FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — It’s been more than 10 years since Kevin MacKrell last saw his brother, Steven.
“I see him all the time in my dreams,” he said.
Steven MacKrell was reported missing during the summer of 2015.
“I can tell you for a fact, I knew he wouldn’t just up and vanish,” Kevin MacKrell said.
The two brothers were only a year apart and extremely close growing up.
“We didn’t come from a family of money and wealth, so we shared the same birthdays, same friends — we shared the same life,” Kevin MacKrell recalled.
Kevin and his family were left devastated after Steven vanished. He was last seen at a gas station on West Sample Road.
For a decade, they wondered what happened — until this past week, when Kevin’s mother called him around 4 a.m. Friday, with news that Steven’s remains and car had been found in a Boca Raton lake.
The news left Kevin numb.
“I stared at the wall for 10, 15 minutes without moving a muscle,” Kevin MacKrell said.
After years of uncertainty, the family finally had some answers.
“Ten years of questioning kind of just came together with a possible closing chapter now,” Kevin MacKrell said.
Private divers from Sunshine State Sonar, a volunteer group that helps search for missing people, located Steven’s car underwater.
“My hats and full respect to those guys,” Kevin MacKrell said.
He and his family say they’re deeply grateful for the team’s countless hours of searching.
“I tear up thinking about it right now. There’s so much evil and bad in the world, but you’ve got people like that that want to help — they don’t ask for nothing,” Kevin MacKrell said.
The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed Steven’s identity through dental records.
“They positively ID’d him in the car,” Kevin said. “I think that being the most satisfying thing to this whole long tragedy is that we have somebody to lay to rest.”
Police said the circumstances of how Steven MacKrell and his car ended up in the lake remain under investigation.
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