New Delhi: Authorities on Monday positively identified the remains of an Auburn student whose car was found in an Alabama creek 45 years after he disappeared.
On Monday, the Troup County Sheriff's Office announced in a news release that the officials identified the remains recovered from a creek in Chambers County as belonging to 22-year-old Kyle Clinkscales. The remains were found inside Clinkscales's 1974 Ford Pinto back in 2021.
According to the Guardian, Clinkscales was last seen alive at a bar where he worked in his hometown of LaGrange, Georgia, on the night of 27 January 1976. He was planning to drive back to school in Alabama about 35 miles away in his white 1974 Ford Pinto, but he never arrived.
“It was like the earth opened … and he vanished,” his mother, Louise Clinkscales, once told their local newspaper, as reported by the Guardian.
According to the sheriff's department, the remains were analyzed by an FBI lab at the request of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and currently, an official report has not been completed or released in relation to the manner of death.
Inside the car, investigators found what they believed were human bones along with identification and credit cards belonging to Clinkscales, Sheriff James Woodruff of Troup County, Georgia said at the time.
Despite that confirmation, Clinkscales’ cause and manner of death have not been determined, the sheriff’s office announcement added.
Authorities in Troup County have previously said Clinkscales was killed. According to news reports, in 2005, they arrested two people in connection with his disappearance after they said his parents received a call from a man who said he witnessed the disposal of their son's body as a 7-year-old, and it was covered with concrete in a barrel and dumped into a pond.
The two people were accused of making false statements. Pete Skandalakis, who was the district attorney at the time, said he made the decision not to indict one of those people. The other pleaded guilty to two counts of making false statements and spent seven years and eight months behind bars, as per CBS news.