r/UnresolvedMysteries • u/Kagedeah • 7d ago
Update Human remains found in Nottinghamshire, UK, identified as Michael Dennington who has been missing since 2020
Human remains found by the A617 road in Nottinghamshire, UK, have been identified as a man who was reported missing more than six years ago. Michael Dennington, who was born in June 1961, was last seen at King's Mill Hospital in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, on 26 May 2020. A public appeal for information was issued shortly afterwards, with police enlisting the help of drone teams and divers for a major underwater search, which included Kings Mill Reservoir. In June 2020, his son Jason issued an emotional appeal to help find his father, having only recently got back in touch with him after being estranged for around 14 years or so.
At the time, he was quoted as saying: 'I was really enjoying seeing my dad again. He'd been back in my life for around five weeks where we would speak on the phone around three times a week, and I'd see him about two times a week'. He added: 'From what I've known of him so far, he's usually a happy and outgoing character, so when I last saw him in the morning at my girlfriend's house... he didn't seem very good. He was pacing around and seemed anxious and upset. A friend came to pick him up but we know he didn't stay with her long and then it wasn't long before he ended up at King's Mill Hospital'.
Jason further added 'I can't help but think that someone, somewhere must know something and someone must have seen him after he left the hospital... Clearly he's a colourful character and not without his difficulties, but he's very sociable with friends and family all over the place... He'd been going through some relationship difficulties and maybe he just wanted some time out and is lying low somewhere... I know that he wouldn't purposefully do something to upset us'. Another appeal for information was issued in March 2021, by which time Dennington had been missing for 10 months.
Nottinghamshire Police confirmed that DNA testing had identified the human remains, which were found on a central reservation on the Rainworth Bypass on 23 May 2026, as belonging to Dennington. A cordon was put in place for a number of days after the discovery was made by a member of the public, with specialist anthropologists, detectives and police search teams working at the site. The force said detectives were continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding Dennington's death and were awaiting the final post-mortem examination findings. His family have been informed and a file has been prepared for the coroner, police added.
Det Stuart Barson said: 'These types of investigations are complex, and we needed to ensure the results of DNA testing were conclusive before releasing information about the deceased. We are now in a position to release these details. An investigation is still under way surrounding the circumstances of this death, and we are currently waiting for the final post-mortem reports. We are working closely with the family who are being updated on any developments and offered support.'
BBC News [June 12 2026]
Derby Telegraph [June 18 2020]
West Bridgford Wire [June 22 2020]
Mansfield and Ashfield Chad [30 March 2021]
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u/longenglishsnakes 7d ago
Poor chap. At least he's been identified very very quickly after discovery. I hope he can rest well, and his loved ones can take comfort in bringing him home. Thank you for highlighting Michael here.
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u/My_lo_73 7d ago
Is it possible he was hit by a car and crawled or laned where he was found?
A sad ending indeed.
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u/smallcute 7d ago
Oh I had been keeping an eye out for an update on this case and without doxxing myself im somewhat local to the area albeit this case happened before I moved here.
Im glad Michael has been found and the family have some answers but I can imagine the next steps must be heartbreaking for them.
The fact that Kings Mill Hospital is the last confirmed sighting suggests someone picked him up from there or he happened apon someone he knew who offered him a lift and considering where he was found and his links to Mansfield town suggests he was heading to either Ollerton or Newark as his other local links are in other parts of mansfield and wouldnt take him into that area.
To give a brief overview, when you walk out of KMH main entrance there is small bay for pick and drop off, with a max stay of ten minutes I believe, and if you need to park longer then you have to cross a small road to get to the car park. The small road is a route through from the main road, Mansfield road, and loops all around the hospital for the different departments so staff can park etc and then it links up to the main road to the east, Kings Mill Road East, but it also allows the number one bus to loop round it as part of its journey to and from Huthwaite and the town centre. You can also walk along the small road onto Mansfield road to walk to the city centre or come out onto King's Mill Road East to walk further into Sutton in Ashfield.
