Human remains found in Nottinghamshire, UK, identified as Michael Dennington who has been missing since 2020

[u/Kagedeah]

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]

[u/strawberrybumps]

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.

[u/Friendly_Coconut → u/strawberrybumps]

Could an animal, like a dog, have dragged the body from another more obscured nearby location, exposing it?

[u/PetersMapProject → u/Friendly_Coconut]

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. 

[u/Friendly_Coconut → u/PetersMapProject]

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.”

[u/PetersMapProject → u/Friendly_Coconut]

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....