American YouTubers Solve 8-Year-Old Disappearance Cases in a Single Afternoon

Two missing persons cases in France, near Biarritz, have been solved in extraordinary fashion - not by police, but by a group of American YouTubers scanning a river with sonar equipment.

Joelle Pouy, 67, had been missing since 2017. David Stevenin, 29, disappeared in September 2018 along with his dog after leaving a party in the village of Urt. French police searched extensively at the time but found nothing.

The four-member team, known as Adventures With Purpose, travels the world searching for missing persons underwater. They had been scanning the Adour River for only a few hours when their sonar revealed three cars on the riverbed. One was a Renault Megane matching Stevenin's vehicle. Police recovered the car and found a body inside.

The team had already left for Italy when they received word of another possible case. Relatives of Pouy said she had last been seen near the same river. A brief search with an underwater drone confirmed that one of the other cars, a Peugeot Partner, contained a body believed to be hers.

"On one hand we are relieved, on the other it is very sad. Our last bit of hope is gone," her son Sebastien told French media. "I thought about it almost every day all these years, but it was bizarre to see the car come out of the water."

The YouTubers say they travel the world for free, funding their work through their channel. "We have sonars that show us live 3D images," one explained. "Sometimes we see things the police may have overlooked."

A French taskforce called LETHE, formed a year ago with similar modern equipment, has already found over 3,000 submerged cars nationwide. Police suspect most were dumped after theft or insurance fraud. So far, four bodies have been recovered from underwater vehicles by the taskforce.