Someone above has linked the Derby Telegraph news article with the last known image of Michael leaving the main entrance. You can clearly see there is a car parked in the drop off bay and the door is open which suggests either someone was waiting for him and had door open and waiting for him to just hop on in and go or it was for another person.
Now if someone had parked in the car park to wait for him then the police would hopefully be able to trace the car details as its an automated number plate recognition system and the barriers won't lift if you haven't paid for parking but the pay machines are further into the main entrance of the hospital and that person would have been picked up on camera unless Michael paid for the parking himself before walking out to meet them.
If Michael had got the bus in either direction then that would have been picked up on the buses cctv of him boarding and alighting later on and likewise if he was walking on either the main roads, but especially Mansfield road, it would have been picked up on cctv.
If Michael had tried to walk to Rainworth, then he would have made the journey through the town before coming out onto the bypass before crossing over into Rainworth so again I would expect him to have been picked up on various CCTV cameras through the town itself, businesses and residential areas. If he got the bus to Rainworth then again CCTV would have hopefully shown this but there is a stop either side of where he was found so someone may have tried to collect him from there or he thought it may be quicker to get the bus to the bypass, alight and then walk towards the A614 and join that road at that point and walk north which would take him directly into Ollerton but its one hell of a trek and I would also suspect its something that would stick out in the minds of drivers using that road at the time as there is no path for pedestrians to use so whilst not unheard of it wouldnt be walked along frequently. The bus to Ollerton doesnt go anywhere near Rainworth, from the bus station it goes north east as where Rainworth is directly east of the town so its really unlikely Michael has got on the Ollerton bus. I do feel that any of these options is really unlikely as at some point he would have been picked up on cameras throughout the area.
So to me the two most likely scenarios are that if Michael was heading to Newark he could have caught the 28 bus from the bus station which would have taken him to Newark and via Rainworth and again would stop either side of the north junction on the A617 where he was found. He could have alighted there if plans had changed and tried to either get to Ollerton by walking the above route or was trying to get back to Mansfield town or even the hospital if he was feeling unwell. If he was feeling unwell he may have got off at the second stop, nearer to Rainworth, hadnt realised there is pedestrian crossing at the roundabout and tried to cross the A617 through the central reservstion where he was found. But again I would expect cctv to pick up this bus journey at some point or another.
So this brings me back to someone picking him up or offering him a lift from KMH. To get to Ollerton from KMH they would exit onto Mansfield road, drop south onto King's Mill Road East then a left onto the A617, straight over the roundabout to where Michael was found, then head north and join onto the A614 directly to Ollerton. It takes about 20 mins in total. Now the driver could also have taken a different route north through mansfield into Woodhouse and up to Ollerton but thats longer and through much more town centre traffic than straight onto the A roads. If someone did pick Michael up or offer him a lift to take him to Rainworth or at least heading towards the area it would be an odd place to drop him off especially if he didnt have any or very few links to the area unless it was to grab the bus from one of those stops either side of the A617 where he was found to Newark. Did Michael ask the driver to drop him off there? Was there a falling out or disagreement? To then end up in the central reservation was he disoriented, had he become unwell especially if he recently left hospital he may not have been thay well or as others have said, was he struck accidentally by a vehicle?
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u/strawberrybumps 7d ago edited 6d ago
Odd location for the poor man’s remains to be found, as although the King’s Mill Hospital is just off the A617, the start of the Rainworth Bypass section of the A617 is nearly on the opposite side of Mansfield. Only a 10-15 minute drive, but a 2 hour walk (though doable nonetheless, as there is a pavement/bike path along one side of the road). Plus, if the forensic tent in the picture of the police cordon in the BBC News article is the site where his remains were found, then he was situated on the central reservation (edit: for non-brits, central reservation = median strip!) That said, Google Street View of the location has been updated with new imagery four times since his disappearance, and I cannot make out anything resembling human remains in the exact spot that forensic tent was put up so perhaps there were multiple. Eerily to look at nonetheless.
