With the mystery of Canadian flight sergeant's death finally solved after 72 years, family can say goodbye

Maureen Pegg grew up listening to stories about her uncle Jay, the uncle she never got to meet; the hockey player, the big brother, the hero, the handsome lug and the oldest and first of the four Carey boys to enlist during the Second World War. Flight sergeant John (Jay) Joseph Carey was shot down over Germany on Aug. 29, 1942. His stricken Halifax bomber crashed into the Laacher See, a crater lake 37km south of Bonn, a watery crypt that has held his remains captive for 72 years.

Jay Carey was presumed dead and, indeed, he was dead. But to his family, especially his mother, Janet, he was a ghost. The son that haunted her. The son she could not bury. The only Carey boy that did not come home from the war.

“My grandmother never accepted the fact that her oldest son had died,” Ms. Pegg says. “I think she did know, intellectually, but in her heart there was never any closure because there was never any body. And what made it worse was one of the other crew, who had bailed out of the plane safely, thought they saw Uncle Jay with his parachute on, getting ready to jump.

“And so for my grandmother it was always: Did he jump? Did he make it to shore? Was he hurt? Was he taken prisoner? Did he have amnesia? My Uncle Jay was very real to me. He was my hero.”

He was the family mystery.