Dismembered body discovered weeks after disappearance off beach used as location for Jaws: The Revenge

The remains of a sailor who disappeared off Jaws beach in the Bahamas, where the final film in the Jaws franchise was filmed, have been found inside a tiger shark.

Authorities used fingerprints to identify Judson Newton, who was last seen on 29 August swimming for shore after his boat's engine stalled, as the body found inside the 3.6 metre (12ft) fish's belly.

An investment banker on a deep-sea fishing trip caught the shark on 4 September. He said a left leg came out of its mouth as it was hauled on to his boat. When police sliced the belly open they found a right leg, two arms and a torso.

Authorities were awaiting DNA test results before formally identifying Newton, said Hulan Hanna, the assistant police commissioner.

Newton, a 43-year-old sailor and part-time chef, was on a boating trip with friends off Jaws beach on New Providence island when the vessel had engine trouble. Three people remained on board while Newton and a friend swam to shore. Neither was seen again and they were presumed drowned.

One of Newton's friends, Samuel Woodside, 37, told AP he had doubted the drowning theory. "To me, he was always a strong swimmer. I don't know what happened."

Woodside said he and Newton were childhood friends and went fishing almost every weekend when Newton wasn't working on cargo boats or in restaurants. "He was a sailor, you see. Anywhere where he could get a fishing line, he would go there."

Films such as Thunderball and Into the Blue have been shot in the waters around New Providence but it was Jaws: The Revenge which is understood to have given its name to the beach on the western strand.

The third sequel to Steven Spielberg's 1975 classic, Jaws, features a giant great white shark which stalks the Brody family down the US Atlantic seaboard to the Caribbean. The tagline was: "This time it's personal".

Michael Caine played a washed up, amiable pilot named Hoagie who has a romance with Ellen Brody, widow of the character played by Roy Scheider in the original. The British actor claimed he never saw the film, panned by critics as one of the worst ever made, but that he had seen the house it bought and it was beautiful.