Causes of death confirmed for Atlanta couple who vanished in Lake Oconee

The highly publicized deaths of an engaged couple found a month apart in Lake Oconee after they vanished while on a boating trip have been declared accidental drownings.

Joycelyn Nicole Wilson, a 49-year-old Spelman College instructor, and her 50-year-old fiancé, Gary Jones, a Westminster Schools teacher, are thought to have died Feb. 8. Wilson’s body was found in the water the next day. Jones’ body was discovered a month later about 40 feet below the surface by an underwater recovery expert.

Autopsy reports for the pair reviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution list their causes of death as “drowning” and their manners of death as “accident.” Those findings are in line with investigators’ expectations.

The sheriff of Putnam County, Howard Sills, who investigated the drownings and helped coordinate the monthlong search for Jones’ body, said soon after the man’s body was found in March that he considered the matter closed “unless there’s something strange in the autopsy.”

He said Tuesday there is no suspicion of foul play nor any indication the couple’s boat was struck by another craft.

Sills said he believes the small size of their boat contributed to the accident, as the 11-foot fishing vessel, outfitted with an 18-horsepower engine, tried to navigate the oft-choppy and treetop-laden open water in the 19,000-acre reservoir.

A GBI medical examiner noted in her reports that Wilson’s body showed some injuries — among them a forehead contusion and, in her neck, a fractured thyroid horn — but concluded they “may have been sustained in the course of immersion/submersion in water in close proximity to a boat.”