ROCK HOUSE – Police and officials with the state medical examiner’s office in Frankfort are now working to gain positive identification of a body found inside a car pulled from a body of water near Rock House in Magoffin County Tuesday night.

Information from Kentucky State Police Post 9 in Pikeville said the police received an anonymous tip that there were human remains in a pond near the community.

Reports following arrival of the police to the scene were that the car was pulled from the water after the Magoffin County Rescue Squad used a magnet to locate the vehicle.

Once the vehicle was pulled to the surface, the remains were found in the trunk of the 1980s model car. Rescue squad officials at the scene have said the body appeared as if it could have been there for several decades.

State police have been notified by locals in the community, which is near the Morgan County line, that there was apparently a missing person case in the area in the 1980s, according to reports from WYMT Wednesday, but have not acted on this information without further word from the state medical examiner’s office.

The remains were sent to that office in Frankfort Wednesday for positive identification and to determine an exact cause of death.

The case, which is considered by police at this time as a death investigation, remains under investigation by KSP Det. Ben Cramer.