Authorities in Arkansas found the body of an emergency room doctor on the shore of a lake after he went missing on his way to meet his fiancée after finishing work in Missouri.
It had been about three days since John Forsyth had proposed to his girlfriend. The man had completed the divorce process from his ex-partner with whom he had fathered seven children.
Authorities confirmed Wednesday that Forsyth, 49, died of a gunshot wound to the head near Beaver Lake in Arkansas.
The doctor’s remains were found Tuesday by a person kayaking on the lake, located about an hour south of where he was last seen in Cassville, Missouri, the Benton County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. .
Forsyth was reported missing on May 22 after he failed to show up for his shift at Mercy Hospital, which was not an ordinary action on his part.
Security camera footage from the last time he was seen shows him walking to his RV outside the hospital around 7 am the day before, his brother Richard Forsyth revealed. Investigators told the family that they located their unlocked Infiniti sedan in a nearby park. Inside were his two cell phones, wallet, passport, driver’s license, work briefcase, and the keys to both vehicles.
Surveillance footage also shows the doctor as he arrives at the Cassville water park shortly after and a white SUV pulls up next to him. The man then gets out of the car and walks to an unspecified location.
For relatives, this would be a sign that he may have been kidnapped.
“The last few days have been hell. We are devastated,” Richard told CNN this week. “We were having dinner together, extended family, John’s fiancée, when the state police came to report that her body had been found. We have staggered since the news broke. The revelation that he was shot has caused new anxieties,” he added.
The professional had been working at the hospital for two decades and was so dedicated that he sometimes slept in his RV in the hospital parking lot when he had consecutive shifts.