Posted on 02/23/2023 11:22:59 AM PST by Drew68
GEORGIA - Human bones found inside a submerged car near the Georgia-Alabama state line in 2021 have been matched to a college student who had been missing for 47 years, according to a Georgia sheriff.
Kyle Clinkscales, 22, of LaGrange, vanished in January 1976 after leaving the Georgia club where he worked as a bartender to return to school at Auburn University in neighboring Alabama.
Investigators got a break in the cold case in December 2021, when someone spotted a car in a murky Alabama creek. The 1974 Ford Pinto pulled from the water belonged to Clinkscales, and some of his belongings were still inside. So were about 50 bones, including part of a skull.
The office of Troup County Sheriff James Woodruff announced in a statement Sunday that forensic tests by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the FBI have concluded that the bones found inside the car more than a year ago are Clinkscales' remains.
"At this time an official report has not been completed or released by the GBI as it relates to a manner of death," according to the sheriff's statement.
GBI spokesperson Nelly Miles confirmed Wednesday that investigators have not determined how Clinkscales died or whether foul play was involved.
In 2006, Jimmy Earl Jones pleaded guilty to making false statements to authorities about Clinkscales' death and was sentenced to four years in prison.
Jones had told investigators that Clinkscales was fatally shot by someone else, but he gave conflicting accounts that prosecutors determined were useless to uncovering the truth.
Pete Skandalakis, the former district attorney who prosecuted Jones, said after Clinkscales' car was found that the "most plausible explanation" for his death was that he accidentally ran off the road.
Teddy, in Hell, gritting teeth, “Damned, if I had been driving a Pinto instead of an Oldsmobile, I would have become president.”
And at Martha’s Vineyard.
Yes, American cars went downhill at that time. It was much tougher to make them go uphill.
Probably tore off during the recovery. On a job like this, you just put J hooks wherever they’ll hook, and start the winch.
If he had been in a Vega the oil slick would have given him away.
The Pinto was in production for almost 10 years, it outlasted the Vega and the Gremlin.
Two boys fishing off the bridge saw the car and called the police. He should have gotten a sea-green car, for camouflage.
Do you remember a few years back someone posted about this same kind of story, I think in FL and the site ended up being a pond in one of those newer neighborhood developments? I actually may have seen a FORENSIC Files about it too. There was a road along one side of this neighborhood pond. You could sort of see the submerged car in the satellite views.
I’m surprised anyone could even get a glimpse of that car in that water.
That’s a better explanation than the car was in the past raided for parts by some local shop.
Chappaquiddick, actually. A smaller adjacent island.
Ode to Billy Joe... the sequel
🙂
It looks like from the windshield; the care was upside down at one point.
Watch the video. During a trial, it turned out that Ford had commented on a proposed DOT regulation requiring flexible filler tubes for automobile gas tanks that the cost (about $10 per car in 1970) could not be justified by the benefit to society of the very small number of lives saved. It was not that a life was not worth $10, it was that a life was not worth several million dollars, but juries do not think like that, and it was open season on Ford, and the Pinto for several years thereafter.
“I drove a 74 Pinto in 1976..................”
You really shouldn’t brag about growing up in a rich family.
I was a lowly E2 in the Marines!................
I remember that one well. I was able to see the car in Google Earth. Spooky.
“The 1974 Ford Pinto pulled from the water”
Check for a snapped off door handle on the inside.
I bet he tried to get out, but the door handle broke off.
For those that remember.
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