Missing Alabama College Student’s Remains Identified After 47 Years

Skeletal stays discovered inside a rusted-out automobile in an Alabama creek roughly a 12 months in the past have been positively recognized as a 22-year-old school pupil who vanished 47 years in the past, authorities mentioned Monday.

Kyle Clinkscales’ stays, which had been pulled out of the submerged 1974 Ford Pinto in late 2021, had been confirmed with the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Troup County Sheriff’s Workplace in Georgia mentioned in an announcement.

An official report stating a way of dying has not been accomplished and so it is not going to be launched, the sheriff’s workplace mentioned.

The Auburn College pupil vanished whereas returning to the Alabama campus from his hometown of LaGrange, Georgia, on the night time of Jan. 27, 1976.

The automobile identification variety of the automobile discovered within the muddy creek matched the one which Clinkscales had been driving on the time of his disappearance. His pockets was additionally discovered contained in the automobile, alongside along with his identification and bank cards, authorities beforehand mentioned.

What stays unknown is how the automobile ended up within the creek.

Authorities for years investigated whether or not Clinkscales had been murdered, and in 2005, they arrested a person who they suspected was concerned in his dying.

That man, who was later convicted of creating false statements to police, instructed investigators that he had a dialog with one other man who claimed to have shot Clinkscales after which moved his physique to a spot “the place nobody would ever discover him.”

The individual he recognized because the killer died years later, The Atlanta Journal-Structure reported.

“Everyone was all the time questioning if he was going to indicate up someplace,” Lauren Griffen, a buddy of Clinkscales’, not too long ago instructed Atlanta station WXIA-TV.

Clinkscales was an solely little one and his mother and father by no means stopped holding out hope that they’d discover him, Troup County Sheriff James Woodruff mentioned at a press convention after the automobile was discovered.

Clinkscales’ father died in 2007 and his mom died in January 2021, simply 11 months earlier than his stays had been discovered.

“It was all the time her hope that he would come dwelling. It was all the time our hope that we might discover him for her earlier than she handed away. Simply the truth that now we have hopefully discovered him and the automobile brings me an enormous sigh of reduction,” mentioned Woodruff.