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Sheriff Howard Sills of Putnam County told The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution that Gary Jones’ body was found on Sunday
afternoon in about 45 feet (13 meters) of water on the popular
tourist lake southeast of Atlanta.
The discovery was made not far from where the body of Jones’
fiancee, Spelman College instructor Joycelyn Wilson, was found a
day after the two went missing on Feb. 8, the newspaper
reported. It comes a month to the day that Wilson’s body was
recovered in the vicinity of where Jones’ empty two-seater
fishing boat and his sneakers were found floating.
Sills said Jones’ body was found by Wisconsin
search-and-recovery expert Keith Cormican, who was brought in by
Jones’ family over the weekend and used sophisticated underwater
sonar in his effort, the newspaper reported.
Jones was a teacher and track and field coach at the Westminster
Schools, an exclusive Atlanta private school. The empty boat was
discovered circling in the water, triggering an intensive search
of the lake.
The sheriff’s office said previously that it had obtained video
of Wilson and Jones launching their small boat from a marina.
Authorities said at the time that they had been staying at a
hotel on the lake, about 85 miles (135 kilometers) southeast of
Atlanta.
The area where the body was found is about 3 miles (nearly 5
kilometers) northwest of a dam that separates Lake Oconee from
neighboring Lake Sinclair just to the south. Underwater timber
still stands from when the Oconee River basin was flooded to
build the lake nearly half a century ago.
Previous searches involved a trained cadaver dog, government
vessels and private boats, a helicopter and underwater sonar to
probe parts of the lake as deep as 80 feet (24 meters).
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