Independent dive team locates Ethan Kazmerzak’s vehicle after seven years of unanswered questions

On an otherwise quiet Mon-day afternoon, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office received a call with information they had been seeking for seven years.

Oregon-based diver and YouTube personality Jared Leisek, a founder of Adventures with Purpose, was on the other side of the phone to deliver news regarding the disappearance of Hampton resident Ethan Kazmerzak.

“We have located Ethan’s vehicle,” said Leisek to the sheriff’s office last Monday. “We have identified the vehicle as a Volkswagen Jetta with license plate number AUZ 382.”

Kazmerzak, 22 at the time, was last seen in the early morning hours of Sept. 15, 2013, leaving a party at a gravel pit northwest of town in a vehicle that matched the description Leisek relayed to the sheriff’s office. A call from his phone was tracked to a location near the intersection of Olive Avenue and 190th Street at 12:15 a.m. on Sept. 15.

Leisek, along with fellow Adventures with Purpose div-er Sam Ginn, on Monday, Oct. 26 located Kazermak’s 2006 Volkswagen Jetta in pond in a field off of Nettle Avenue northwest of Hamp-ton, near one of the last locations Kazmerzak was seen that night.

Law enforcement recovered the vehicle last Tuesday and located remains inside, but official identification had not been made at the Chronicle’s press deadline this week.

AN OVERDUE DISCOV-ERY

Based out of the Pacific Northwest, Adventures with Purpose, which has a YouTube following of more than half a million subscribers, travels the country in hopes of providing answers to cold cases believed to involve water. The crew is currently on a cross-country tour to help communities and families in similar situations receive answers and learned about Kazmerzak’s story through the channel’s viewers. To date, Adventures with Purpose has helped solve nearly half a dozen cold cases.

The discovery was the culmination of the group’s two visits to the Hampton area. The first, in early Octo-ber, centered around three gravel pit ponds in the Olive Avenue and 190th Street area, where Kazmerzak may have last been seen. After the initial video of their investigation of the area went live on Oct. 4, Adventures with Pur-pose received a tip from a viewer that they needed to investigate the pond off Nettle Avenue. With that information in hand, they returned to Hampton, confident that this sweep would provide more information than the earlier tour.

“It was the location of the party,” Leisek said. “Our viewers let us know that we did a great job searching the areas we thought the party was at…but we could say for a 100 percent fact that the car was not in those first ponds.”

On the afternoon of Mon-day, Oct. 26, Leisek and Ginn returned to the Hampton area and launched their boat into the pond. Within half an hour, they had a sonar hit on a vehicle.

“The car showed up extremely visible on our sonar and at that moment, we looked at each other and we just knew,” said Ginn. “The fact that we were so close to the party, the information we had gotten from the viewer and the fact that there wouldn’t be a whole lot of cars in that pond to begin with and as clear as it showed up on the sonar, you just knew. It was a gut feeling that you just know.”

A subsequent dive showed evidence, including a license plate match, that the vehicle was Kazmerzak’s.

“Most of the other (recoveries) have been in black water, meaning we could only see our hand half an inch in front of our face and we really had to identify if that was our car or not,” Leisek offered. “Whereas this one when we swam up to it, we could see it was a Volkswagen, it was a Jetta.”

Leisek and Ginn then con-tacted Franklin County Sher-iff Aaron Dodd to inform him that the vehicle was a match to the description given on the Iowa Cold Cases missing person report, formally turn-ing the investigation over to law enforcement.

Dodd arrived on scene shortly after and viewed video of the dive recorded by Leisek and Ginn. He believed the evidence to be adequate enough to declare it to be Kazmerzak’s Jetta.

“I was surprised because this had been something that was searched multiple times. It was the first body of water ever searched…I even asked them on the phone if they were sure and that they could see the license plate,” he said. “They described what they had seen and they were able to show me video and it was really convincing…there was no questions it was the car we were looking for.”

Dodd said he then arranged for a dive team from the Story County Sheriff’s Office and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation to provide an official investigation and dive of the area, also requesting Adventures with Purpose re-main on scene for additional assistance and information if needed.

“We needed a team to treat it not just as a recovery, but that it has evidentiary value,” he said.

Dodd also said he contact-ed Kazmerzak’s family to inform them their missing son’s vehicle may have been located.

The Story County Sheriff’s Office Dive Team, the DCI and other area law enforcement entities arrived at the gravel pit at approximately 9 a.m. last Tuesday to begin the investigation and recovery.

“The first couple hours was spent gathering evidence, video imaging, they were able to dive on the car and capture more video and then they had to rig it to be removed,” Dodd said.

Once the rescue crews recovered the vehicle, a cursory look informed officials on scene that human remains were in the back seat. The remains were collected and sent to the Iowa Office of the State Medical Examiner in Ankeny for identification. Officials could not immediately confirm if the remains were Kazmerzak’s.

Dodd said investigators collected evidence and information available at the scene and will proceed with the investigation based on the identification and autopsy of the remains.

“Everything from the scene was collected seven years ago and the only missing piece was collected yesterday (Tuesday),” he said.

QUESTIONS ANSWERED, QUESTIONS REMAIN

Although the car and unidentified remains have been located, questions began to surface throughout the community and social media regarding Adventures with Pur-pose’s discovery.

Many questioned how a team from out of town could locate a vehicle that had been missing for seven years in one afternoon, in a pond that had been scanned shortly after Kazmerzak’s disappearance.

Dodd, who was a deputy with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office at the time, said that the pond had been thoroughly searched both on land and underwater at least three times. The dive team from the Story County Sheriff's Office made the initial underwater investigation just days after Kazmerzak went missing. Another professional search and rescue dive team from Black River Falls, Wisconsin, followed up shortly after. Both dive teams and sonar scans from above the water turned up no clues.

