Their son has been missing for decades, but each time Louise and John Clinkscales left their home in LaGrange, Georgia to search for him, one of them left a note.
If their son Kyle returned while they were away, his parents wanted their only child to know that a lot had changed since he was last seen in 1976 at the age of 22. They loved him, the Clinkscales would write, and there, on the dining room table was a spare car key for him.
“They left no stone unturned,” said Ms. Clinkscales’ sister, Martha Morrison, 88, of Oxford, Alabama, in an interview.
Mr. Clinkscales’ parents died before authorities made a remarkable discovery in December 2021: a 1974 Ford Pinto sticking out of a stream, an ID card in Mr. Clinkscales’ rusting car, and about 50 skeletal fragments trapped in the mud.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation confirmed last week that the remains were those of Mr. Clinkscales. Erin Hackley, the Troup County, Georgia coroner, said it could be months before investigators could determine a cause of death given the age of the remains, if they can pinpoint one at all.
For a little over 47 years, residents of LaGrange, about 70 miles southwest of Atlanta, wondered what happened to a sports-obsessed young man who attended Auburn University in Alabama.
At university, he began to search for his place in the world and what career he should pursue. On January 27, 1976, Mr. Clinkscales quit his part-time job at a bar in LaGrange and made the approximately 45-minute drive to Auburn University, where he was a sophomore.
Investigators believe that something happened at some point during his journey and his whereabouts have remained a mystery ever since.
Sergeant Stewart Smith of the Troup County Sheriff’s Office said a driver in Cusseta, Alabama, about 30 miles southwest of LaGrange, was on a dual carriageway on December 7, 2021 when he saw the tailgate of a rusted vehicle sticking out of the creek and called the authorities. It wasn’t clear what allowed the car to become visible from the road after all this time.
The creek in Chambers County, Ala., outside of LaGrange was probably never searched because the road probably would not have been Mr. Clinkscale’s main route to Auburn, although it could have been an alternate one.
“We were shocked,” Sergeant Smith said, noting how MPs felt to find that the oldest missing person cold case in the county was finally over, just 11 months after Ms Clinkscales died in January 2021 at the age of 92 had died.
The Troup County Sheriff’s Office and the Clinkscales had searched extensively for Mr. Clinkscales for the first few weeks after his disappearance. Lakes have been drained. Rewards were promised. Deputies searched forests for a single lead.
For Louise and John Clinkscales, the effort was a passionate, all-consuming search that mirrored dozens of other missing person cases across the country, with loved ones asking for tips, searchers growing weary with each unsuccessful endeavor, and members of a weary community , who looked horrified that something so frightening could have happened to one of them.
Her determination was the source of admiration for many.
Kyle Clinkscales had always loved New Orleans, so the couple bought ads around town asking for help locating their son. He’d loved Hawaii when he was on vacation as a boy, so his parents sent letters to every police department in the state, according to a 1978 interview they gave with The Auburn Plainsman.
And when clues came in that a person matching his description had been found—strong chin, shaggy brown hair, thick eyebrows—they drove to the locations where those clues had originated. Two years after their son’s disappearance, the Clinkscales had given out nearly 5,000 bumper stickers to obtain information.
They became supporters for the families of others who had missing relatives and tried to draw attention to cases that weren’t as well publicized. The Clinkscales were among those invited to the White House in 1985 to meet with President Ronald Reagan to explore ways to address the problem of missing and exploited children, The LaGrange Daily News reported.
At their home — the same where Kyle Clinkscales grew up and adorned with pictures of him smiling and wearing a bow tie — his parents’ urge to find their son sometimes gave way to fatigue, said Ms Hackley, who knew the Family.
In an interview with The Plainsman in 1978, John Clinkscales expressed his unease: Perhaps, he said, his son, who didn’t really like college, felt he was a financial burden on his parents. Rather than stepping out or sharing his feelings, “maybe he wanted to make it easier for us by disappearing,” John Clinkscales said.
Nothing out of the ordinary was found in Kyle Clinkscale’s apartment, suggesting he ran away or moved elsewhere.
In fact, Ms Clinkscales recalled her son, who was last seen on a Tuesday, promising to collect the clothes she had ironed for him by Friday. Ms. Hackley said that years later, when John Clinkscales was thinking about a title for his book about his son, he used a phrase that kept recurring in his mind: “Friday never came.”
John Clinkscales, who died in 2007, submitted DNA samples to investigators for testing if his son’s remains were ever found, Ms Hackley said. Mrs. Clinkscales did the same. Ms Hackley, who was with Ms Clinkscales when she died, said she searched for her son up until her last days.
Ms Hackley said that when she received the call from investigators that the remains had been identified, she called Ms Morrison, who responded with relief and regret that Mr Clinkscales’ parents were no longer alive to complete the investigation to hear news.
“They were very strong Christians,” said Ms. Morrison. “They had faith that things would work out for them. And they never gave up hope.”
When Kyle Clinkscales’ remains are returned to his relatives, they plan to go to Shadowlawn Cemetery in LaGrange, Ms. Morrison said.
There in the soft earth, between the graves of his mother and father, he will be buried, nestled in a space reserved for him years ago.
Susan Beachy contributed to the research.
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