In 1998, Henry Moreno was about to make a dream come true. He was getting ready to open his own restaurant on the banks of the Sacramento River in California.
There was just one small problem to fix before opening day. The restaurant needed a part for its septic tank.
So Henry drove south to the little river town of Courtland to pick it up. He got the part. And then he disappeared.
More than 25 years later, his family is still waiting for answers.
THE MAN EVERYONE TURNED TO
Henry came from a big, close family. He was one of 13 brothers and sisters.
“Solid citizen of the family,” one relative said. “Every time there was family trouble, we all turned to Henry.”
When he vanished, he left behind a 16-year-old daughter and parents who were heartbroken. His parents have since passed away without ever learning what happened to their son. His remaining siblings are now in their 70s and 80s.
Every year, on the day he disappeared, Henry’s brothers meet at East Portal Park in Sacramento to remember him. They repeat a blessing Henry always used to say, a phrase that means “may the blessings be.”
THE LAST SIGHTING
According to the family, the visit to the parts shop in Courtland is the last time anyone is certain they saw Henry.
There was one other possible sighting, at a restaurant that no longer exists. But no one could ever confirm that it was really him.
Henry never returned to his restaurant with the part. He never made it home.
The family believes he likely drove along River Road, which runs right beside the Sacramento River. In many places, the road sits just a few feet from deep, fast-moving water.
YEARS OF QUESTIONS
The police investigation turned up nothing.
Over the years, some relatives came to suspect that Henry was the victim of foul play, and they pointed their suspicions at someone he knew. But no answer ever came, and the case has never been solved.
The family has also asked many times to see the police reports. Each time, they say, their request was denied.
They did not sit still. Years ago, the family searched the river themselves for several days. They even hired divers. Those divers found several cars in the water, but none of them was Henry’s.
“It only takes one person to come forward and give up the information on his whereabouts,” a family member said.
A NEW SEARCH ON THE RIVER
Recently, the volunteer dive team Adventures With Purpose was searching the Sacramento River for other missing people. The team has spent years finding missing people whose cars went into the water.
They had known about Henry’s case for a while. But they had always focused on the north side of Sacramento, where his restaurant was. They had never searched in the south, near Courtland.
Then they reread an old message from Henry’s niece. It mentioned two key words: River Road and Courtland.
At that moment, the team had already found an SUV-shaped object on their sonar along that same stretch of river. Henry had been driving a Nissan Pathfinder, an SUV.
The team called Henry’s family right away and promised them one thing: if it was Henry, they would be the first to know.
CAR AFTER CAR
The divers went down. The current was so strong that the diver said his mask was shaking, and he had to use all his strength just to hold on.
The first vehicle was a blue SUV, badly damaged and half buried in the river bottom. It was not Henry’s.
Then they kept going.
They found a 1990s Nissan Z sports car with a broken windshield. A white Cadillac DeVille. A very old car from the 1960s, so worn by the water that its roof was completely gone. A sunken boat. An old farm truck. A Chevy or Buick sedan, whose license plate had expired in 2018. And a car that looked like a Toyota Corolla.
One upside-down vehicle measured almost exactly the length of a Nissan Pathfinder from the 1990s. For a moment, hope rose again. But when the diver reached it, it was a big off-road farm truck.
None of them was Henry’s car.
By the end, the team had found close to 80 vehicles in that part of the Sacramento River. They also cleared the whole west bank of the river along River Road, from the town of Clarksburg up to Garcia Bend Park.
STILL MISSING
At the end of a long and exhausting day, Henry Moreno was still missing.
But the search is not over. Large parts of the river near Courtland have never been searched at all. And every mile that is cleared brings the family a little closer to an answer, or at least rules out another possibility.
For his aging brothers and sisters, finding Henry would mean finally being at peace.
Somewhere between a small parts shop in Courtland and a new restaurant that never got its owner back, a loving brother, father, and son simply vanished.
After more than 25 years, someone may still know what happened to him.
