Veteran whose remains were found under Lake Grove basement laid to rest

George Carroll’s children laid the remains of the Korean War veteran to rest Friday in Calverton National Cemetery — and buried some of the demons that haunted them ever since the Lake Grove dad mysteriously disappeared in 1963. 

About 100 people attended a private memorial ceremony Friday for George Carroll, nearly a year after his grandsons Michael Carroll Jr. and Christopher Carroll discovered his skeleton under the basement of the family’s Lake Grove home on Oct. 30, 2018. Family and friends then gathered at Calverton National Ceremony for a brief ceremony honoring George Carroll’s service in the Army during the Korean War. 

“This has been the greatest day of closure for us,” said Steven Carroll, who was 6 years old when his father disappeared. “The outpouring of love we have experienced today is just incredible.” 

Three of Carroll’s four children, as well most of his 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, attended Friday’s service. 

Carroll’s children, who consulted with psychics and paranormal phenomena investigators to learn what happened to their father, said they were scarred by feelings of abandonment and loss ever since their father disappeared, but the discovery of his remains have helped heal those wounds. His remains will be placed in a columbarium — a wall that is used to store cremated remains — with a plaque that will say, “I never left.” 

“This is a love story,” said George Carroll’s oldest child, Jean Carroll Kennedy, who was 10 when her father disappeared. “It’s a love story between children and their father.” 

Michael Carroll, a 2-year-old toddler when his father vanished, said it was a struggle to locate the proper documents required for interment at Calverton. “We had to recreate his life,” Michael Carroll said, “but we got to know my dad a little better through the process.” 

The family learned a little more Friday: A man who said he served with George Carroll in Korea also attended the service, sharing stories and photos — including a black-and-white picture of Marilyn Monroe as she visited the troops. The man left without speaking to reporters. 

George Carroll was 30 when he vanished about 56 years ago, according to his family. Suffolk County police said nobody, including his wife, Dorothy, ever filed a missing person report. Dorothy Carroll, who died at the age of 64 in 1998, told her children their father went out one day and never came back. Some friends and relatives speculated, the family said, that he left his family to return to a girlfriend in Korea. Others had suggested he had met a more nefarious fate — and may have been buried somewhere in the Olive Street home. 

Ground-penetrating radar indicated a disturbance in the ground 5 or 6 feet below the surface. Michael Carroll’s sons, Michael Jr. and Christopher, found their grandfather’s bones near that spot. 

Suffolk County Medical Examiner Michael Caplan ruled last year that trauma to the head was the cause of death.

Suffolk police said investigators would have wanted to question Richard Darress Sr., a handyman who was working on the property when George Carroll disappeared. Darress, who died last year, later married Dorothy and the couple had a son, who remains close to his half-brothers and sisters.

“I’m happy for them, they needed this closure,” Richard Darress Jr. said at Friday’s ceremony. 

Authorities said they may never be able to determine how George Carroll died, but his family seemed more interested Friday in celebrating his life than solving the mystery. 

“It is such an honor to find my grandfather, so he could be laid to rest,” Michael Carroll Jr. said. “My father and his family needed closure. They needed to find out what happened to their father.”