Wentworth, N.C. ? Bone fragments and a skull found on a rural property are the remains of a 9-year-old girl who vanished after her parents were fatally shot in their home seven weeks ago, authorities said Friday.

Investigators said they have not made any arrests but would like to talk with a man now in Canadian custody whose rented house and mobile home in Rockingham County recently were searched.

Jennifer Short’s remains were discovered Sept. 25 near a home in Stoneville, N.C., about 30 miles south of her home. She had been shot in the head, Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page said.

Jennifer had been missing since Aug. 15, when her parents Michael Short, 50, and Mary Short, 36 were found shot to death in their Bassett, Va., home. Investigators had said they believed the girl had been abducted.

“The skeletal remains in Rockingham County have been determined to be a positive match with the DNA profile of Short and are hers,” Page said.

The investigation and search for the little girl had been emotionally difficult, said Sheriff Frank Cassell of Henry County, Va.

“She’s gone now and she’s safe now and no evil can befall her,” he said.

Tests by a lab in Roanoke, Va., showed Jennifer had been shot, Page said. Neither sheriff would say whether evidence indicated she had been raped.

“I am saddened. I am heartbroken for this little girl and her family,” Cassell said. “But at least it’s important for them to know she’s not out there being abused or hurt.”

Page said investigators would travel to Canada in the next few days to speak to Garrison Storm Bowman, a 60-year-old carpenter who was last seen in Rockingham County the day after the Shorts were killed.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Friday night said Bowman was being held in the Northwest Territories on grounds he illegally entered Canada about a month ago.

RCMP spokesman Sgt. Phil Johnson said Bowman had been living in the town of Inuvik, about 700 miles north of the territory’s capital of Yellowknife, where he is currently being held.

North Carolina authorities seized nine maps, one of which was marked to show the location of the Shorts’ home, on Saturday from Bowman’s trailer. A house he rented was searched in August.

An affidavit accompanying the search warrants said Bowman had threatened to kill a man in Virginia in a dispute over moving the mobile home from one site to another in Rockingham County, the News & Record of Greensboro and The Roanoke (Va.) Times reported Friday. The man was not identified in the affidavit.

Michael Short owned and operated a mobile-home moving business in Virginia.