Cape Coral police have identified remains found in a canal by kayakers in 2024 as Rose Marie Gayhart, missing since 1985, and the department says the case is now an open homicide investigation

Money & World

The Editorial Team · July 26, 2026

A single water droplet rebounding from a dark blue-grey water surface, surrounded by concentric ripples.

Photo: Vilnis Husko / Pexels

What it changes

The practical change for Cape Coral is that a case which sat open for forty years now has a name attached to it, and with the name comes a different kind of request to the public. While Gayhart was an unidentified set of remains, there was nothing specific to ask anyone. Now the department is investigating the death of a named 23-year-old who, according to WINK News, was last seen in March 1985 at the restaurant where she worked, then known as Big Howie's Hot Dogs on Southeast 47th Terrace. That gives long-time residents a concrete place, a workplace and a date to think back to, which is the entire reason the department is asking for information rather than simply announcing a closure. Anyone who lived in Cape Coral in the mid-1980s is now a potential witness in a way they were not last week. The second thing that changed is the legal character of the case. The department describes it as an open homicide investigation, which is a change from a missing-person file and means the Violent Crimes Unit is working it as a death investigation. It is worth being exact about what that does and does not mean. A homicide investigation is the classification police have given the case; it is not an accusation against anyone. No suspect has been named, no one has been charged, and no cause of death has been made public, so there is no allegation here attached to any person, and readers should not read one into it. The third point is about how the identification actually happened, because it is the part most likely to matter to other families. The remains surfaced in May 2024 when kayakers came across them in a canal in the northeast of the city. The confirmation did not arrive until May 2026, two years later, and it came through familial DNA secured by the Livingston County Sheriff's Office in New York and confirmed by the District 21 Medical Examiner's Office. That is a cross-state chain involving a New York agency, a Florida medical examiner and three Florida law enforcement and public works agencies at the excavation, and it took two years after recovery. For anyone with a decades-old missing relative, the useful and unglamorous fact is that these identifications are now being made, and that they run through relatives' DNA rather than through anything recoverable at the scene.

The Cape Coral Police Department said on Friday, July 24, that human remains recovered from a canal in the northeast of the city have been identified as Rose Marie Gayhart, who was 23 years old when she went missing in March 1985. The department published the identification in its own release, and WINK News and WGCU reported it locally.

According to the department, kayakers found the remains in a Cape Coral canal in May 2024. Confirmation of the identity did not come until May 2026, when the District 21 Medical Examiner's Office confirmed the match to the department's Violent Crimes Unit. The department credited the Livingston County Sheriff's Office in New York with securing the familial DNA that made the identification possible. The Cape Coral Department of Public Works, the Lee County Sheriff's Office and the Broward County Sheriff's Office assisted with the excavation of the area where the remains were located.

Chief Anthony Sizemore, in the department's release, said that for more than forty years Rose Marie Gayhart's family has carried the weight of not knowing what happened to her, and pointed to the agency's continuing commitment to the case.

WINK News reported that Gayhart disappeared in March 1985 from the Cape Coral and North Fort Myers area, and that she was last seen at the restaurant where she worked, then known as Big Howie's Hot Dogs on Southeast 47th Terrace in Cape Coral.

The department says the case is an open homicide investigation and has asked anyone with information to contact it. That classification is the department's own. No cause of death has been released, no suspect has been named, and no one has been accused or charged in connection with Gayhart's death. Nothing in the department's release attributes conduct to any person.

This brief credits WINK News and WGCU for the local reporting and links the Cape Coral Police Department release as the primary source. The identification, the timeline, the assisting agencies, the case classification and the chief's statement come from that release; the detail about where Gayhart was last seen is attributed to WINK News, which reported it. One detail carried in a separate headline elsewhere, placing a multi-day excavation off Kismet Parkway, does not appear in the department's release or in the WINK account and is therefore not stated here.

Cape Coral police have identified remains found in a canal by kayakers in 2024 as Rose Marie Gayhart, missing since 1985, and the department says the case is now an open homicide investigation

Cape Coral approved two community development districts covering 1,327 acres, with petitioners estimating $292 million of infrastructure to be financed by assessments

The man charged over the I-75 standoff in Lee County had his first court appearance from a hospital bed, and the judge set no bond

Cape Coral police say a bank-impersonation scheme rerouted victims' debit cards to Cape Coral addresses, and have arrested a 31-year-old on identity theft and grand theft charges