COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho (AP) – Human remains found at a remote campsite in Montana last week have been identified as those of 9-year-old Dylan Groene, the Idaho boy who was kidnapped seven weeks ago, authorities said Sunday.

Kootenai County Sheriff Rocky Watson announced the finding in a short news release. The FBI lab in Quantico, Va., made the identification using DNA evidence.

No other details were immediately available.

The identification ends any hope that Dylan might have been found alive, as his 8-year-old sister Shasta was a week ago.

The pair vanished in mid-May from the rural home near Coeur d’Alene where their mother, brother and mother’s boyfriend were bound and bludgeoned to death.

Authorities believe the children were abducted by Joseph Edward Duncan III, a convicted sex offender, and spent time at the remote camp site in the Lolo National Forest where the remains were found.

Shasta was rescued July 2 after she was spotted with Duncan at a Coeur d’Alene restaurant a few miles from her mother’s home. Information she provided, along with other evidence, led authorities to the campsite.

Duncan has only been charged with kidnapping the two children, but authorities have said they believe he also killed their mother, Brenda Kay Groene, 40; their brother, Slade Groene, 13; and the mother’s boyfriend, Mark Edward McKenzie, 37.

Watson said Friday that the family appeared to have been chosen at random but that the attack was carefully planned and executed, possibly with the motive of abducting the young children for sex.

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