OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — Year-round, it's a place for relaxation and recreation.
Fishermen cast lines out eager to catch bass. Boaters knife across the placid face, leaving waves in their wake. Rowers come from across the country to compete in a world-class setting.
There's a darker side to Melton Hill Lake in Anderson County, however. Slip beneath the surface and you'll find evidence of sadness and loss, theft and abandonment.
For some, it becomes a resting place -- by their own choosing or because someone left them there.
"Water seems to attract people that want to end their lives also," said Oak Ridge Police Department Capt. Mike Uher. "We've seen some of that. It's a peaceful place to go and sit at the water. We've had that happen a couple times. And it's sad, it really is, that people end up in that place in life."
Melton Hill Lake isn't the only local body of water that's seen sorrow. Any police department with a lake or river gets calls about crimes or loss of life associated with the water, Uher said.
But Melton Hill Lake has been more in the news lately.
In March 2020, someone found the body of a newborn boy, umbilical still attached, perhaps discarded by a young mother. The lake is a frequent dump site for unwanted or stolen vehicles; authorities know of at least a half-dozen vehicles sitting on the bottom right now.
Cars often veer off the road lakeside, plunging into 50-degree water.
Among the latest incidents: the discovery of Nov. 10 of a 1999 Buick that belonged to an 84-year-old Oak Ridge woman missing since July 2005.
Authorities had wondered through the years if Miriam Ruth Hemphill might be in the lake somewhere. A private diver using sonar, at last, confirmed it.
FINDING MRS. HEMPHILL
Jeremy Sides is gaining an international reputation as a diver of mysteries. He documents his dives and discoveries on his YouTube channel, "Exploring With Nug."
The Atlanta area man said he dedicates all of his time to finding missing people. That's how he and a colleague came to find Hemphill's Buick LeSabre.
Sides looks at a website that keeps data on thousands of missing people who are mainly from the United States. Scores of people disappear every year. The Charley Project is a place where anyone can go to learn more about specific cases.
Sides became intrigued about the Hemphill case because Oak Ridge is close enough to reach from his North Georgia home and there were enough clues to make him think it could be solved.
"With her case, all the indicators were there that she could be in a body of water. And so that's when I started pursuing that one, looking deeper into it, because she vanished without a trace. Her car vanished without a trace. And there's a big river right near town."
Sides uses sonar, which can outline objects of interest resting on a lake bottom.
Sides and Britain Lockhart, who runs the "Depths of History" exploration page on YouTube, traveled in November to Oak Ridge. They decided to explore Melton Hill Lake.
Sonar soon revealed four vehicles of interest.
Sides and Lockhart "dived" on them one by one.
"One car has been there for a long time," he said. "It's like a Honda. I don't even know what kind of car it is. It was like a Honda hatchback. It looked like a Ford Escort. But they don't even make it anymore. And it didn't have the tag on it. And then the other car's a little compact -- no tag, no way to identify it."
On the third vehicle, they hit pay dirt.
It was 25 feet down -- not something you could spot from the surface with the naked eye. Zebra mussels, a notorious nuisance in Melton Hill Lake, covered the car, a sure sign it had been there many years.
While Lockhart filmed, Sides swam to one end, brushed away mussels and discovered an easily readable Tennessee license plate: ABA676.
It was Hemphill's car.
The men alerted Oak Ridge police. Later that night a crew pulled the car out of Melton Hill Lake. Inside, authorities said, were human remains.
The Buick had been there more than 16 years.
How did she end up there? Authorities can't say for sure. The Oak Ridger newspaper reported that she'd suffered a loss in her family before disappearing in the summer of 2005. Her husband died years later, fearing she'd taken her own life somewhere.
Oak Ridge police and the Blount Special Operations Response Team, or BSORT, had searched parts of Melton Hill Lake for her before without luck.
"Underwater is a whole 'nother world, it just is," Uher said.
The captain applauds Sides and Lockhart for their work. They also benefited from fairly clear, calm water conditions that made it a lot easier to spot abandoned vehicles at the bottom of the lake. Often the water is so cloudy that it's hard to see beyond a foot in front of you, he said.
Sides said it's understandable that he could find Hemphill's car easier than the police could. He has the luxury of hours and days of free time that they might not have, he said.
Police have to do a lot more than search for missing people, he said.
"Every time I'm out on the river, I'm playing with this equipment and just getting better at it," Sides said. "And the cops, they may have this equipment, but they're not using it every day."
BLACK WATER MAVERICKS
In Melton Hill Lake -- and in any area pond, lake or river -- there's danger.
That's why special teams like BSORT, part of the Blount County Sheriff's Office, train constantly, said Capt. Jeff Burchfield.
The Blount County group, which responded to Melton Hill Lake in November after Sides and Lockhart found Hemphill's Buick, is among several in the region that can respond to reports of water rescues and recoveries.
The team can go into rapidly moving water, like the Little River in Blount County, or dive in deep water like Fort Dickerson Quarry in Knoxville. They've also been called in to try to find key evidence, such as a firearm that may be tied to a crime.
Some of BSORT's training is actually done in a quarry so divers can get the experience of being 50, 60, or 70 feet down.
"I've been a cop for 34 years," Burchfield told WBIR. "I've done undercover and I've been on SWAT teams. One of the most dangerous things I've ever done is public safety diver. The threat is there, and that's why we train, train, train."
BSORT was formed in October 2001. Burchfield calls team members the "Black Water Mavericks."
Visibility in Melton Hill Lake actually can be a lot easier than other water the Blount County divers have to work, the captain said.
Often they have "zero" visibility, he said. They can see nothing. They're discouraged from even trying to use their eyes underwater because it can be more disorienting than anything. Powerful underwater lights make little difference, Burchfield said.
Instead, the officers work by feel, by touch. They start running a pattern.
"We call it Brailling. They're feeling for the object they're looking for," Burchfield said.
Brailling is a reference to the Braille method by which the visually impaired can use their fingers to read patterns on a page.
The BSORT team was plenty familiar with the search for Ruth Hemphill. They'd tried without success to find her car previously, a few miles away near the bridge on Edgemoor Road, Burchfield said.
On the evening BSORT drove up to Oak Ridge to help with Hemphill's car, they encountered a familiar foe: those pesky zebra mussels. The lake is known for its abundance of fingernail-size mollusk.
Hemphill's car sagged under the weight of thousands of mussels as a tow truck pulled it out and put it on a truck.
"We have actually tried to lift cars with airbags that have been down there for so long and have so many zebra mussels on them. They just tear apart as we're trying to bring them up," Burchfield said.
The Buick, Burchfield said, was "coated" in the creatures.
"I've never seen anything quite like it that came out in one piece," he said. "This was a concern for us, and we had several discussions here at the scene about what we would do if that car came apart on us."