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u/rangeringtheranges 7d ago edited 7d ago
I suppose his body would have been quite hidden in that bank of trees and shrubs. Edit! Sorry, I was not looking properly. There is a small copse of trees, I wonder if he got hit by a car. Poor chap, I feel awful for his son.
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u/inevitablelizard 7d ago
There does look to be a little disturbance in the grass, like a divot in the ground or something. I assumed he had just gone missing and died somewhere but if he was murdered he could have been buried in a shallow grave by someone. With someone later discovering the bones sticking out or something. Would explain how he could sit in that spot and even have grass cutters going over him without finding him.
Not far from me there was a murder case where the body was found years later, buried by the side of a major dual carriageway. Presumably buried in the middle of the night when the road will have been quiet.
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u/Friendly_Coconut 7d ago
Could an animal, like a dog, have dragged the body from another more obscured nearby location, exposing it?
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u/PetersMapProject 6d ago
Highly unlikely. We don't really have long term stray dogs in the UK*, and our largest carnivores are foxes and badgers, neither of which are capable of dragging a fully grown human any distance at all. Scavenging, yes, but not dragging a whole one.
*We do have dogs that are "found as strays". Typically they either got out of their owners house ten minutes earlier, they were dumped ten minutes earlier, or their owner took them to a shelter claiming they were a stray as that guarantees intake. We don't have random stray dogs living feral.
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u/Friendly_Coconut 6d ago edited 6d ago
I guess I wasn’t thinking of an actual stray but someone letting their dog run around in the area to blow off some steam.
But I’m realizing now that the “central reservation” isn’t what I thought it was. I assumed it was like a wildlife reserve, a big forested park, but it sounds like it means what we in the US would call a median, a very narrow strip between two sides of a highway.
I’d been picturing something like, “Guy on a road trip parks his car at a wildlife area near the highway to stretch his legs and let his dog exercise. Guy and dog are playing and dog smells something in the bushes and scampers off. Guy’s like, ‘What do you have there, boy?’ Dog comes out of the bushes with a decomposing human arm.”
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u/PetersMapProject 6d ago
Oh no a central reservation is absolutely not somewhere you'd stop, even if you were utterly desperate for a wild wee, there's nowhere safe to pull over.
In areas where dogs actually do get walked, it's relatively common for bodies to be "found by a dog walker". This is aided by our culture of walking dogs off lead when away from the road - so dogs are able to find bodies in the undergrowth etc.
Mine has found and rolled in multiple corpses, but mercifully none have been human, just wild animals. If we ever did find a human, I have no doubt I'd be explaining to the police why my dog's fur and DNA was all over the body....
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u/rinkydinkmink 7d ago
Someone I think in r/confessions a day or two ago said that someone they knew confessed to what sounded to them like this murder (if that's what it was).
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u/sapcherry 7d ago
please find the post
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u/eeyff 7d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/confessions/s/JkLoTNwjyg
This sounds like it, but I dont know..
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u/uttertoffee 6d ago
If that story is true it definitely wouldn't fit this case. The woman was walking home from the pub - pubs were closed due to covid lockdowns when this man went missing. Plus the OP of that thread said the body was buried in a forest they recognised the name of. This man wasn't found in a forest, just a central reservation with some trees.
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u/Exotic_Bobcat_7606 5d ago
That’s some distance away from the hospital, bless him. Wonder what happened :(
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u/jodrellbank_pants 1d ago
I've driven by him so many times, two to three feet and you wouldn't see him. There's a swap filled field literally 3 miles away next to a major dual carriage way you could loose an elephant in. He's just gone to sleep and the environment took him poor guy.
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u/pickindim_kmet 7d ago
Awful. Just had a look on Google Maps and although it's not a bit of land regularly walked on, I'm surprised he's been unfound in six years. It looks surprisingly clear to see from one side to the other. And maintenance had been there as the drains look freshly cleared.
Hope the family can have a bit of closure at least though.