December 17, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Patricia E. Gillespie
Culture Representation: Taking place in New York state, the documentary film “The Secrets We Bury” features an all-white group of people from the same family discussing the mystery of the family’s patriarch, who went missing in 1961.
Culture Clash: For years, the father’s four children believed their mother’s story that the father abandoned them, but a psychic reading and growing suspicions about an abusive family member led the family to investigate and find out the truth.
Culture Audience: “The Secrets We Bury” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of true crime documentaries about missing-person “cold cases” and ordinary citizens doing their own investigations.
“The Secrets We Bury” is a slow-paced but fascinating true crime documentary about family members who took matters into their own hands to investigate the disappearance of a family patriarch who went missing in 1961. What this family found in 2018 is stunning and an example of how ordinary citizens can go farther in an investigation when law enforcement is unwilling or incapable of doing so. The discovery involved a psychic/medium reading, which was the catalyst for the family’s investigation. The documentary leaves it up to viewers to decide if this psychic/medium reading is legitimate or not in how this reading was able to accurately pinpoint certain information that turned out to be true.
Directed by Patricia E. Gillespie, “The Secrets We Bury” takes the unusual approach of only interviewing the family members for the documentary. Excluding the perspectives of professional investigators might have been detrimental to many other true crime documentaries. However, considering that the family members were solely responsible for solving the biggest part of this mystery, it makes sense that the surviving family members who were involved are the only ones interviewed in “The Secrets We Bury.”
The documentary’s narrative is driven by Mike Carroll, who lives in the same middle-class house that he grew up in the Long Island village of Lake Grove, New York. Mike was only 8 months old when his father George Carroll disappeared in 1961. At the time, George was married to Dorothy Carroll. In addition to Mike, the couple had three other children, who are Mike’s older siblings: brother Steve, sister Patricia (nicknamed Pat) and sister Jean. Pat, who is described as the “wild child” of the siblings, is the only one of the siblings who isn’t interviewed in the documentary.
“The Secrets We Bury” begins by showing Mike giving a tour of his very cluttered house, which includes several items showing that he’s a supporter of Donald Trump. Mike describes himself as “crazy,” a QAnon believer and a hoarder. He says his hoarding began in 1998, after his mother Dorothy died of cancer. Mike suspected for many years that Dorothy knew what really happened to George. Mike tried to convince her to make a deathbed confession, but she never did.
The story that the Carroll siblings heard during their childhood about George’s disappearance was that George went out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back. It wasn’t long before Dorothy became romantically involved with and eventually married a man who had been living at the house when George had disappeared. Dorothy’s second husband was Richard Darress, who had been hired by George to be a temporary live-in worker to help with remodeling of the house.
Dorothy and Richard (who died in 2018, at the age of 77) had one child together: a son named Richard Darress Jr., who is interviewed in the documentary. Richard Jr. says he always felt like an outsider in the family because his half-siblings had a different father, who was revered by his half-siblings. In 1961, Richard Sr. had been living with George and Dorothy because Richard Sr. had recently gotten out of prison for stealing a ham radio from the government. Richard Sr. needed a job and a place to live because his parents refused to let him live with them after he got out of prison. George provided the help that Richard Sr. needed.
Steve and Jean (whose name is now Jean Kennedy) say that although their father George wasn’t perfect—George was reportedly a “troubled” guy who was never the same after being in the Korean War—he was a lot better father than Richard Darress Sr., who was abusive to everyone in the household. Mike nearly breaks down in tears when he remembers the physical abuse that he says he suffered from his stepfather Richard. Jean says that Richard Sr. sexually abused her for years, starting when she was 8 years old.
Jean also says that she told her mother about the abuse, but her mother didn’t believe her and actually asked Jean if Jean was in love with Richard. Jean’s younger sister Pat also said that Richard Sr. sexually abused her, according to Jean. Pat ran away from home at age 15 and has been estranged from her siblings for years. Curiously, Jean says that she doesn’t believe that Pat was sexually abused by their stepfather Richard because Jean says she thinks Pat pretended to have the same sexual abuse trauma as Jean as an excuse for Pat’s bad behavior.
Richard Jr. says he never found out about the alleged sexual abuse abuse until well into his middle-age. Richard Jr. says that if he knew about this sexual abuse, he never would’ve invited Richard Sr. to Richard Jr.’s wedding. The marriage of Richard Sr. and Dorothy ended in divorce, but it isn’t clear in the documentary when this divorce happened. Dorothy did not marry again.
