Mom Said Dad Left in 1961. He Was in Basement All Along

When he was growing up, Michael Carroll's mother told him and his three siblings that their father had walked out one day in 1961 and never returned. But George Carroll was just feet away the entire time, buried more than six feet below the basement of their Long Island home. Authorities say that bones Michael Carroll and his two grown sons found while digging in the basement on Oct. 30 have been identified as George Carroll, whose death is now being treated as a homicide, NBC News reports. The Suffolk County Medical Examiner's office says he suffered blunt-force trauma to the head that fractured his skull, though the injury may been inflicted after his death.

Michael Carroll, who was just eight months old when his father disappeared, bought the house from his mother in the 1980s. She died in 1998. He says that growing up, he was told not to ask about his father, though there were multiple family rumors—including one that George Carroll had been buried in the basement of the Lake Grove home, the Washington Post reports. Michael Carroll says he has an idea who might have killed his father—who was never reported missing—but anybody involved is long dead, ABC7 reports. He says he would like his father, a Korean War veteran, to be buried at Calverton National Cemetery. " I want him to be a soldier," he says. "I want him to get what he needs." (The body of another long-missing person was recently found in another Long Island basement.)