Case closed on Kyle Clinkscales' disappearance with few answers
TROUP COUNTY, Ga. - It is a heartbreaking ending to one of the oldest missing persons cases on the books in Georgia. This week, the Troup County Sheriff’s Office announced that tests on the recently discovered remains of Kyle Clinkscales cannot say how he died or even if he was murdered.
Was it a car accident or something more sinister? Kyle Clinkscales remains, and the evidence found in his submerged Ford Pinto in 2021, can reveal no more. So, the questions about how he died will continue unanswered for now.
It seemed miraculous in January 2021, that Clinkscales’ car was found submerged in an Alabama creek 45 years after he disappeared on his way back to Auburn University from his home in Troup County.
Bones found in the Ford Pinto matched his family's DNA last year. It was Kyle. The next step was determining his cause of death. As FOX 5 reported in 2023, it was a longshot for GBI investigators who have had the remains for two years.
This week, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Troup County Sheriff’s Office announced the cause of death was impossible to determine from the skeletal remains and other evidence they found in the car.
"So, the case is closed for now with the understanding that if new information comes forward, we will look at it then," said Sgt. Stewart Smith of the Troup County Sheriff’s Office.
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(Troup County Sheriff's Office)
In the four decades after his disappearance, the names of numerous Troup County criminals swirled about the investigation.
The only person ever prosecuted in the case was Jimmy Earl Jones. Jones was convicted of giving false statements to investigators in 2008 and sentenced to 9 years in prison. And although he claimed a man named Ray Hyde murdered Kyle, the changing stories he told about that night frustrated the investigation for years, and branded Jones an unreliable witness.
The sheriff’s office says the GBI will now release Kyle’s remains to his family. He was the only child of John and Louis who passed away before the 2021 discovery of their son’s remains. They say no other close relatives remain in Georgia.
Other than the protocol of releasing the remains, the sheriff’s office says it does not know yet of any funeral plans. Authorities said back in 2021, that it was the dying wish of Kyle's mother that if he were found afterward, that he would have a Christian burial.