Diving with a Grim Purpose

If you're looking to do something useful with your diving, look no farther than the rivers and lakes near your home. In fact, many divers have taken to searching for missing people.

In 2018, Oregon scuba diver Jared Leisek started removing debris from local rivers, but he soon progressed from finding unwanted iPhones, old car tires, and unwanted domestic appliances to recovering bodies of missing persons. He's now part of a group of volunteers who call themselves Adventures with a Purpose. In October, they pulled out the remains of a pregnant woman and her 22-month-old daughter, along with their submerged vehicle, who went missing in 1998.

They got started by posting information about their less gruesome finds on YouTube, but soon the families of people who had gone missing reached out. One of the first contacts was about Nathan Asby, a 22-year-old Missourian who went missing in 2019. Investigators knew his truck was in the Missouri River, but at the time, investigators were unable to deploy divers because of the depth and strong current.

Equipped with lifting bags sufficient to raise a vehicle, the Adventurers with a Purpose had Asby's body and truck on land within a day. Since then, they've recovered the remains of 15 other missing persons.

In late November, another diving body hunter, Jeremy Beau Sides, who has made it his mission to find missing people, located a vehicle and the bodies of two teens who disappeared 21 years ago in rural Tennessee. Sides, who publishes his hunts on YouTube with the title Exploring with the Nug, said he stumbled upon the cold case while looking through a missing person database. "When I looked at the town where they were last seen, I saw that a big river, the Calfkiller, ran through it. That just told me to go." While he was unsuccessful on his first day of diving, the local sheriff suggested another site to search, and it was there he found the car and bodies. Sides, a 42-year-old father of two from Georgia, says he hopes his effort could help bring some peace to the missing teens' families. "Ultimately, I just want to help," he said.