JOHNSON COUNTY (CBSDFW.COM) – A missing person investigation in Johnson County has ended with the revelation that a 57-year-old man was completely eaten by his dogs.

Sheriff’s deputies were called to a trailer-home near Venus, Texas on May 6 to perform a welfare check. Once there relatives told officials a reclusive family member, Freddie Mack, hadn’t been seen or heard from since April 19.

When the family went to check on the man they couldn’t get close because of 18 aggressive dogs on the property. Deputies were able to distract the animals and search a small section of the property, but didn’t find Mack.

A report was filed and in an attempt to again make contact with Mack detectives returned to the property on May 9. The aggressiveness of the dogs on the property again prevented officials from getting inside the home, so they flew a drone over to try and find any signs of Mack — to no avail. One day later sheriff’s officially listed Freddie Mack as a missing person.

As the search for Mack continued family and neighbor Michael Sergeant said spoke about how unusual it was for Mack to leave his dogs unattended.

“His dogs were always by his side,” said Sergeant.

Sheriff’s say it was on May 15, during another search of the property, when a detective noticed a small piece of bone on the ground. Two days later detectives executed a search warrant and located the piece of bone and several other bone fragments. The items were gathered and sent to the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Still needing to perform a thorough search of the property, sixteen dogs were seized on May 19. One day later deputies, detectives and members of the Tarrant and Johnson County Medical Examiner’s Offices performed a detailed search.

This time items including strips of cloth, animal feces containing bone fragments, suspected human hair, and fabric were collected. Investigators learned Mack “was known to wear a single set of clothing and did not own any other sets.”

Officials began to suspect the dogs had eaten Mack when they found bits of clothing described by relatives in the animal feces collected. To confirm their suspicions the bones were sent to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification.

“During the course of our investigation it was found that Freddie suffered from serious medical conditions so we will never know if the dogs killed Mr. Mack or consumed him after he died from a medical condition,” said Sheriff Adam King. “Either way, it is a very gruesome event and we extend our sympathy to Freddy Mack’s family.”

Because the dogs were still very aggressive, and it was believed they’d killed their owner, they were put down.

On July 9 two pieces of bone found on the property were confirmed to be human by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office and a familial DNA match positively identified the remains as those of Freddie Mack.