State police positively identifies Hepworth’s remains.

James Hepworth

State police positively identifies Hepworth’s remains. 

LANSING — The Michigan State Police has confirmed that the remains of the body found in Wexford County on March 28 were those of James Hepworth, 37, of Pentwater, who had been missing since early August 2016, according to Hepworth’s widow, Amanda Wheaton.

The body was found by a cadaver dog approximately 3/4 to one mile away from where Hepworth’s truck was found last August in South Branch Township of Wexford County near the Dobson Creek Bridge, said Michigan State Police Det. Sgt. Travis House of the Cadillac post.

The body was sent to Sparrow Hospital in Lansing for an autopsy and post-mortem exam.

The state police, family, and friends had been searching the area for several months after Hepworth’s truck was found there last August. “It was an original missing person complaint out of Oceana County,” he said.

Hepworth, a father of eight children, was last seen in his 2001 Chrysler Town and Country minivan, Aug. 1, at noon leaving his workplace, Haworth, in Ludington.

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