Sea Pines Suicide: Body Of Massachusetts Man Found In Crawl Space

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The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) has confirmed it located the body of a Massachusetts man who went missing ten days earlier in the South Carolina Lowcountry. According to officials, 60-year-old Stanley Kotowski was found dead in the crawl space of a vacation rental home just a few doors down from a rental residence where he was staying in with family members.

As we previously reported, Kotowski was last seen on August 16, 2024 at approximately 10:30 a.m. EDT on a Ring camera leaving 226 South Sea Pines Drive – a vacation home in the Sea Pines resort community on Hilton Head. Kotowski was wearing a dark blue Coors Light t-shirt, shorts and no shoes – and did not have his cell phone with him.

Sheriff PJ Tanner opened a press conference on Tuesday morning by stating that very little information would be released regarding Kotowski’s case out of respect for the family.

“We’re going to be very respectful to the family and we’re going to keep a lot of information to ourselves for the time being,” Tanner said.

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When family members reported Kotowski missing, they also told authorities he was acting paranoid and had been experiencing mental health issues. According to BCSO lieutenant Eric Calendine, family members indicated was “paranoid and was going through a mental health crisis and he had sought medical attention days prior” related to that crisis.

Deputies were summoned to Sea Pines at approximately 12:42 p.m. EDT on August 16 – a little over two hours after the Ring camera video was recorded. The search for Kotowski commenced immediately as officers “began fanning out looking for this gentleman.”

The ten-day search included daily canvassing of the area where Kotowski was vacationing with BCSO deputies assisted by Sea Pines security. For more than a week, though… nothing. Although deputies had repeatedly searched the area, a Sea Pines security officer noticed something different on Monday and called law enforcement.

“He smelled something that was a foul odor and immediately saw that there were some flies in the area,” Calendine said.

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According to Calendine, deputies struggled to access the crawl space – and once they had worked their way inside, struggled to locate Kotowski.

“It was not easy to find where exactly we could find access… to the crawl space,” Calendine said. “We ended up finding a hatch that was by the outdoor shower on the deck… removed the hatch, an officer went down, took the flash light around, didn’t see anything, had to crawl into the crawl space around some pillars to finally locate the body.”

Kotowski’s body was found approximately 150 to 200 yards from the place he was last seen on a doorbell video, according to Tanner.

Beaufort County coroner David Ott said an autopsy conducted on Tuesday morning determined Kotowski died of “asphyxiation by hanging.” The manner of death was determined to have been a suicide. The date of his death was not conclusively established, but was assumed to have been the same day he went missing. 

Ott also confirmed the decedent had been “positively identified” as Kotowski.

“We’re going to leave it at that,” Ott said.

The Tuesday morning press conference followed a confusing afternoon of inaccurate information related to the public. Specifically, The (Hilton Head, S.C.) Island Packet filed a report on Monday afternoon citing BCSO source stating definitively that the remains of Kotowski had in fact not been found.

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RELATED | BODY FOUND IN SEA PINES: CONFUSION REIGNS

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“Kotoswski has not been found and (the) investigation remains ongoing,” the paper reported. “They are continuing their search and investigation for the missing husband and father from Methuen, Massachusetts.”

According to the paper’s sources, the alleged “confusion” regarding the discovery of Kotowski’s remains was due to “the proximity of the coroner’s van… in response to an unrelated medical event.”

As the Packet report was making the rounds in the Lowcountry, BCSO issued a statement on the investigation indicating the body its deputies discovered was likely Kotowski.

Both Tanner and Ott declined to provide further details about the death – or the specific location where Kotowski was found.  Tanner described the crawl space where Kotowski was found as “no more than three feet high” and “very unusual.”

“It’s very unique and it’s very small,” Tanner added. “To even consider that being an entry point for a crawl space is something you would probably overlook because it just doesn’t make a lot of sense on how that would be the crawl space entry point. And then once you get underneath the building it’s kind of a maze – you have to go several different directions because you have concrete pillars that are underneath.”

Reporters at the press conference tried to obtain further details related to the manner in which Kotowski took his life. Officials encouraged them to think beyond the specter of someone “dropping from the ceiling.”  

“An apparatus was used to reduce the amount of oxygen Kotowski was able to take in,” Tanner said, declining to elaborate out of respect for deceased’s family.   

BCSO officials expressed gratitude to the community for assisting them the search. They also urged citizens to be on the lookout for signs of mental illness.

“If there is a message in any of this, we have got to be more attentive to mental health,” Tanner said.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

Callie Lyons is a journalist, researcher and author. Her 2007 book ‘Stain-Resistant, Nonstick, Waterproof and Lethal’ was the first to cover forever chemicals and their impact on communities – a story later told in the movie ‘Dark Waters’. Her investigative work has been featured in media outlets, publications, and documentaries all over the world. Lyons also appears in ‘Citizen Sleuth’ – a 2023 documentary exploring the genre of true crime.

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