It has been two years since Joel Rosenbaum went missing in Habersham County, and his family is still searching for answers. Rosenbaum, who was last seen on the evening of January 26, 2023, near the Chevron station in Clarkesville, disappeared after being released from the Habersham County Detention Center earlier that evening.
He had been arrested two days earlier, on January 24, 2023, on various traffic charges. After his release from custody, Rosenbaum walked out of the jail with only the clothes on his back and his driver’s license.
Joel’s brother, Harold Rosenbaum, had warned authorities that his brother struggled with mental health issues, including depression and bipolar disorder. The family’s concerns only grew after Joel disappeared.
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Searches
In the two years since his last known sighting, the Rosenbaum family, along with friends, volunteers, and local authorities, have tirelessly searched for any trace of Joel. On February 2, 2023, they conducted a search around the Clarkesville area, but no new evidence or leads emerged.
A $10,000 reward was posted, urging anyone with information to come forward. Another search took place in the Clayton area on February 20, 2023, after a report from a Rabun County woman who believed she had seen Joel. However, that search also yielded no new results.
Specialty tracking dogs were brought in on April 4, 2023, to search areas around Habersham County, but they too found no new leads. Despite these efforts, the search for Joel continued to come up empty.
SEE ALSO: Family asks for public’s help to find missing man
Expanded search
In an attempt to expand the search, Harold Rosenbaum listed Joel on the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), a platform for families and authorities to track missing persons on a national scale. DNA swabs from Harold and his sister and Joel’s dental records were also submitted in hopes of identifying him should he be found. Unfortunately, recent reports of skeletal remains found in Cherokee, NC, and near Hiawassee did not match Joel’s description.
Since Joel’s disappearance, Harold has been vigilantly monitoring his brother’s social security account and driver’s license, hoping for any sign of activity that would suggest Joel was still alive or had reentered society. However, there has been no activity on either front. Joel’s driver’s license has since expired, and there has been no attempt to renew it.
Despite his efforts to secure help for his brother, Harold’s attempts to have Joel committed due to his mental decline were thwarted by a judge in Gwinnett County, who determined that Joel posed no threat to himself or others. Just two weeks later, Joel went missing.
Moving forward
After maintaining Joel’s home, mortgage, and bills for two years, Harold and the family made the difficult decision to move forward. In late 2024, they petitioned the court to declare Joel deceased, after receiving advice from several probate attorneys.
A judge ruled in favor of the petition on December 13, 2024. However, the family has not yet received the official paperwork from the court. “After two years, he didn’t look like a missing person anymore,” Harold said. “If he was younger, I probably wouldn’t have gone that route, but at his age, not being an experienced person that can live out in the wild, I just don’t see him being alive,”
Despite the legal ruling, the family still struggles with a lack of closure. While Harold is able to visit his parents at their cemetery and find some sense of peace, he says there is no finality in Joel’s case. The question of what happened to him lingers, making it difficult to move on.
As the search continues, Harold’s hope remains that someone will come forward with information that will help the family find the closure they seek. “We just want to know what happened,” Harold said. “Where did he go? What happened to him?”
