The couple were residents of Warren Grove which is a small,
unincorporated community located within the Pine Barrens, 37 miles north of Atlantic City.
It seemed that Gary, 67 and his wife Lorraine, 60, decided to take a trip
on their all-terrain vehicle into the Pine Barrens which is located right near their home.
This is something they did often and wasn’t unusual in and of itself.
What happened next though was very strange.
Gary and Lorraine’s daughter Lindsay posted on Facebook that her parents
went missing at 12:41 in the morning on the 17th.
She later wrote:
“My parents’ quad has been found along with my father’s shotgun which was strapped to it...
Still no sign of either of my parents....
Their quad was found stuck in a field not far
from their home that my dad has used for years to bait deer...
Trail cam footage has nothing after footage captured last week.”
There was no exact date released as to when the couple actually
went missing aside from the fact that Lorraine was last seen on the 17th.
Capt. James Vaughn, of the Stafford police, said he didn’t believe the couple went hunting,
noting that in the rural community “many people have shotguns readily available.”
Cpt. Vaughn also said that even if the couple was out in the elements for a few nights,
he was “hopeful” they could survive because, “They are both avid outdoors people.”
When the two-day manhunt — which included more than 100 searchers, police dogs,
ATVs, drones, and air support — failed to find the couple, Stafford police turned
the search over to its detectives and the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office.
The couple’s disappearance is somewhat chilling and only lends
to the terrifying mystique of the land itself.
The Stafford police hadn’t given up their search even though they had officially handed it over.
It was the same drone that had been used previously in
the searches that eventually found the couple.
Cpt. Vaughn stated about the discovery of the couple’s bodies,
"The only way we were able to find them was by using a drone.”
He was describing the density of the woods in that area. "We did have people in that area,
but I can tell you, it's the thickest part of the Pine Barrens you're going to find."
The couple’s remains were found at around 1pm the following Tuesday
after they had been reported as missing by their daughter Lindsay.
Cpt. Vaughn himself had taken part in the grid search
and he said there were wooded areas that were virtually impassable.
He stated, “There were times I couldn't see six inches in front of my face. And
there were times I had to crawl underneath things to get through the brush," he said.
"Again, without the use of a drone, it was nearly impossible. You could have walked by
them and not seen them unless you were directly looking. It was- it was very thick, very dense."
The question still remains though,
what were the couple doing in this dense and virtually impassable part of the Pine Barrens?
They were found about 200 to 250 yards from their home and about 70 yards from
the ATV they are believed to have driven into the woods.
The search party was estimated to have traversed 800 to 1,000 acres, Cpt. Vaughn said,
citing the New Jersey State Police Missing Persons Unit.
A week earlier, and the details are a bit sketchy here,
a small amount of methamphetamine was found on the Parker's property.
A law enforcement raid of a suspected meth lab approximately two miles away from the
Parker residence fueled online sleuths and conspiracy theorists everywhere.
The speculation grew so wildly out of hand that the Stafford police felt compelled to write a
statement in a news release regarding the investigation into the meth lab.
It stated: “This investigation (meaning the meth lab raid) was not related to the
missing person’s investigation involving Gary and Lorraine Parker of Warren Grove.”
While authorities said they do not suspect foul play,
they are being tight-lipped as to what they do think occurred.
They said they believe the most likely scenario is that one of the pair had some sort of medical
emergency and the other was unwilling to leave them there to go and get help.
There are plenty of flaws with this theory though. How did they both end up dying then?
Why were they in such a deep and dense, relatively unpassable part of the Pine Barrens?
The couple would go out there often and presumably knew which areas were
for hiking and riding, walking and recreation, and which areas weren’t.
Why had they left their ATV in the first place?
The police stated in their initial report upon finding the off-road
vehicle that it didn’t seem as though it had crashed and wasn’t damaged in any way.
This, as with everything else, only lends more mystery to this already very strange case.
If they didn’t have an accident then why leave their vehicle?
Gary and Lorraine were found lying together some distance from their all-terrain vehicle.
Though the injuries weren't listed or relayed to the public.
It was reported that they were “heavily injured” from sharp vegetation in the underbrush.
Of this implausible mystery, Cpt. James Vaughn stated:
"I don't think we're ever going to know. I mean,
there wasn't an ATV crash per se, but why they got off and why they ended up
in the thicket the way they did far from their house, we're never going to know."
So what do you think happened?
Be sure to let us know in the comments below!
But please, keep it friendly and respectful!
And I'll see you in the next video!