Skeletal remains found inside of a rusted-out vehicle in an Alabama creek roughly a year ago have been positively identified as a 22-year-old college student who vanished 47 years ago, authorities said Monday.
Kyle Clinkscales’ remains, which were pulled out of the submerged 1974 Ford Pinto in late 2021, were confirmed with the help of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Troup County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia said in a statement.
An official report stating a manner of death has not been completed and so it will not be released, the sheriff’s office said.
The Auburn University student vanished while returning to the Alabama campus from his hometown of LaGrange, Georgia, on the night of Jan. 27, 1976.
The vehicle identification number of the car found in the muddy creek matched the one that Clinkscales had been driving at the time of his disappearance. His wallet was also found inside the vehicle, along with his identification and credit cards, authorities previously said.
What remains unknown is how the vehicle ended up in the creek.
Authorities for years investigated whether Clinkscales had been murdered, and in 2005, they arrested a man who they suspected was involved in his death.
That man, who was later convicted of making false statements to police, told investigators that he had a conversation with another man who claimed to have shot Clinkscales and then moved his body to a place “where no one would ever find him.”
The person he identified as the killer died years later, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“Everybody was always wondering if he was going to show up somewhere,” Lauren Griffen, a friend of Clinkscales’, recently told Atlanta station WXIA-TV.
Clinkscales was an only child and his parents never stopped holding out hope that they’d find him, Troup County Sheriff James Woodruff said at a press conference after the vehicle was found.
Clinkscales’ father died in 2007 and his mother died in January 2021, just 11 months before his remains were found.
“It was always her hope that he would come home. It was always our hope that we would find him for her before she passed away. Just the fact that we have hopefully found him and the car brings me a big sigh of relief,” said Woodruff.