The documentary includes video footage of Richard Sr. and Dorothy dancing together at Richard Jr.’s wedding reception. Richard Jr. says he remembers at one point during this wedding celebration, Richard Sr. began sobbing uncontrollably, but Richard Jr. and other family members never knew why. Richard Jr., just like his siblings interviewed in the documentary, have wondered if Richard Sr. was responsible for George’s death. “Is it possible? Sure, it is,” Richard Jr. says. “Is it likely? Probably not.”
Regardless of whom you believe, this is a family that has been damaged by secrets and lies. Mike says he remembers the first time he began to suspect that his father disappeared under suspicious circumstances was when he saw a neighbor he knew only as Mr. Yagel go over to their house and deliver a box to Dorothy, after George had been missing for an untold number of months. The box contained many of George’s belongings.
Mike says he remembers Dorothy being very angry and upset at getting this box. When Mike asked Dorothy why Mr. Yagel would have George’s possessions, that’s when Dorothy revealed some bombshell information: Mr. Yagel used to be married to George’s mother. That’s the first time that Mike knew that the Carrolls were related to Mr. Yagel.
Later, when Mike was an adult, he had a career as an emergency medical worker. One day, he was giving medical treatment to a man whose last name was Yagel. The Yagel man said that he was George’s brother and claimed that George was buried underneath the Carroll family house. Mike was stunned and asked his mother Dorothy about it. Dorothy stuck to her story that George abandoned them, and she didn’t know where George was.
Jean believes in psychics and mediums. In 2010, Jean decided to consult a psychic/medium, who is not named in the documentary. The psychic/medium said that not only was George’s body buried in the family home but he was also murdered by someone he trusted. What convinced Jean that the psychic was telling the truth was the psychic described George’s body being buried near a gun target that had been on the wall in the house’s basement, but the target hadn’t been there since the 1960s. Only family members would’ve known about that gun target.
Steve adamantly says he doesn’t believe in psychics. But Mike was willing to look into the psychic’s claim, so he began digging in the house’s basement, to see if George’s body was really there. According to his brother Steve, Mike began digging so much, Mike was digging into a crucial foundation of the house. Steve says in the documentary that he had to convince Mike to stop digging at the foundation, or else the house would collapse.
During this digging project, which lasted for nearly two years, Mike had a stroke, which he believes happened because of the stress of this digging. Mike, who was a divorced dad at this point, asked his sons Michael Carroll Jr. and Chris Carroll (who are both interviewed in the documentary) to continue the digging. In 2018, Chris found in the house’s basement what would be the turning point in the mystery: the bones of his grandfather George.
This discovery was big news, particularly in the U.S. media, so it’s not spoiler information to reveal that George’s body was found. What this review won’t reveal is the result of an autopsy, which showed that George could have been murdered or could have died in an accident. Mike says he and Steve were going to confront Richard Sr. about what Richard Sr. knew about George’s death, and were all set to travel to Texas, where Richard Sr. was living at the time, but Richard Sr. died a day or two before the brothers had planned to see him. The documentary does not mention Richard Sr.’s cause of death.
According to family members interviewed in the documentary, George’s body was found on the night of October 30, 2018, and was reported to law enforcement on October 31, 2018. Because the discovery of the body was reported on Halloween, Mike says that police didn’t take the report seriously at first because they thought the family’s phone call about the body was a Halloween prank. When police finally arrived at the house to investigate, they were shocked to see that the family was telling the truth.
These questions remain: How much did Richard Sr. and Dorothy really know about George’s disappearance? How and why did George die? Mike says that if George was murdered, then he refuses to believe that Dorothy had anything to do with it. Mike also thinks it’s possible that Dorothy didn’t know that George was buried underneath the house. Mike’s siblings Steve and Jean think it’s very possible that Dorothy knew the truth all along, but they can’t say for sure what Dorothy knew.
Because of Richard Sr.’s work experience in building construction and because Richard Sr. had full access to the house, the Carroll family members interviewed in the documentary believe that Richard Sr. is the person who was most likely to have buried George in the basement. “The Secrets We Bury” methodically and respectfully tells this tragic story in a straightforward, no-frills way, with no actor re-enactments or outsider commentary. The Carroll family might not get full closure about happened to George, but they can get some level of comfort that George’s body was recovered (the body was eventually cremated), so the family members can properly grieve and try to heal from his untimely death.
Investigation Discovery premiered “The Secrets We Bury” on December 16, 2025.