Accidentally Found: Todd DiMinno Was Discovered While Searchers Looked for Janet Walsh
A hundred cars were lying hidden beneath the rivers of Pittsburgh. One of them belonged to Todd DiMinno.
The Father Who Never Missed a Pickup
Todd DiMinno, 54, owned a small gift shop called Harmony Emporium in Harmony, Pennsylvania. His friend Sierra Reynolds met him there and knew him for 15 years. She called him one of the most caring people she had ever met, and one of the most interesting characters. But more than anything, he was a devoted father to his young daughter, who always put a smile on his face.
Todd was last seen on Wednesday, September 28, 2022. Two days later, on September 30, he failed to pick up his daughter at the bus stop. His family found that deeply suspicious. It was completely out of character for him, and they reported him missing.
Police thought he might have traveled to New Haven, Connecticut, for a concert. They described him as 5 feet 10 inches tall, about 160 pounds, with brown hair and a full beard, driving a red 2006 Honda Civic with license plate JSY3391. They asked anyone with information to call.
There were no sightings.
The Woman They Came to Find
A week after Todd disappeared, a volunteer sonar and dive team was in Pittsburgh. But they weren’t looking for Todd. They were looking for Janet Walsh.
Janet was 70. On January 20, 2021, she invited her daughter over for dinner. When her daughter arrived, Janet’s car was gone, but her phone was still upstairs. Her husband had died just 60 days earlier. Police in Shaler Township renewed their appeal for help, describing her car as a silver 2018 Chevy Trax with Pennsylvania plates KTW6007.
The team had already searched for Janet once, the year before. On that first trip, they covered 16 miles of river. They found old vehicles, including an upside-down car with an aqua-colored panel and a vintage Plymouth minivan, its old-school emblem still visible. But they did not find Janet. As one searcher said at the time, the only positive was that they now knew where she wasn’t.
Starting Over
In October 2022, the team came back to Pittsburgh and started again from square one. They had learned a great deal in a year, and they believed they could find her. Their rule was simple: other teams might say an area had been searched, but if this team hadn’t searched it themselves, it hadn’t been searched.
They mapped out a five-mile radius around the places that mattered in Janet’s life: her home, her church, and St. Mary’s Cemetery, where her husband was buried. The last license plate reader to capture her car showed it heading south, toward her home.
Over two days, they cleared the Allegheny River one boat ramp at a time: Sharpsburg, Deer Creek, Springdale, all the way up to the Tarentum Bridge. They even checked the creek behind Janet’s house, but it was dry.
They found cars. At one point, the sonar showed what looked like a small SUV, possibly the Chevy Trax. A diver reached it and pulled off an emblem. The car had been underwater for decades. It was a Yugo, the tiny, long-forgotten car, and the team hauled it out of the river. They found a Nissan Altima. They found a Nissan with no plates. None of them was Janet’s.
A River Full of Cars
On the third day, the team went back to water they had already searched, and to water no one had searched at all. They planned to cover parts of the Allegheny, the Ohio, and the Monongahela that they hadn’t reached yet. They were also looking for another missing man, Bunny Lee, last seen at his home in East Liberty on the evening of November 13.
Then the sonar operator noticed something strange: a shadow that looked like two wheels. Sometimes, he explained, it’s not the target itself he watches for, but the shadow it casts.
“That’s a car. Upside down.”
Then another. And another. “Dude, there’s like 30 cars right here,” he said. “I’m mind-blown right now.” Soon there were more than 50.
In the team’s experience, when many cars are clustered in one place, it usually points to a dumping ground used by car thieves. They cleared the North Shore and the South Shore from a spillway all the way down to the ballparks at the point where the rivers meet. The count climbed to 74, then 90.
In 11 hours, the sonar marked about 100 cars along mile after mile of shoreline. Most had clearly been underwater for decades. When a car sits in the water that long, the wheels shrink and corrode into jagged star shapes.
But the very first car they had marked was different. “That one was cleaner,” they agreed. Its wheels were still round.
Behind the Stadium
On Saturday, October 8, the team returned to that first car. It was sitting in the river right behind Heinz Field, about 100 yards from the stadium, and a football game was about to begin. Since crowds were gathering, they decided to dive on that car first. It already had a buoy on it.
The diver went down and tried to figure out what kind of vehicle it was. The rear license plate was missing, and at first he thought someone must already have searched the car. But he swam around to the front and found the other plate. The car looked new.
The plate belonged to Todd DiMinno.
“There’s a family that’s now going to have answers,” one team member said. “And that’s the most critical point of this all.”
A Quiet Recovery
With tens of thousands of people heading into the stadium and the game set to start in about an hour and a half, the team worked to recover the car as discreetly as possible. A Pittsburgh Panthers game was underway nearby. The entire wharf was shut down so the public, including the students arriving for the game, wouldn’t see what was happening.
Underwater, the diver threaded tow straps through the spokes of the wheels on each side of the car. Once it was rigged, the tow truck pulled it from the river, wrapped it up, and took it to the medical examiner’s office. Several hours later, officials positively identified the man inside as Todd DiMinno.
The Zelienople Police Department confirmed that the 54-year-old from Harmony Borough had been reported missing on September 30. The dive team, they noted, had been in the area working on two other missing persons cases when they discovered his car near the North Shore.
Todd’s car was found at the exact place where Pittsburgh’s three rivers meet: the Allegheny and the Monongahela joining to form the Ohio.
“We’re Not Built to Not Know”
For the team, the outcome was what mattered. Todd’s daughter would now be able to process her father’s death instead of living for who knows how long without knowing what happened to him.
“That’s really tough stuff,” one team member said. “But we are built to process death. We’re not built to not know. Not knowing is a nightmare.”
Over the next few days, more members of the team arrived in Pittsburgh. Of the 100 vehicles they had found, the very first one had held Todd. They began working through the remaining 99, with divers going down one by one. In a single day, they cleared 45 to 50 cars. None came back as stolen, and none was linked to a missing person.
“Every time I find a car now,” one diver said, “all I am ever going to think of is Todd DiMinno.” Another added that even when a car isn’t the one they’re looking for, it could belong to someone else who is lost.
Remembering Todd
Sierra Reynolds said Todd had always been fascinated by the way Pittsburgh’s three rivers come together. “This isn’t how we wanted him to be found,” she said, “but honestly, we have the closure.”
She said he was a great friend, and an even greater father to his young daughter. She wants him to know how loved and how special he is, and that all of his friends will keep his spirit alive for the rest of their lives.
Janet Walsh, the woman the team came to Pittsburgh to find, was still missing.
