(WWJ) — Police in West Michigan have found the remains of a Metro Detroit man who went missing during the Electric Forest Music Festival in 2018.
Kevin Graves of Oakland County's Highland Township was 28 years old when he was last seen at the festival in Rothbury, north of Muskegon. Search parties near the festival grounds at Double JJ Ranch came up empty in the weeks after the 2018 event, as did efforts to find him in the years since — including distributing fliers and even paying for a billboard near the festival.
This week officials with the Michigan State Police Sixth District said troopers and detectives from the Hart Post were called to a wooded area near Rothbury after someone found human remains on Monday, Dec. 30.
On Thursday afternoon MSP released an update, saying forensic anthropologists from The Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine had made the positive identification through dental record comparisons earlier in the day.
The cause of death has yet to be determined and may take several months, MSP officials said. There are, however, no indications of foul play at this time, according to MSP.
At the time of Graves' disappearance in 2018, some had speculated that he may have left the festival to join a cult, according to a prior report from MLive, though his family was skeptical of that idea.
Witnesses told police in 2018 they saw Graves crying while walking away from the campgrounds after an apparent argument with his girlfriend.
"Now that we have positive identification of the remains at least the family has some closure on where he is and now hopefully the next steps can determine what happened," Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said in a statement Thursday.
