Car and remains of Auburn student missing since 1976 found in Alabama creek
The search for an Auburn University student who never made it back to campus after winter break in 1976 is over.
Kyle Clinkscales was 22 when he was last seen Jan. 27, 1976, leaving his hometown of La Grange, Ga. His car was found Tuesday in an Alabama creek, police announced.
The creek was not far from Interstate 85, which connects La Grange to Auburn, about 40 miles apart across the Alabama-Georgia state border. But police do not think Clinkscales’ death was an accident, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
In 2005, a man named Jimmy Earl Jones confessed to moving Clinkscales’ body shortly after he was killed, cops told reporters at the time. Jones spent just over five years in prison after pleading guilty to making false statements to police. He was released in 2013.
But police never named a killer in Clinkscales’ case and never determined his cause of death.
Cops in Chambers County, Ala., were notified Tuesday of a 1974 Ford Pinto half-submerged in a creek off County Road 83 near the town of LaFayette, police said. They ran the car’s plates and found it was registered in Troup County, Ga., on the other side of the state line.
Troup County cops realized the vehicle was registered to Clinkscales, whose cold case they’d struggled to solve over 45 years, according to a Facebook post from the Troup County Sheriff’s Office.
Police also found bones and Clinkscales’ ID in the car, according to the AJC. Additionally, they found a wallet with several credit cards.
Investigators believe Roy Hyde, a car thief who died in 2001, was behind the murder of Clinkscales, but never formally charged or accused him, the AJC reported. Cops searched Hyde’s salvage yard in 1996, 2003 and 2005 but never found Clinkscales’ body or the Ford Pinto they were looking for.
An unidentified man said he saw Clinkscales’ body in a barrel owned by Hyde. That man was only 7 years old when he saw the barrel and didn’t come forward until 2005, according to the AJC. His report led to Jones’ confession.
Clinkscales’ parents, John and Louise, kept hoping to find their son until their deaths. John died in 2007. Louise died earlier this year. Kyle was their only child.
