MADISON, N.C. (AP) — Authorities with cadaver dogs descended on a rural area in Rockingham County on Wednesday after a man reported that his dog had found a small human skull, police said. Law enforcement officials included a contingent from Henry County, Va., where officials have been looking for 9-year-old Jennifer Short since Aug. 15. Officials believe the girl was kidnapped after her parents were slain in their Henry County home.

AP Jennifer Short The skull "appears to be from somebody young," said Jeannie Justice, a spokeswoman for the Rockingham County Sheriff's Department.

The dogs were brought in to look for the rest of the remains. The area is about 30 miles south of the Short family home in Bassett, Va.

Rockingham County resident Eddie Albert discovered the skull around 12:30 p.m. after he noticed his two dogs, Blue Girl and Zeke, tossing around what seemed to be a brown wig, said his daughter, Lisa Albert. He realized the hair was attached to a skull when he picked it up and turned it around, she said.

He immediately called police, she said.

"When the Sheriff's Department got here they found teeth and bone fragments all over the yard," Lisa Albert said.

More that a dozen detectives, fire and rescue workers were draining a pond in the yard Wednesday night, Albert said.

For days after Jennifer's disappearance, authorities combed the rolling hills behind her parents' house on horseback and four-wheelers. Search dogs only picked up the girl's scent in the house and the neighboring convenience store, where the family regularly shopped.

Jennifer's parents, Michael Short, 50, and Mary Hall Short, 36, were shot to death in their red-brick ranch house along busy U.S. 220, about 35 miles south of Roanoke.

Christopher Thompson, 25, a laborer who worked for the family's mobile home moving business, found Michael Short's body in an enclosed carport and called police.

Wednesday's discovery comes four days after a Henry County judge made Jennifer's' uncle and aunt her legal guardians.

-- Anonymous, September 26, 2002