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Written by: E. George
Published May 3, 2024 @ 8:30 PM ET
TROUP COUNTY, Ga. – A 22-year-old male, Kyle Wade Clinkscales, disappeared in January 1976, and officials searched for answers to no avail for 45 years, deeming it a cold case. In December 2021, his vehicle was discovered submerged in a creek in Chambers County, Alabama.
Police found skeletal remains and Clinkscales’s wallet and driver’s license inside the 1974 Ford Pinto Runabout. In February 2022, The Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab identified the remains as Clinkscales’s, but the medical examiner ruled the cause of death as undetermined.
Troup County Sheriff James Woodruff revealed that the case is now closed unless additional information is discovered. He stated, “I want to once again thank my team of investigators, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office for their hard work to finally close this case after more than four decades.”
Witnesses reported last seeing Clinkscales driving away from the LaGrange Moose Club at approximately 11:00 PM on January 27, 1976, after his bartending shift. He was allegedly heading to Auburn University, the college he attended.
On December 7, 2021, a 911 caller alerted the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office that they had found a car in the water off County Road 38. The vehicle donned a 1976 Georgia license plate and a Troup County decal sticker. The VIN matched Clinkscales’s Pinto.
On December 8, 2021, officials notified Troup County authorities about the discovery.
At the time, Sheriff Woodruff said, “For 45 years, we have looked for this young man and his car. We drained lakes. We looked here and looked there, and it always turned out nothing. Then, out of the blue, we got the car, his ID, and hopefully his remains.”
Clinkscales’s parents, John and Louise Clinkscales, never gave up hope about finding answers, but sadly, John passed away in 2007, and Louise died in 2021.
Woodruff expressed, “It was always her hope that he would come home. Always our hope that we would find him for her. Just [the] fact that we found him and his car brings me a big sigh of relief.”
After Kyle’s disappearance, his father wrote “Kyle’s Story – Friday Never Came,” a book about the harrowing ordeal. Friday appears in the title because the family had planned to see him again that Friday, the week he vanished.
While the case has been officially closed, questions still exist regarding his mysterious death, and officials revealed that they suspect foul play.
In 2005, Troup County Sheriff’s investigators arrested two individuals in connection with the case. According to Fox 5 Atlanta, Troup County residents 61-year-old Jimmy Earl Jones and 57-year-old Jeanne Johnson were detained after someone alleged that the duo had witnessed Clinkscales’s murder.
The accuser claimed that his body was deposited into a concrete drum. The duo was accused of hindering the case but did not face murder charges.