A body found in a car pulled from the Cooper River may have solved a 14-year-old cold case

A woman’s body was found inside a car that was pulled from the Cooper River in Pennsauken this week, solving a 14-year-old missing person’s case that had gone cold, a source familiar with the case said.

Police hoisted three cars from the river near Cooper River Park, south of Kaighn Avenue, Thursday and found human remains in the driver’s side seat of one of them, a spokesperson for the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office said.

A source who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation said the body was that of a woman who had gone missing from Camden in 2010. The woman was “distressed and distraught” when she left her Camden home years ago, the source said, and her family later told police she left behind a note saying she planned to drive her car off a bridge and end her life. Her family never heard from her again, according to the source.

The woman’s name was not released. The Prosecutor’s Office said it was investigating and waiting for the medical examiner to identify the remains.

An amateur investigator, who had been looking into an unrelated missing persons’ case out of Mount Laurel, stumbled upon the submerged cars during a search of the water using a boat and underwater equipment to scour Cooper River, the source said. Law enforcement officials later pulled the cars from the river and discovered the body.