“That was the first body of water searched and in Novem-ber of that same year, it was searched again, twice. So essentially, it had been searched three times prior,” Dodd said. “We were confident it had been covered because it was hours we had spent out there. Talking to the teams, they don’t have an explanation other than if following the screen they took their eyes off it for the wrong second or the technology wasn’t there…we don’t know. “Just knowing the teams, they’re very confident in their work and they searched it very well,” Dodd added.

Then-Franklin County Sheriff Larry Richtsmeier said the search also included an aerial sweep by a local farmer in an ultralight plane and a swarm of volunteers that scoured the area, but still, the search found no signs of Kazmerzak.

“It wasn’t like Ethan to just up and disappear like that, so we figured something had to have happened, but the car just never turned up anywhere,” he said. “We had someone flying over the pond to see if he could see anything, we organized a ground search with volunteers and had fire departments and first responders looking all over the place.

“We used what was available,” he added.

Dodd pointed to a couple of factors that could have pre-vented Kazmerzak’s location at previous searches. The most probable, he said, was, the technology available at the time of the search and whether or not it was adequate enough at the time to find the vehicle.

In a live YouTube video, recorded last Tuesday even-ing, Leisek said that the dive teams then were at the mercy of the technology available and were possibly using equipment that was several years old at the time. The advancements made in sonar since then, have made under-water recovery missions easier than they would have been back in 2013.

“What we have to remember is, technology and sonar have changed. We’re using sight imaging with a much crisper image than what was available seven years ago,” he said in the video. “Even if we go back seven years ago, did they have a brand new sonar at that day or time or was the sonar four or five years old and they were dealing with decade-old technology?

“We could’ve been there 10 years ago and we could’ve had the same technology that they had and we could’ve missed it too,” he added.

Hampton Police Chief Bob Schaefer, who was police chief in 2013, said the question of why Kazmerzak’s vehicle was not found earlier may never be answered.

“This brings closure but of course it brings some other questions,” he said. “People want to know why didn’t those two dive teams find him earlier, but I don’t know if we’ll ever know that answer.”

Along with the questions of how the vehicle went undiscovered for seven years came theories about the answer. One of the most popular Dodd has seen was that the vehicle was put there after the initial search was complete. However, Dodd said that no proof to back that claim up exists.

“By every piece of evidence we have now, he has been there since Sept. 15, 2013,” he said. “We can’t say that definitively but definitely all evidence points to that.”

A COMMUNITY HEALS

Behind the confusion and want for answers from the public and those involved in the search was an outpouring of emotions from a community that could only wonder where Ethan went.

For Richtsmeier, last Tuesday’s news reminded him of a young man he had known for years and a family to which he had vowed to give answers.

“I knew Ethan when he was a little tyke and kind of watched him grow up,” said Richtsmeier. “It was a tough time back then because the mom kept looking at me for answers and I could not give them to her. This one with Ethan was the one thing I wanted to solve, it was strictly personal.”

Since 2013, Hampton Po-lice Chief Bob Schaefer at each anniversary of Kazmer-zak’s disappearance has issued press releases urging anyone with information to speak to law enforcement. His work to keep the case in the public’s mind, he said, stems directly from his own life as a parent.

“I’m a parent and I can’t imagine, as a parent, what the family was going through and I just didn’t want him to fade away to where people forget about him,” said Schaefer. “I wanted to make sure it was out there and that people knew he was still missing and that if anyone knew anything, they needed to come forward and help bring an end to the story.”

The find for Leisek and Ginn was reaffirmation to their mission and why they’ve spent the last 45 days in a RV working to bring peace to people impacted by cold cases. Information to Kazmer-zak’s whereabouts came with a $100,000 reward. Leisek said if they receive the money, they would reinvest it into Adventures with Purpose’s cause to ensure they can continue to provide the service to other families in impossible situations and if not, they have the reward of knowing one more family has been given some form of closure.

“The emotional time for us was on that boat; that this is why we were out there, that this was our mission to serve and that we had just brought home the answers for the family that was in desperate need for answers,” Leisek said.

“This open wound can now start to close for the community and people can begin this stage in the healing process,” Ginn added. “Especially for the family. We’re humbled and honored to be able to serve others in this way to utilize our skills for the better of our fellow man.”

Those close to the case often used words such as “closure” and “healing” to describe the feeling’s of Tuesday's events; closure for final-ly receiving answers to years-old questions and healing for a community and family that have been asking those questions.

“People use the word closure and I think that is an accurate term,” Dodd said. “Some people may think that sounds too harsh or too definitive but it is a resolution and it finally gave them (Kazermak’s family) some peace.”

As for the community, and Dodd, himself, an answer has finally been granted and the healing process can begin. He said he appreciates Adventures with Purpose’s contributions to the search and that their efforts will help ease the pain of the previous seven years.

“We just appreciate that they were willing to hop around the country and just keep looking into stuff,” he said. “I couldn’t be more appreciative because it gave the family some closure and we’re thankful for what they did.”

With Kazermak’s car uncovered and the remains in-side waiting to be identified, Richtsmeier said that the discovery does not diminish the impact the case has had on the community, the family and the hearts of those who dedicated their career to finding him. While the missing post-ers can finally come down, Richtsmeier said the memory of a young man taken too soon will forever remain.

“This just means that part of the story is done but in my heart, it’s always going to be here,” he said. “My feelings towards his family are always going to be ‘Why?’ ‘Why did this have to happen,’” he said, “and the only one that can answer that is God, because He has a plan and He doesn’t share it with us.

“Ethan’s memory will still be there in my heart,” he added.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ethan Kazmerzak’s family declined to comment for the article when reached. The Hampton Chronicle and Mid-America Publishing extend their sincere condolences to the Kazmerzak family.