Human remains found in submerged truck of man missing since 2018, Kentucky officials say

More than three years after a Kentucky man went missing, officials believe his body has been located.

Chaos Divers, a diving team based out of Harrisburg, Illinois, helped unlock the most important piece of the case when they found a license plate in a McCreary County pond on Sunday, Dec. 5, according to a coroner’s report. The plate belonged to the truck of Jeff Anthony Shepherd, who was 30 when he went missing in 2018, officials say.

Divers then found his truck submerged in the pond, and it was pulled from the water by a towing service. Inside the truck were human remains, which will be sent to the medical examiner’s office for identification, McCreary County Coroner Tim Corder said.

The coroner did not say the remains were of Shepherd, but the diving team that made the discovery believe they are his.

“We are extremely humbled to announce that Jeffrey Anthony Shepherd has been brought home to his loved ones,” Chaos Divers said in a Facebook post.

Shepherd, of Whitley City, was last seen at his home on March 12, 2018, Kentucky State Police said after he went missing. A friend said he saw him that night at Missy’s Bar in Winfield, Tennessee, but he had not been seen or heard from since then.

There was a $10,000 reward for information leading to Shepherd’s discovery, and a missing person’s poster was updated to show he has been found.

The town of Strunk, where the truck and remains were located, is near the Tennessee border about 5 miles north of Winfield.

This story was originally published December 6, 2021 at 10:41 AM with the headline "Human remains found in submerged truck of man missing since 2018, Kentucky officials say."