George Carroll’s children grew up with the same story: their dad stepped out to buy cigarettes one day and never came back.
For years, Mike Carroll and his siblings searched for any clue about what happened to their father. Mike still lived in the family’s longtime home in Lake Grove, N.Y., on Long Island, and the questions only deepened as time passed.
After their mother died in 1998 — and shared little about her former husband, a Korean War veteran last seen in the early 1960s — the mystery felt like it would remain unsolved forever.
Everything changed after a visit to a psychic and a months-long excavation in Mike’s basement, a startling turn of events explored in the upcoming ID documentary The Secrets We Bury, premiering Dec. 16.
In the documentary’s trailer, Mike recalls joining his sister for a psychic reading years after their father disappeared, even though he didn’t believe in it. Their father’s car, he says, had remained in the driveway all those years.
“The psychic goes, ‘Oh, the M word: murder. He is in the basement,’” Mike recounts in the trailer.
Shaken, he decided to take action.
“I’m gonna go find him,” he says. “I’m gonna dig.”
With help from his sons, Mike spent months digging through the basement floor. In 2018, the search ended with a grim discovery: human remains buried several feet below the home. Authorities later confirmed the remains were George Carroll’s.
The documentary features interviews with Mike, three of his siblings, and his sons, Chris and Michael Jr. It examines what may have happened to George, whose death was investigated as a homicide.
The Secrets We Bury will air on ID and also stream on HBO Max.
