Police police cassette.(Photo: Getty Images)

Homicide detectives in New York are investigating human remains found in a basement on Long Island, and the owner thinks they might belong to his long-missing father, police said Thursday.

Michael Carroll, 57, and his two adult sons were searching the basement of their home in Lake Grove, New York, when the sons discovered skeletal remains, the police said.

Carroll told the police that his father, George Carroll, had disappeared in 1961 and that the family had long believed his father was buried in the basement, detective Lt. Kevin Beyrer. told reporters.

"It was still a family legend that the father had been buried in the basement since 1961," Beyrer told reporters, adding that the family had said they had never got a clear answer about what was arrived at George Carroll.

An anthropologist will now examine the remains, the police said.

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The Carroll family bought the house in the 1950s, and Michael and his three siblings lived there with their parents, the police said. Mother Dorothy Carroll died in the 1990s, police said.

Michael Carroll, who is now the owner of the house, says that his mother told him, along with his siblings, that their father "came out and never came back," Newsday reported.

The family had hired a radar company to search the soil under the basement, and the sons began to search based on these results, Beyrer told reporters.

"Sometimes your premonitions tell you things," Carroll told the New York Post. "I believe it's my father."

A voice message that USA TODAY left at a phone number listed for Carroll's address was not immediately returned Thursday night.

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