A disturbing discovery under a South Carolina house has ended the search for a missing Massachusetts man, but major questions surrounding his disappearance and death have yet to be answered.
On Tuesday afternoon, the body of 60-year-old vacationer Stanley Kotowski was discovered underneath a home on Hilton Head Island.
Kotowski was reported missing on Aug. 16 after he walked out of his family’s vacation rental in the Sea Pines Resort, just four doors down from where his body was discovered.
According to WJCL-TV, when Kotowski walked out of the vacation home that Friday morning, he was barefoot and without a phone or identification.
He may have been in mental or psychological distress at the time of his disappearance.
“He just walked out the door,” his wife Jackie Kotowski told WJCL.
“He had really bad insomnia for about a month. He doesn’t have dementia. His anxiety just kept getting worse and worse and worse and he started to get a little paranoid.”
Authorities were called to the Kotowskis’ Sea Pines rental an hour after the disappearance.
A police report obtained by WJCL further detailed Kotowski’s mental state before his final departure from the Sea Pines rental.
According to the report, Jackie Kotowski said her husband “believes Sea Pines is a ‘set up’ and has a conspiracy that the people here are out to get him,” and said that “Stanley has made several statements of people at this place ‘watching him.’”
His family put out a call for the community to rally to find the missing man immediately following his disappearance, underscoring the potential danger he faced.
“We just need people everywhere to be looking because he could be anywhere,” Jackie Kotowski said, according to WTOC-TV.
“We are very scared for him.”
His son, Zachary Kotowski, echoed the concern as authorities used drones, K9 teams and helicopters in a desperate search for the man.
***MISSING ENDANGERED*** HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SC
The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office is asking for the public’s help locating a missing and endangered 60-year-old male from Massachusetts. Stanley Kotowski was last seen around 10:30 A.M. on Friday, August 16, 2024, leaving 226… pic.twitter.com/BHjhAWpTol— The AWARE Foundation (@aware_the) August 24, 2024
“It’s like a nightmare where we are just waking up into something that feels like a terrible dream,” he said. “We are just waiting for it to be over.”
According to WJCL, the search came to a close after nearly two weeks when a Sea Pines security guard noticed bugs and a foul smell. Shortly after the disturbing clue was noticed, Kotowski’s body was found in the crawl space of a home.
The Beaufort County Coroner concluded Tuesday that Kotowski killed himself by hanging, dying from asphyxiation. This is believed to have happened the same day he was reported missing.
