Auburn student missing since 1976 found dead in car submerged in creek
Chambers County AL December 9 2021
The body of an Auburn University student who disappeared more than four decades ago has now been found.
was 22-years-old in 1976 when he left LaGrange, Georgia to go back to Auburn, where he was a junior.
Clinkscales reportedly left the Moose Club in his hometown of LaGrange, where he was bartender, about 11 p.m. to drive back to Auburn.
He never arrived on campus and his white, two-door 1974 Ford Pinto Runabout was never seen again either.
On Tuesday, about 11:30 a.m., deputies with the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office were notified of a what appeared to be a car submerged in a creek off of County Road 83, approximately one mile from County Road 388, in LaFayette, according to the Troup County Sheriff’s Office.
Once they arrived on scene, they recovered the car from the water, and it appeared to be an older model Ford passenger car with a 1976 Georgia tag with a Troup County decal.
Chambers County officials contacted the Troup County Sheriff’s Office for assistance in trying to run the tag information.
The Troup County tag office was contacted, and investigators began to check for any records they may have had.
The learned the tag and VIN matched that of a 1974 Ford Pinto Runabout which was the same car that Clinkscales was last seen driving on the night of January 27th.
Troup County Sheriff James Woodruff told reporters at a Wednesday morning news conference that Clinkscales’ wallet and remains were inside the vehicle.
Clinkscales father, John Dixon Clinkscales, published a book in 1981 called “Kyle’s Story: Friday Never Came.”
In 2005, Jimmy Earl Jones, then 63, was charged in Georgia with concealing the death of Clinkscales, hindering the apprehension of a criminal and two counts of false statements and concealment of the facts, The Associated Press reported at the time.
The Troup County sheriff in 2005, Donny Turner, told reporters Jones acknowledged helping move Clinkscales’ body shortly after his death, but Jones said he didn’t know what caused the death.
Jones was arrested after a man contacted Clinkscales’ parents and said that when he was 7, he saw Jones help another man move the body and then he saw his own grandfather help dump a barrel containing the body into a pond in southern Troup County.
The outcome of the 2005 case against Jones was not immediately clear.
Woodruff said at the press conference he could not comment on Jones’ arrest or the related arrest of another person, Jeanne Pawlack Johnson.
“That was another administration, another prosecutor,” Woodruff said, according to the LaGrange Daily News. “You’d have to direct those questions to them and why they made those arrests.”
