LAKE OCONEE, Ga. — It’s been one week since Gary Jones and Joycelyn Wilson took a boat out onto Lake Oconee, but never returned.
Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills says this is more than just a drowning investigation.
“There are some peculiarities about all of it, which I’m not going to elaborate on at this time,” Sheriff Sills told Channel 2′s Bryan Mims.
He added that the homicide division is investigating, which is standard practice for unexplained deaths.
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Mims joined dive teams at Lake Oconee on Saturday morning where they continued searching for the beloved teacher and track coach.
They say the chilly conditions are playing the largest role in slowing down the search.
“The biggest thing that we’re dealing with at this lake is the weather, and what I mean by that is the temperature and the rain and having to work in these conditions. The water temperature on the surface is 53 degrees. Down at the bottom, it’s 42 degrees,” Richard Pickering, team leader with nonprofit Emergency Dive Response Team, explained.
The couple went boating on Saturday, but crews only found their empty boat circling in the water, leading witnesses to believe something bad had happened to them.
Wilson’s body was recovered from the lake on Sunday, but crews are still searching for Jones’ body.
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Earlier this week, crews found Jones’ shoes in the lake, but have still not been able to recover his body.
“There are other matters here we are investigating,” Sills said on Friday. “I’m not prepared to say this is a murder investigation yet, I’m not there. We’re doing other things that are more than we would do, if we had an outright drowning and a body came up.”
Sills added that Jones’ shoes raised some questions.
“The shoes were not laced or tied up tight. There’s no evidence on the shoes they reached the shore. There’s no red mud on the shoes, there’s not debris on the shoes,” he said.
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