JAY REEVES,Associated Press

BIRMINGHAM — A pack of seven wild dogs that may have killed a 96-year-old man and strewn his remains over property near his home in rural west Alabama was tracked down and destroyed, authorities said Wednesday.

The dogs appeared hungry, and some of the dead man's bones were found around and under a ramshackle trailer they used as a den, Pickens County Sheriff David Abston said in a telephone interview.

Investigators sent the dead man's remains to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences for examination, but Coroner Chad Harless said authorities may never know what killed Israel Pope Jr., who would have turned 97 this month.

"I feel it's not likely we're going to be able to make a decision on (the cause of death) because of a lack of evidence," said Harless.

Pope was a lifelong resident of Pickensville, a town of about 660 people near the Mississippi line, 100 miles west of Birmingham.

Pope shared a home with his 97-year-old wife less than a half-mile from the trailer where the dogs lived.

Another man who lived beside the trailer claimed to own some of the dogs and fed them, as did Pope occasionally, Abston said. But the animals didn't get enough food, drank water out of a stagnant ditch and were so wild no one could pet them, he said.

The man was cooperating with investigators, and no charges appeared likely.

Abston declined comment on how officers killed the dogs, which he said easily could have overpowered the elderly man.

"Some of them were big dogs," said Abston.

Pope's wife is in frail health and couldn't recall exactly the last time she saw him, Abston said. Other relatives reported him missing on Monday, three days after they last saw him.

A team using search dogs located some of the man's remains Monday afternoon near the ditch the dogs used for drinking water. More bones, plus bits of cloth that appeared to be clothing, were found near the trailer where the dogs lived, the sheriff said.

The ditch was near a trail that Pope traveled regularly to visit a nephew, Abston said.

"He may have been going there. We just don't know," he said.

A relative said Pope was a retired manufacturing worker.

"He loved church, his church family, and he loved farming and gardening," great-niece Laverne Manning told The Tuscaloosa News, which first reported the man's death.