Police are using "all means available" to identify human remains found in a field in the hunt for a man killed in 1999.
The skeletal remains were discovered during Tayside Police's search to find the site where 39-year-old Adam Alexander was believed to have been buried after he was killed.
On Friday the force confirmed work to formally identify the remains found within a field at Muiredge Farm at Errol in Perthshire on Tuesday was continuing.
It is anticipated that he will be identified next week after processes of identification have been completed including evidential and dental, as well as DNA matching.
Detective chief inspector Greig Steele said: "Against the background of a longstanding investigation that spans more than a decade, it is important that we do not jump to any conclusions. Mr Alexander’s whereabouts have not been known for 13 years and it is absolutely correct that we use all means available to us in trying to find the answers we are seeking for those most affected by this tragedy."
Mr Alexander died when businessman Thomas Pryde attacked him with a metal bar in 1999.
Despite continued searches his body was never found.
Eight years after the crime Pryde confessed to his then wife that he had killed a man and in 2010 he was jailed for ten years after admitting culpable homicide.
Mr Alexander, a long-distance lorry driver, was last seen in Errol High Street near his cottage on November 14, 1999, the day he was killed.
Hi mother Patricia Bremner said she had "never given up hope" her son would be found. Speaking after the remains were found she called it a “breakthrough” and said she hoped she could now "move forward".
Pryde had told police that he "just completely lost the plot", grabbed a bar and attacked Mr Alexander. He then dumped the body.
He said: "I took him along by the brickworks and buried him. It's never been out of my mind."
IN DETAIL
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