Car Belonging to Pappas’ Missing Wife Is Found in a Pond With Body Inside

WHEATON, Ill. —  A car belonging to the missing wife of former major league pitcher Milt Pappas was pulled from a shallow pond Friday, nearly five years after she disappeared, and a body was found in the front seat, police said.

“I can’t say why or how or what happened,” Pappas said at his Wheaton home. “It was a hell of a shock . . . (that) it is four blocks away from where she lived.”

Carole Pappas was reported missing on Sept. 11, 1982, the day she turned 42. A positive identification is expected today.

“It has been five years of thinking and wondering . . . as to how and why . . . all sorts of things going through your head. There was no answer until about an hour ago,” said Pappas, 48, who pitched in the majors from 1957-74 with Baltimore, Cincinnati, Atlanta and the Chicago Cubs, finishing with a 209-164 record.

Carole Pappas was last seen at a shopping center, where she had been looking for a gift for her newlywed son, one of her two children. The day before she disappeared, she had undergone oral surgery and had been taking painkillers, according to a newspaper report at the time.

The 1980 Buick was submerged in nine feet of water in the pond, which is about 30 yards from a street. Police said workers were draining water from the pond to work on the shoreline.

The route the car apparently had taken from the shopping center was not necessarily the way Pappas would have driven home, police said, but she might have mistaken the route for the way home in the dark.

Pappas, who has a 2 1/2-year-old child by his fiancee, said the two had been prepared to wait two more years before having his wife declared legally dead and getting married. Pappas now works for C. Itoh Building Products in Bedford Park, Ill.

Police have been investigating tips on the disappearance for several years. A psychic was consulted in the case, and she said Mrs. Pappas would be found under water but did not know where.