ROTHBURY, Mich. — The discovery of human remains in a wooded area near Rothbury on Monday has reignited hopes and sparked further questions about the disappearance of Kevin Graves. The 28-year-old man vanished during the 2018 Electric Forest Music and Art Festival, after getting into a verbal altercation with his girlfriend.
Michigan State Police, with assistance from Western Michigan University's Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, are currently working to identify the remains.
While authorities have not yet confirmed anything beyond the initial discovery of remains, the Graves family is anxiously awaiting the results.
Police notified Gary Graves, Kevin’s father, after the remains were found.
“I am waiting to hear for sure what they found,” Gary told FOX 17 Tuesday afternoon.
Gary and the rest of the Graves family have been fearlessly pushing to locate their son ever since he was last seen in 2018.
They have attended the festival every year, distributing flyers and seeking information about his disappearance. In 2023, they even paid to have a billboard put up near the festival grounds, pleading for anyone with information to come forward.
There are only two active missing persons cases out of Oceana County, according to the federal database NAMUS.
Rene Martinez Vazquez fled a refugee resettlement program in the Montague area in September of 2017. His whereabouts are currently unknown.
The only other name on that list: Kevin Graves.
In 2018, a volunteer search crew combed through the wooded area around Double JJ Resort, where the festival is held.
According to a search and rescue specialist who was party of that crew in 2018 — speaking to FOX 17 on the condition of anonymity — it was a particularly difficult endeavor.
“It was the most difficult search I've ever been on for multiple reasons,” he explained. “It's marsh land like you've never seen before. I have never encountered something like that.”
He never believed any of the theories floating around over the years, that Kevin left the ground with a cult or that he had simply decided to go “off the grid.”
“I thought it was 100% near certain he was there," he said Wednesday.
As the investigation continues, the Graves family and the community are holding their breaths, hoping for closure.
Back in 2023, Gary Graves told FOX 17 Kevin “had a heart of gold. He would do anything for anybody, you know. All of his friends and everything... everybody loved him.”
“He was very knowledgeable on things he had to do. He was a mechanic, you know, and taught him how to work on vehicles. He loved doing that kind of work. He could do anything. He could do construction work, building work; he was just, like, a handy guy.”
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