MISSING 32-Years: He Left His Home and Vanished, Our Search for Barry Aiken and His 1993 Nissan!

Missing for 32 Years: The Search for Barry Aiken and the Nissan That Never Came Home

Wilmington, North Carolina — On a quiet February day in 1993, 21-year-old Barry Maurice Aiken left his father’s home on Wrightsville Avenue and vanished without a trace. More than three decades later, there are no confirmed sightings, no financial records, no photographs on file — and no sign of the black 1993 Nissan Sentra he was believed to be driving.

What remains is a question that has haunted his family and investigators for 32 years: What happened to Barry Aiken?

This winter, a small civilian dive team returned to Wilmington hoping to bring answers where time and circumstance had long failed.

Barry Aiken was reported missing in late February 1993. According to his father, Barry had been struggling emotionally and suffered from seizures. On February 24, his father came home to find the house quiet and Barry gone. His wallet, identification, and cash were still inside. There were no signs of a struggle.

Barry never returned. Neither did his car.

At 6 feet 3 inches tall and approximately 190 pounds, Aiken would have been hard to miss. Yet no confirmed record of him has surfaced since. No use of credit cards or Social Security. No hospital admissions. No arrest records. Nothing.

“Back then, it was mostly cash,” one searcher noted. “So the lack of card activity doesn’t tell us much. But leaving his wallet behind? That’s unusual.”

For years, the case stalled.

Now, independent search teams like Exploring with Nug, led by Jeremy Sides and Adam Brown, have taken on cold cases across the country — using sonar, underwater drones, and old-fashioned persistence to search rivers, ponds, and lakes for missing vehicles tied to long-forgotten disappearances.

Their work has brought closure to dozens of families. Wilmington was next.

Five people from the Wilmington area remain missing from different years and circumstances. The cases are not connected, but they share a troubling pattern: disappearances without witnesses, followed by decades of silence.

The most obvious place to search for Barry Aiken has always been water.

Wilmington is surrounded by it — ponds, creeks, marshes, and the Cape Fear River, a massive and dangerous waterway with shifting currents, deep channels, and near-zero visibility. Vehicles can vanish there in seconds.

The team had searched parts of the river before. They had found vehicles. They had reported them to police. None belonged to Barry.

This time, they returned with improved equipment and a renewed focus — determined to systematically clear any body of water that existed in 1993.

Their first stops were small ponds near roadways. Many looked promising from the surface, but sonar quickly revealed shallow depths — often only four to seven feet deep.

“Cars could go in here,” one diver said, “but you’d see them. There’s nowhere for them to hide.”

One by one, the ponds were cleared.

The search moved closer to the river.

The Cape Fear River is no ordinary body of water. Strong currents, submerged debris, alligators, and heavy fishing activity make it extremely dangerous. Visibility can drop to zero instantly.

During earlier dives, the team admitted they had been in over their heads.

“We managed to not get ourselves killed,” one searcher said. “That river is no joke.”

This time, they relied heavily on sonar and underwater drones rather than diving blind.

At a boat ramp beneath a railroad bridge, sonar revealed something unmistakable.

A vehicle.

On the screen, the outline was clear — a tire inside a wheel well. Metal. Structure. No question.

“That is 100 percent a vehicle underwater,” one of them said.

Excitement surged. This was the kind of discovery that had solved cases before.

But confirmation matters.

The team deployed a magnet. It stuck. Then an underwater drone.

What they found was disappointing — but important.

The first vehicle turned out to be an old Mercedes-Benz, likely a W123 model from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s. The distinctive Mercedes star on the center cap made identification immediate. It was heavily rusted, wrapped in fishing line, and clearly not a 1993 Nissan Sentra.

“It’s not our car,” the team concluded. “At least we know that.”

Clearing wrong vehicles is a crucial part of cold case searches. Each one eliminated narrows the field.

As daylight faded, sonar revealed another vehicle — this one directly beneath the bridge in deeper water, around 30 feet down.

The shape suggested a small truck, possibly a single cab. The drone struggled against strong current and submerged logs stacked around the bridge supports. Visibility was poor, but brief flashes of color came through.

Blue.

Not black.

The team maneuvered carefully, aware that diving in those conditions would be extremely dangerous.

“There’s no problem with diving,” one said, “except it’s black water, strong current, logs everywhere — it’s not safe.”

They made the call to stop.

The vehicle was documented as best as possible and ruled out for Barry Aiken’s case.

By the end of the day, no sign of Barry’s Nissan had been found.

But the search was not a failure.

Every body of water cleared is one less place Barry’s family has to wonder about. Every vehicle identified is one more answer, even if it’s not the one they hope for.

The clock is still ticking.

Barry Aiken would be 53 years old today. His case remains open. His family remains without closure.

Civilian search teams will likely return to the Cape Fear River again — when conditions are safer, equipment stronger, and time allows.

Until then, Barry Aiken’s name remains on the list of the missing.

And somewhere in or beyond Wilmington, the black Nissan Sentra that disappeared with him in 1993 still waits to be found.