Cold Case Goes Warm: GA Man's Car Found At Bottom Of Alabama Creek 45 Years Later

TROUP COUNTY, GA — Kyle Clinkscales, a 22-year-old Auburn University college student, went missing on Jan. 27, 1976, on his 35-mile drive back to campus from his bartending job in his hometown of LaGrange. Authorities followed hundreds of leads, Troup Country Sheriff James Woodruff said, but never found answers — until this week.

On Tuesday, investigators found Clinkscales' white 1974 Ford Pinto submerged in a creek that runs underneath County Road 83 in Cusseta, Alabama — about 33 miles from LaGrange, 25 miles from Auburn University and roughly 13 miles from Interstate 85, the main artery between LaGrange and Auburn. Someone spotted the car and called authorities, officials said.

In addition to Clinkscales' car, investigators also found his ID and several credit cards in the car, Woodruff said, as well as several human bones. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is now sifting through the muddy contents of the car and analyzing the bones to confirm whether they belong to Clinkscales.

"For 45 years we have searched for Kyle and his car. We followed hundreds of leads, and never really had anything substantial develop from those leads," Woodruff said in a news conference Wednesday. "We are glad today."

Law enforcement in Troup County initially investigated Clinkscales' death as a possible killing.

In 2005, Troup County investigators arrested two people in connection with his disappearance — Jimmy Earl Jones and Jeanne Johnson — after John and Louis Clinkscales, Kyle's parents, said they got a call from a man who claimed to witness the disposal of their son's body as a 7-year-old, CBS News reported. The witness said his body was covered with concrete, put in a barrel, and dumped into a pond that belonged to a man named Ray Hyde, a convicted car thief.

Both Johnson and Jones were accused of hindering the investigation, and Jones was later convicted of making false statements to police, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. He spent nearly eight years behind bars, while Johnson was never indicted.

Troup County investigators had speculated that Hyde, who died in July 2001, killed Clinkscales because he thought he may have found out about Hyde's role in hiding stolen cars on his 50-acre salvage yard, according to the AJC. Hyde was arrested six months after Clinkscales disappeared on auto theft charges and was later sent to prison.

No other leads ever led to an arrest or answers to Clinkscales' disappearance.

When asked by reporters what his theory of the case is after Tuesday's discovery, Woodruff said investigators are looking into all possible outcomes.

"I want to see what the GBI finds in the car — how many bones they find, do they find a skull, is there something that we can take to the crime lab and determine if there was foul play?" he said at the news conference. "Was he murdered and left there? Did he run off the road and wreck there? That's some things we hope to discover, but it's been 45 years."

Woodruff said he only wished they'd made this discovery earlier, before Clinkscales' parents died. His father, John, died in 2007 and his mother, Louise, died in January 2021.

"It was always her hope that he would come home. It was always our hope that we would find him for her before she passed away," Woodruff said. "So just the fact that we have hopefully found him and the car brings me a big sigh of relief."