Remains discovered at a mobile home park in Ormond Beach, Fla., late last month have been positively identified as those of a 16-year-old girl who disappeared in 2004, authorities confirmed.
“This week, VSO Crime Scene Unit personnel and an ANDE Rapid DNA scientist developed a profile from DNA extracted from bones recovered from the Ormond Beach burial site,” said Thursday the Volusia County Sheriff's Office in an update. The DNA was matched to Autumn McClure's family.
“Rather than sending the DNA to a state laboratory for analysis, using VSO's ANDE Rapid DNA technology significantly reduced the time required for official family identification,” the office said of the sheriff.
McClure, 16, was reported missing by her grandmother in May 2004, after her boyfriend told her he had dropped her off at a mall. Her boyfriend later said he left her on a bridge where she got into a car with a woman named Jessica Freeman.
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Autumn McClure's remains were positively identified 20 years after her disappearance. (Volusia County Sheriff's Office)
Investigators learned that McClure lived with Freeman, with whom she worked at a Winn-Dixie supermarket, as well as Freeman's boyfriend, Brian Donley, who was 31 at the time, and that the three were involved in A love relationship.
They lived in the Shady Oaks mobile home park and told investigators that McClure only stayed with them for a short time, saying they did not know where she was.
In 2021, the sheriff's office received a tip claiming that Donley or his girlfriend were responsible for the death of a teenage girl in Volusia County. Investigators followed the informant and obtained additional evidence.
Donley died during a medical operation in 2022 and subsequently, Freeman received a letter of immunity and she confessed to seeing Donley kill McClure.
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The Volusia County, Florida Sheriff's Office has identified the recently discovered human remains as 16-year-old Autumn McClure. (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“She came home one afternoon and saw Brian choking Autumn in the bathroom,” Sheriff Mike Chitwood said. “When she intervened, she saw that Autumn was lifeless and she left” the caravan. Freeman told investigators that Donley threatened to kill her if she ever spoke about McClure's murder.
Freeman is not a suspect.
In the 20 years since McClure's disappearance, the property the trailer was located on has changed hands several times and a new trailer was placed there in 2021.
The sheriff's office was able to have the trailer, along with the concrete it rested on, removed to allow for excavation of the property last week.
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Chitwood added that while Donley will not face justice in this life, “I hope to God that when he took his last breath on May 26, 2022, he may have had a vision of the place where he was going.”
Greg Wehner of Fox News contributed to this report.