Deepest-Ever Body Recovery in U.S. Made in Lake Tahoe, CA

The deepest-ever recovery in the United States and Canada was made on Sunday when a nonprofit body-recovery group recovered the body of a New Jersey man who went missing on Lake Tahoe on Aug. 10, 2020. 

29-year-old boater Ryan Normoyole’s body was extracted from a record depth of 1,565 feet according to Bruce’s Legacy, a nonprofit that specializes in underwater body recovery. The previous deepest recovery at Lake Tahoe was in 2018 at a depth of 1,062 feet, according to a press release. The lake has a maximum depth of 1,645 feet.

Police said Normoyle drowned last month after he recorded himself jumping off his rental boat, becoming unable to swim fast enough to catch up with the vessel which he had left in gear. The New York Post reports that the empty boat washed ashore in Glenbrook on Aug. 10 and that several days of subsequent searches were unsuccessful.

Normoyle’s family later sought the help of Bruce’s Legacy to recover his body submerged somewhere in Lake Tahoe, which was recovered on Sunday, September 27. 

Authorities used GPS coordinates collected from his phone to find him, the New York Post reports.