Ben McDaniel

Case background and investigation

Ben McDaniel, a 30-year-old from the Memphis suburb of Collierville, Tennessee, had been living at his parents' property in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, for several months in 2010. According to the Tampa Bay Times, his parents had suggested the stay after a difficult period in which his construction business failed, his marriage ended and his younger brother Paul died in 2008. A diver since the age of 15, he became a regular at Vortex Spring, a commercial dive park north of Ponce de Leon in Holmes County.

The spring contains a cave whose deeper section lies behind a locked gate; the dive shop released the key only to divers with cave certification, which McDaniel did not hold. The Tampa Bay Times reported that on Wednesday, August 18, 2010, he made a daytime dive, spent the afternoon testing equipment and writing in his dive log, and entered the water again around dusk. Two employees, Eduardo Taran and Chuck Cronin, saw him descending toward the cave mouth with his lights on. Nobody is known to have seen him afterwards.

His pickup truck remained in the parking lot, and on Friday, August 20, Taran called the Holmes County Sheriff's Office. Deputies found McDaniel's wallet, containing about $1,100, along with a detailed dive log and a map he had drawn of the cave. Recovery divers found two decompression tanks belonging to him near the cave. Cave recovery specialist Edd Sorenson told reporters he went about 1,700 feet into the system, beyond the mapped section, and saw no scrape marks, disturbed sediment or other indication that a diver of McDaniel's size had passed through. Steve Keene, who had mapped the cave in 2003, made seven dives for the family with the same result.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, cadaver dogs reacted to the water, but about 30 water samples taken over several months showed no bacterial change consistent with decomposition, and searches of the surrounding woods and downstream waterways found nothing. Taran and Cronin both passed polygraph examinations. Capt. Harry Hamilton of the sheriff's office said monitoring of McDaniel's bank, phone and online accounts showed no activity, and that investigators had no indication he had resurfaced.

McDaniel's parents, Shelby and Patty McDaniel, offered a reward that grew from $10,000 to $30,000. The Commercial Appeal reported that they withdrew it in 2012 after diver Larry Higginbotham of Biloxi, Mississippi, drowned in the cave; his family said he had not been looking for McDaniel, though some cave divers doubted that. A search by cadaver dogs on land that year also found nothing.

Divers, investigators and the family have discussed several possibilities: that his remains lie in an unreached part of the cave, that he left voluntarily, or that he met with foul play. None has been supported by evidence, and no one has been charged with any offence. His parents have rejected the idea that he chose to disappear. Wikipedia states that Florida issued the family a death certificate in 2013. He has never been found.