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 said Tuesday.

Tom Gentry, spokesman for the Independence police department, said authorities were able to confirm that the remains were those of Sam and Lindsey Porter.

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 have remained a mystery, and Dan Porter has told several different stories about what happened to them.

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.

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 land where the bones were found Sunday is in a wooded, industrial area 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.

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

Tina Porter 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.