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After appealing to the public, OPP have located a family member of one of two men who went missing while fishing in Lake Huron nearly 60 years ago, police say.
Huron County OPP made a public appeal Oct. 2 for biological family members of Neil Wormsbecker, 29, and Hank Englebertus Halff, 30, to contact them.
The two Stratford residents left Goderich on Oct. 22, 1967, to go fishing and never returned.
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Investigators are seeking biological relatives of the missing men so they can obtain DNA samples and then search for a possible match with other samples stored in the police database that also includes samples of human remains found in Lake Huron, the fourth-largest fresh-water lake in the world.
OPP have tracked down a relative of Halff, police said Monday.
“We’ve got half the equation figured out,” OPP Const. Craig Soldan said.
The family member lives in Ontario but Soldan said he couldn’t discuss details because the information is confidential.
The focus of the investigation has turned to finding a relative of Wormsbecker, Soldan said.
“We just don’t have enough to track down anyone for Mr. Wormsbecker, and that’s why we want to put that update out there just to kind of refresh people’s memory and say, ‘Listen, thank you. We’ve got one, but we still need the other,’” Soldan said.
Wormsbecker and Halff left for a Sunday cruise at 8 a.m. on Oct. 22, 1967, and were expected back by 1 p.m., the Stratford Beacon Herald reported at the time. The boat, registered to Wormsbecker, was found 3.2 kilometres from shore that evening. The newspaper referenced the men’s wives as saying they were both good swimmers and had life-jackets.
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