Sugar Creek, Mo. ? Remains found in a shallow grave near the Missouri River are those of two missing children last seen when their father picked them up for a weekend visit in 2004, police confirmed Tuesday.

Tom Gentry, spokesman for the Independence police department, said authorities used dental records to confirm that the remains, found Sunday, were those of Sam and Lindsey Porter. Gentry said police were notified Monday evening that the remains had been identified.

The children were 7 and 8 years old when their father, Dan Porter, picked them up from his estranged wife, Tina Porter, on June 5, 2004. The children’s whereabouts had remained a mystery, and Dan Porter has told several different stories about what happened to them.

“In one sense it is somewhat of a closure, a resolution, to this long ongoing case that we have had,” Gentry said. “In another sense it hits us all, as it does you, in the heart to have two children discovered in this condition.”

Porter, 44, was convicted in February 2006 of parental kidnapping with the intent to terrorize his ex-wife and sentenced to 38 years in prison. Additional charges have not been filed against him since the bones were found, and Gentry said police plan to present their case to prosecutors “in a timely fashion.”

Children’s gravesite

Maj. Gregg Wilkinson brought Tina Porter to the scene Monday evening, Gentry said. He did not say how much time she spent at the grave. Calls to her home in Independence were unanswered Tuesday.

Gentry would not comment on what led police to the site or whether Dan Porter was involved in helping find it.

“It’s been part of an ongoing investigation,” Gentry said. “Even though it has been more than three years, we have never stopped our investigation of this. Any thoughts about exactly how we got here, I cannot answer.”

During a tour of the grave site with reporters later Tuesday, Wilkinson said he could not disclose how the children died or if they died where they had been buried.

“I know, but I can’t say,” Wilkinson said.

The grave had been covered over and was no longer apparent. Wilkinson said the grave was concealed “not as a deception, but out of respect” to the children.

He said police used an anthropologist from Kansas State University and an expert on dental records from Omaha, but he would not name them. Metal detectors also were used at the site, but Wilkinson would not say what metal was being sought.

“The day we came down here is three years, three months and three days (since the children were last seen). It has taken a toll,” Wilkinson said. “This isn’t the closure we wanted. We all were hoping the children were alive.”

‘We’ve tried everything’

The land is in a wooded area about 40 yards from the Missouri River near Sugar Creek, a small Jackson County town east of Kansas City. Investigators looking for the children had searched the area before, and Gentry has said Porter knew the area because he had hunted there.

Herb Soule, chief of police of Sugar Creek, said it’s not the first time bodies have been found there.

“We have had bloodhounds down there. We’ve had experienced trackers down there,” Soule said Tuesday. “We’ve tried everything known to mankind. It’s such a dense area.”

It also is in an area where Dan and Tina Porter met on the day he took the children. Police said Dan Porter had asked Tina Porter to meet him near the area so they could exchange vehicles.

Tina Porter, 44, has said that when she met Dan Porter, the children weren’t with him. She said Dan Porter tried to get her to drive her pickup into the woods by telling her that he had stashed $50,000 there and wanted to get it. She refused.

After his arrest on the kidnapping charges, Porter told authorities several stories about what he had done with his children, including that he had cut them up and that he had strangled them.

The Jackson County executive’s office announced Tuesday that a memorial fund had been established in the children’s name and that a candlelight vigil was planned for Friday in Independence.