Dateline: Secrets in the Mist — Who was Carol Jeanne Lubahn and what happened to her? Disturbing details of the 1981 incident revealed

Dateline: Secrets in the Mist deals with the 1981 disappearance and murder of Carol Jeanne Lubahn. She was a wife, mother of two, and architecture student at El Camino College. As per initial statements, Carol was last seen by her husband, Michael Lubahn Clark, leaving their Torrance house after they argued over his refusal to sign the property papers.

The case went cold for around three decades. Around 32 years later, Carol's husband, Michael Lubahn Clark, confessed to his crimes after he was arrested for his inconsistent statements. In 2013, Michael Jeanne Lubahn admitted that he killed his wife, Carol Jeanne Lubahn, and dumped her body at the Palos Verdes Peninsula coast. Michael was sentenced to 15 years in prison after he agreed to help the authorities locate Carol's body. Unfortunately, Carol's body remains missing to this date.

Dateline: Secrets in the Mist revisits the 1981 disappearance and murder of Carol J. Lubahn — a story of betrayal, a long-hidden crime, and the search for answers that stretched over three decades.

Dateline: Secrets in the Mist — Who is Carol Jeanne Lubahn, and what happened to her?

Born on October 28, 1954, Carol Jeanne Lubahn was a beautiful wife and a loving mother of two, who went missing in March 1981. Described by her friends as fun, outgoing, and quite ambitious, Carol was an architecture student at El Camino College. She wanted to carve a life of independence. However, the 26-year-old's dreams were shattered when she went missing on March 31, 1981.

According to NBC's Dateline episode, Michael and Carol were high school sweethearts who married in 1972 and had two children — Bandi Clark and Michael Clark Jr. However, their marriage was strained, as the couple often fought over the future of their home and relationship.

On March 31, 1981, after an argument over Michael's refusal to sign documents to sell their house, Carol reportedly left the house. According to Dateline, Michael claimed that when he woke around 4 or 5 am, he saw that his wife was still missing, her car was gone, and the garage door was left open. As per Michael's initial statements, he thought his wife would return after a day or two, but when she did not, he alerted the authorities on April 3, 1981, when he found her car, a red Audi Fox, near the Redondo Beach restaurant. Authorities were unable to trace Carol due to lack of evidence, and the case went cold for several years, until Detective Walt Decline took over.

Eight months after Carol's disappearance, Michael started dating Kerry Dunki-Jacobs and they eventually got married. He moved to Huntington Beach and had two children with Kerry as well.

When Detective Walt took over the case three decades after the crime, he launched a Facebook campaign to trace Carol Jeanne Lubahn, but that didn't yield results. On the other hand, Carol's husband, Micahel, was arrested in April 2011 due to inconsistent statements.

During the murder trial in October 2012, he claimed that Carol returned home the night of her disappearance. However, what ultimately led to the final confession was a letter addressed to a relative. He wrote that Carol returned home at 1:30 am after she met another man. Carol planned to take that man to her sister's wedding — proof that sh was done with their marriage and was already seeing someone else. Michael further wrote that he was deeply hurt and tried to choke Carol using a pillow, but when he failed to do so, he shoved her head, and it hit a coffee table. Upon further questioning, he revealed that he punched her instead. Michael then took his wife's lifeless body and dumped it in her car, and he drove it to the Red Onion restaurant in Redondo Beach.

As per Dateline, he wrapped Carol's body with multiple blankets, tied it with cinder blocks, and finally, using his scuba diving skills, dumped her body down near Point Vincete's lighthouse.

Dateline: Secrets in the Mist — Where is Michael Lubahn Clark now?

On January 8, 2013, Michael Lubahn Clark was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for the murder of his wife, Carol Jeanne Lubahn. He agreed to help the investigators trace her body. As per Dateline, even after multiple searches, polygraph tests, and questioning, Carol's body was never found. Even though there has been no update about his current whereabouts, initially Michael was serving his prison time at the men's central jail in downtown Los Angeles.

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