The Disappearance of Margaret Jane Chony: A 38-Year Mystery Finally Solved

Texarkana, Texas – October 20th, 1987, was a warm autumn night, the kind where the air carries the faint smell of dry leaves and gasoline. Margaret Jane Chony, a 34-year-old nurse, clocked out from the late shift and walked briskly to her 1983 red Pontiac Fiero. Something about that night felt wrong. She had told a coworker she thought someone was following her and asked a friend to trail her to the post office, just to be safe.

At the post office, she picked up her mail, waved reassuringly at her friend, and drove off toward her apartment complex on College Drive. She never made it home.

For nearly four decades, Margaret’s case would haunt her family, confound police, and become a painful piece of Texarkana lore. Her daughter grew up without knowing what happened to her mother. Police searched fields, questioned coworkers, and dragged parts of local lakes in 1987, but nothing turned up. No car. No body. No answers.

That changed in the spring of 2025, when a small team of volunteer divers from the popular YouTube channel Adventures with Purpose returned to Texarkana on a mission to find Margaret — or at least find her car.

The Search Begins

The divers arrived with limited daylight, their small aluminum boat bouncing across Bringle Lake as the sun dipped behind the tree line. Their plan was simple: clear every nearby body of water with sonar before nightfall.

“The Fiero is a weird car,” lead diver Adam Brown explained on camera. “It’s fiberglass, so magnets don’t always stick. If we find it, we’ll know by the shape.”

That first evening they found a vehicle near a boat ramp, half-buried and caked with silt. It looked old — the right era. For a moment, everyone held their breath.

But when Adam dove on it the next morning, fighting through water that looked “like chocolate milk,” he discovered it was a Chevrolet sedan from the 1950s or 60s. Not Margaret’s car. Not even red.

“It’s a false lead,” Adam reported when he surfaced. “But that just means we keep going.”

Into the River

The team turned to the Sulphur River next. The current was dangerous, the water nearly opaque. Adam described it as “the scariest environment I’ve ever been in.”

Within hours, their sonar lit up with more targets — three cars, all upside down. Some were buried to the roofline. They dropped a magnet on the first one and ran a rope to shore so Adam could follow it down.

When he came back up, he shook his head.

“Not a Fiero. Metal body, different handle design. Probably a Mazda,” he said, exhausted. “We still have two more to check.”

The divers worked methodically, clearing car after car, sometimes pulling serial numbers or license plates to report to local law enforcement. They found a stolen Camry from 1999, a pickup truck likely dumped during a flood, even a car used in an old theft case.

Each discovery brought someone closure — just not Margaret’s family.

The Private Pond

On their last day in Texarkana, Adam and his team checked one final location: a privately owned pond near College Drive, just two miles from the post office where Margaret was last seen.

Locals had always dismissed the pond as too small, too shallow. But when the team’s remote sonar boat skimmed across the surface, the screen lit up with a distinct vehicle profile. The shape was unmistakable — low and sloped, just like a Pontiac Fiero.

The next morning, Adam slipped into the water. It was cold, the bottom soft with decades of mud, but he followed the guide rope hand-over-hand until he felt the smooth curve of a roof.

The car was upright, its rear bumper wedged into the silt. Adam swept his gloved hand across the back panel, and his fingers found raised metal — letters that spelled F-I-E-R-O.

His chest tightened. After nearly 40 years, they had found Margaret’s car.

The Recovery

Police were called to the scene immediately. The area was secured, and a tow truck with a crane was brought in. As the winch strained, mud frothed to the surface, releasing the smell of rust and river weed.

When the car finally broke the surface, its red paint was still visible under the grime. The windows were rolled up. Inside, investigators found skeletal remains in the driver’s seat, still belted in place. A small leather purse rested on the passenger side floorboard, containing Margaret’s ID card and keys.

The medical examiner would later confirm through dental records that the remains were indeed Margaret Jane Chony.

A Story Comes Full Circle

For Margaret’s daughter, who had been just a child when her mother vanished, the discovery was bittersweet.

“All these years, we thought maybe she was kidnapped, maybe she suffered. But seeing the car… she was just driving home,” she said through tears. “Something happened — maybe she swerved to avoid someone or something — and she ended up in the water. Now we can finally bring her home.”

Police concluded that Margaret likely drove off the narrow dirt access road by accident, possibly while looking in her rearview mirror at whoever she thought was following her. The car entered the pond nose-first, trapping her inside.

The case, long considered a possible foul play investigation, was officially closed as an accidental death.

Closure for Everyone

For the divers, the moment was sobering.

“This is why we do what we do,” Adam said in the final minutes of the video. “It’s not just about finding cars — it’s about finding people, giving families answers. Today, we gave Margaret her name back.”

The community held a small memorial service at the pond’s edge, with Margaret’s surviving family, local police officers who had worked the original case, and the dive team all present. A wooden bench with her name was placed near the water, facing the spot where the car had been submerged for 38 years.

Epilogue

Margaret’s daughter now volunteers with missing persons organizations, helping other families keep their cases alive. The divers returned to their travels, carrying with them another story of hope and heartbreak.

For Texarkana, the case became a lesson about persistence — that even decades-old mysteries can be solved with enough time, technology, and determination.

And for Margaret, after 38 years of silence, her story was finally complete.