Remains found by kayakers in Florida in 2024 have been identified as a missing New York woman who disappeared more than 40 years ago.
DNA testing confirmed that the remains belonged to 23-year-old Rose Marie Gayhart, the Cape Coral Police Department said in a press release Friday.
The remains were stumbled upon by kayakers in a canal in northeast Cape Coral in May 2024.
“In May of 2026, the Cape Coral Police Department Violent Crimes Unit received confirmation that the remains belonged to Gayhart,” police said, adding that the District 21 Medical Examiner’s Office helped with the investigation.
“The Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in New York played an integral role and secured the familial DNA used to confirm the identity of the remains.”
Gayhart was reported missing by her parents in Dansville, New York, in March 1985. At the time, she had been living and working in the Cape Coral and North Fort Myers area, police said.
“For more than forty years, Rose Marie Gayhart’s family has carried the weight of not knowing what happened to her. While this identification brings long-awaited answers, it also strengthens our resolve,” Cape Coral Police Chief Anthony Sizemore said.
Gayhart’s sister, Laurie Travis, said she spent decades searching for answers about what happened to her missing sister — and never gave up hope that she would find them.
“I mean, there’s always that wondering, where are you? Where are you?” Travis said in a 2017 interview with WINK.
At the time of her disappearance, Gayhart was working at a Cape Coral restaurant once known as Big Howie’s Hot Dogs.
Months before she vanished, she had moved to a trailer park in North Fort Myers on Christmas Day 1984 from New York with her boyfriend and his mother, her sister said.
Travis said that neighbors of where her sister was staying believed she was murdered.
“I think she was murdered, the neighbors were all saying when they did the investigation,” Travis told the outlet.
“Also, there was a lot of crashing and banging and fighting going on at the trailer park all the time.”
Some neighbors also believed Gayhart was pregnant and trying to go home — but her boyfriend refused to let her leave, Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers reported, according to WINK.
Others believed the boyfriend’s mother had her own reasons for wanting Gayhart gone.
“My mother got a letter from his mom, stated that she got the bus ticket for her [Gayhart] and everything, that she was hanging in bars and she was no good and this and that and she was sending her back to my mother and then she never came back,” Travis told WINK.
With the remains now identified as Gayhart’s, the case is considered an active homicide investigation, police said.
“No matter how much time passes, even after four decades, our investigations do not stop, and our pursuit of justice does not end,” Sizemore said.
“This is now considered an active homicide investigation, and we are committed to following every lead.”
Anyone with information on Gayhart’s case is urged to call the Cape Coral Police Department at 239-574-3223.
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