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.
I remember several found in a submerged car in Western Oklahoma quite a few years ago.
Then there were some who ran off a bridge and flipped their car into the river in Eastern OK in the last few years.
Reminds me of the movie GHOST STORY from 1981.
I had a baby blue pinto and considered myself lucky to fave it. We got it at the beginning of the gas shortage
Very few options
The picture reminds me of a movie from 1981, “Ghost Story”. There is a scene where an old car is pulled out of a river, or a lake, and a girl’s body is in it…
Melvyn Douglas, Fred Astaire, John Houseman, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. among others. A great movie.
I think I’ll look for it tonight…
I just saw your post! Me too!
My condolences to the family and friends of the young man. Yes, at long last he has been found.
My husband’s freshman year college roommate is/was missing. Happened right around the time we graduated. To my knowledge he’s not been found. He was last known to be embarking on a country wide road trip, hoping to be gone for a few months. I always wonder if they ever found him. Hope so. He was a nice guy.
It is rather sleek looking.
“Why would the hood be missing?”
Probably tore off when the kid hit the sound of speed in it.
When I was in college I drove the worst clunker around. I would tell my buddies when we came out of any business we went into that I would trade my car for any other one on the lot. I think only one time did I take it back.
When I graduated one of my life’s goals was to one day own a car less than 10 years old. Only 6 months later I was the proud owner of a 79 Pinto station wagon. Gorgeous medium blue with 4 speed and wire wheel covers. I drove it for 5 years and had no issues. I DID ride like a truck. Even drove it to Florida a couple times. Flipping the back seat down there was plenty of room to stretch out and sleep when I didn’t have the $ for a motel room or just wanted to catch a couple hours.
If you know his name, this woman keeps a very good repository of active missing person cases going back decades, often including details surrounding their disappearances as well as case updates, if any. It's easy to search.
Thank you, will look.
Who’s the U Boat commander?
What a perfect line that was….
Checked and he’s not on there. Maybe that means his case was resolved? He had a very common name, and I don’t know his middle name, but a search for just his last name turned up no one with the same first name.
Yep. I remember that. The people living in the neighborhood had no idea but the car was fairly clear in the satellite photos.
In the missing persons link I posted above this post, it's amazing the number of "resolved" cases are cars found years later in bodies of water.
Just last week, the body of a woman missing since 2001 was found in her car in a retention pond in Florida.
I wonder if it’s in good enough shape to be rebuilt? Those cars are quite rare on the resale market as they were not regarded as desirable to preserve.
PINTO! No sweat! Send it to the scrappers in Missouri! Instead of crushing it for scrap they will take another wrecked Pinto, splice the two( or three) together clean it and run it down into Arkansas where they can sell it at the auto auchtons as an abandoned car!
There you can get a nice clean new Arkansas title for $45 showing it has never been wrecked and only driven to church on Sundays by the salesman’s poor old grandma.
Guaranteed to run till you get a mile from the car lot!
It is the Arkan-saw way!
I was fascinated about this story and posted a few photos of the area before development and after the subdivision, roads, and artificial lakes were finished off showing the submerged car. I think he went missing in 1997 or 1998, in western Lake Worth, FL AKA Wellington.
I thought it was from the ‘70s also.
We had the Mercury Bobcat. The Merc version of the Pinto.
It was black and white. Black vinyl top.
As a kid I liked it. Like a Small station wagon and we had a full-panel window on the hatch, so fun to sit back there and have a full view.
We did not have any particular problems.
Bear in mind this was the alternate car to our successive Lincoln Town Cars (which I absolutely adore).
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