CHICAGO (CBS) – A mother’s two-year search for her missing son came to a tragic, if not unexpected, end.
Nearly 26 months after Eddie Gardner’s mother reported him missing, workers found his remains in the basement of an abandoned building. His mother’s focus has shifted from finding him to finding out who killed him.
Sandy Gardner said she had to see firsthand where the workers were found her son’s body on March 20 in a basement in Chicago, two years after she reported him missing.
‘Where did you find him? Here?’ she asked
News reporter: “Did this help you at all?”
Sandy: “Yes. It helps me to know where he was dumped.”
The workers were hired by the owner of the abandoned two apartments to clean out the Englewood basement. They showed Sandy where they found Eddie.
Garner family
“It was covered?” she asked them.
The discovery was so shocking that every time they had to work near the wall, they placed and lit candles.
Eddie Gardner disappeared in March 2022, shortly after renting a Dodge Charger from Hertz. Sandy reported him missing to Oswego police, where he once lived with her. She then asked Hertz to report the car as stolen so that police could track it down.
Hertz refused.
Two weeks of lost leads later, the Charger was involved in a collision in Hammond, Indiana. Police said there was another man in the car, but not Eddie.
That was the impetus for Sandy’s daily email campaign.
“I can’t go on,” she told CBS 2 last year. “So I’m sending it out every night.”
She begged police and others to do more to find her son. Sandy and her daughter Jessica too started their own investigation. They even hired private investigator Don Haworth and gave him all their information, including the names of people associated with the man involved in the collision.
“You can’t tell me these guys don’t know about it,” Haworth said. “You just can’t do that.”
Oswego and Hammond police told CBS 2 they continued to work the case, but it went nowhere until Eddie’s ex-girlfriend Sandy called last April to tell her his body might have been found in Chicago. It wasn’t his, but Sandy called the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office and begged an employee to examine all the unidentified bodies in the morgue.
“He said, ‘That’s a lot of work,’” Sandy said. “‘We have a lot of bodies.’ And I just begged him, ‘Please… I’m looking for my son.'”
CBS
Two weeks later, the Medical Examiner’s Office employee called her back. One of the bodies was Eddie’s. Forensic dentist Howard Cooper, who works with the Medical Examiner’s Office, made the match.
“As soon as I started looking at those X-rays, I realized I recognized them, and I knew right away who it was,” Cooper said.
News reporter: “Was the condition of Eddie’s body so seriously compromised that dental identification was really necessary?”
Cooper: “Yes. In this case it was definitely necessary.”
“The hope that he would ever come back is gone, but I’m glad we know,” said Jessica, Eddie’s sister. “It’s better to know.”
Now Jessica and Sandy plan to find Eddie’s killer.
“The next step must be to determine the cause of death as homicide so that the official murder investigation can begin,” Jessica said.
Sandy added: “I’m sad right now, but I’m also angry, and I’m determined to hold the people who did this accountable. I know who they are. They better be on their guard.”
Eddie’s cause of death was still listed as pending by the Cook County Medical Examiner, but Chicago police said they are conducting an active death investigation.
