Despite the passage of decades, whenever the couple left their residence in LaGrange, they would leave a note just in case Kyle returned in their absence.
Their singular child needed to understand that they cherished him and that things had transformed since his disappearance at the age of 22. They left a spare car key for him on the dining table.
“They left no stone unturned,” remarked Martha Morrison, Ms. Clinkscales’ sister, aged 88, of Oxford, Ala., in an interview.
The couple died before a remarkable discovery was made in December 2021. A rusty 1974 Ford Pinto was discovered in a creek, with identification inside the car belonging to Mr. Clinkscales and about 50 skeletal fragments entombed in the mud.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation established last week that the remains belonged to Mr. Clinkscales.
Erin Hackley, the Troup County, Ga. coroner, stated that it might take investigators several months to determine the cause of death, if at all possible, given the remains’ age.
For a bit over 47 years, the citizens of LaGrange pondered what had happened to the sports-loving young man who was a student at Auburn University in Alabama.
At the university, he was in the early stages of discovering his place in the world and determining which career path to pursue.
On Jan. 27, 1976, Mr. Clinkscales left his part-time job at a bar in LaGrange and headed toward Auburn University, where he was a sophomore.
Investigators suspect that something occurred during his journey, and his whereabouts have remained unknown ever since.
Sgt. Stewart Smith from the Troup County Sheriff’s Office reported that a driver in Cusseta, Alabama spotted a rusted vehicle hatchback sticking out of a creek while driving on a two-lane road on December 7, 2021, and immediately alerted the authorities.
It remains unclear how the car became visible from the road after such a long time.
The creek outside LaGrange in Chambers County, Alabama, was probably not searched initially because it was unlikely to be Mr. Clinkscales’s main route to Auburn. However, it could have been an alternate one.
The discovery was a surprise for the Troup County Sheriff’s Office and the Clinkscales, as they had intensively searched for Mr. Clinkscales during the initial weeks after his disappearance, exhausting all possible leads.
Despite the effort, the county’s oldest missing person cold case remained unsolved until just 11 months after Ms. Clinkscales’s death in January 2021 at the age of 92.
Louise and John Clinkscales’ all-consuming passion for finding their son was inspiring. They became supporters of other families with missing loved ones and advocates for cases that received less public attention.
In 1985, they were invited to the White House to discuss ways to address the issue of missing and exploited children with President Ronald Reagan.
Their search tactics were creative, including buying ads in New Orleans, where Kyle Clinkscales had always liked, and sending letters to every police department in Hawaii, a place he enjoyed visiting as a child.
The couple distributed almost 5,000 bumper stickers seeking information two years after their son’s disappearance. In their home, decorated with pictures of their son, the couple’s tireless drive to find their son would sometimes give way to fatigue, according to Ms. Hackley, who knew the family.
In a 1978 interview with The Plainsman, John Clinkscales speculated that his son may have disappeared because he felt like a financial burden to his parents.
No evidence was found at Kyle Clinkscales’s apartment to indicate that he ran away or relocated. Moreover, Kyle had promised to pick up his pressed clothes by Friday before he went missing on Tuesday.
Years later, John Clinkscales used the phrase “Friday never came” as a title for his book about his son.
John Clinkscales, who passed away in 2007, provided investigators with DNA samples to test if his son’s remains were ever discovered.
When investigators informed Ms. Hackley that the remains had been identified, she contacted Ms. Morrison, who was relieved but saddened that Kyle Clinkscales’s parents were not alive to hear the news.
Ms. Morrison said that Kyle Clinkscales’s remains would be buried in Shadowlawn Cemetery in LaGrange, between his mother’s and father’s graves, in a spot reserved years ago for him, when they are returned to his relatives.
