Body of N.J. man found in ‘deepest part’ of Lake Tahoe weeks after he went missing

The body of a New Jersey boater who went missing five weeks ago was found more than 1,500 feet deep in Lake Tahoe, an effort described as the “deepest recorded recovery” in U.S. history, authorities said Monday.

Ryan Normoyle, 29, was recording himself jumping off a boat he rented on Aug. 10 when the empty vessel apparently moved away from him and washed ashore in Glenbrook, Nevada, according to police.

Investigators believe the boat had been left “slightly in gear” and was moving forward at a slow speed but Normoyle couldn’t swim fast enough to catch it.

Police in Nevada and California used GPS data from the victim’s phone to try to track him down, but it wasn’t until this past Saturday that his body was found, California’s South Lake Tahoe Police Department said in a statement posted on social media.

It took yet another day for search crews to recover his body, which was in the “deepest part” of Lake Tahoe, according to Bruce’s Legacy, a nonprofit that provides search and recovery operations for drowned victims.

The group, which assisted police in the search, said this was the deepest known recovery of a person anywhere in the U.S. or Canada. The previous record was in 2018 at a depth of 1,062 feet.

Normoyle, who was from Closter, N.J., had “luckily” activated Google location data on his phone.

“Without this, there would have been no hope to know where to look,” Bruce’s Legacy said in a statement.

Multiple marine units, a University of California research team and an unmanned submarine were involved in the weeks-long search.

“I can assure you that it takes many volunteers to do what we do,” Bruce’s Legacy said. “There is no way this recovery could have been pulled off without all the help and cooperation that we had here on Lake Tahoe this week. It takes special people to be able to do this work and we had many stepping up to get Ryan back home.”

Normoyle’s mother told CBS Sacramento that he was a great son, a great brother, had tons of friends and “loved with his whole heart.”