Dad who went missing during family trip found dead in river

A father who vanished while on a family holiday trip has been found dead in a river as mystery continues to shroud the case.

The remains of Robert Loren Bacon, 52, were discovered at 2pm on Saturday by a dive team scouring the Cass River close to Heritage Park in Michigan, according to the Frankenmuth Police Department.

Bacon was last seen attending a family gathering on December 27 at the Bavarian Inn Lodge in Frankenmuth and his family reported him missing three days later, wrote the police department on Facebook.

His ex-wife Melissa McLenna, said he met his daughters aged 13 and 15 and his mother at the lodge around 6.40pm.

Bacon ‘was going to his car to get something and was coming back to the pool area to join his family,’ McLenna told McClatchy News. 

‘He never returned to his family at the pool.’  

CCTV footage reportedly captured Bacon going to the fun center and exiting the hotel but never returning to his car, McLenna told WNEM.

‘They don’t have any video showing he exited the building.’

Bacon’s preliminary cause of death is stated to be drowning, but Saginaw County Medical Examiner’s Office is working on a final determination.

The police department said they and first responders, the community and the lodge ‘extend our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Robert Bacon during this difficult time’.

Over a dozen agencies are involved in the ongoing investigation into Bacon’s death.

McLenna, on Sunday expressed sorrow over his passing.

‘I have no words to describe how we feel we are so sad I just want to say thank you to everyone that helped look for Robert thank you to all that prayed for us and that are continuing to pray for us,’ she wrote on Facebook.

Later in the day, McLenna wrote that she was turning off her phone and thanked everyone and the Bacon family.

She previously told WNEM: ‘My poor kids, our kids, I don’t know what to tell. They ask, “Mom, have they found him yet?” and I just say, “No, we’re still looking.”‘

Bacon’s body was found two years after a missing five-year-old boy’s remains were pulled from the Yakima River in Washington state following a search that lasted months.

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