OHP Pulls Mystery Buick From Bottom Of Keystone Lake

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol pulled a car from the bottom of Keystone Lake Thursday evening.

Troopers said it’s a 1967 or ‘68 Buick Wildcat. It's a two-door model that still had its windows rolled up, but its windshield was broken. 

Now the challenge is to figure out who owned it and how it ended up at the bottom of Keystone Lake. 

OHP began sending divers down to the car Thursday morning, July 26, 2018.

The dive team began working on a plan to recover the car after a couple spotted it on their sonar while out on the lake a couple of weeks ago.

They started working around 9 o’clock Wednesday morning but ran into a setback after realizing part of the car was embedded in the lake bed, almost up to the top of the hood.

Divers eventually found some anchor points on the front of the vehicle and attached two 4,000-pound lift bags.

After some time, the airbags lifted the front end of the car, which is still about seven feet below the surface.

"The windows are up on the vehicle. We have zero visibility down there so all of this is by feel, so we can’t tell. We know it’s a Buick, based on some pieces that we’ve been able to bring up, but other than that we can’t really tell anything other than it’s a two-door, and some wing windows, there’s some little clues that we have on what kind of vehicle it is, but we can’t tell anything about what’s inside, if anything," OHP Lieutenant Jeff James said.

Early in the afternoon, they pulled what was left of the trunk lid to the surface. It had a Buick emblem attached to it.

"Feels like it's been in there a long time, like a very old car, so, if we try to lift on points that aren't attached to the frame we may pull it loose, or tear it loose, and we want to lift it all at once. So, we're trying to get dug down into an area around the wheel well where we can hook our air bags to and lift the frame itself," said James.

Divers towed it to the ramp where a huge tow truck winched it up onto shore at about 7:30 p.m. Troopers checked to make sure no human remains were inside it, then set about looking for its VIN or any other means of identifying who owned it.

Based on its condition it appears the car has been in the lake for decades.

On July 14th, Robin Schwer posted on Facebook about finding the car. Just a few days after Robin's post, a Facebook page called "Keystoners" decided to have have some fun and created a guessing game.

7/16/2018 Related Story: Car Found In Keystone Lake

The contest blew up and has nearly 2,000 shares and over 4,000 comments.

Keystoners' original post gave people a chance to vote on the year, make and model of the car for a $200 Amazon gift card. With the help of some local businesses, that prize is now at $400.