The search of this missing family of four has come to a grim end.

A year-long search for a family of four who disappeared in mysterious circumstances has finally reached an end.

ABC is reporting that four human bodies and the body of a dog were found in a rural area near the family’s home sometime over the past few days.

A hand gun was also uncovered near the bodies, its serial number matching packaging retrieved from the family’s home.

Authorities allege it was a murder-suicide, but have not yet made any concrete conclusions.

The bodies were discovered within 800 metres of the family’s home on Saturday, after a person driving on the trail spotted clothing and called police. The remains are yet to be formally identified, but police have little doubt.

Rebecca Adams, 23, her boyfriend, Brandon Jividen, 38, and her children, Michelle Hundley, 6, and Jaracca Hundley, 3, were last seen in May, 2014.

The family, who resided in a small fishing village southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, seemed to disappear without a trace — with all their belongings, even half-eaten meals, remaining untouched in their home.

Mamamia previously reported…

It’s a mystery gripping a nation.

A family missing. Breakfast half eaten and abandoned on the table.

Keys, wallets, credit cards still in their place. Cars parked in the garage.

But two little girls, their Mum, her partner and Sparks their beloved dog. Gone. Without a trace.

In the small Alaskan city of Kenai 23-year-old Rebecca Adams, her six-year-old daughter Michelle and three-year-old Jaracca Hundley have not been seen or heard from since May 27, along with Rebecca’s boyfriend Brandon Jividen, 38.

The case has just become even more complex with the ex-Mother in law of Rebecca taken into custody by US Marshals over the weekend.

The mystery has made headlines over the past few weeks with reports from friends and neighbours about the family’s actions in the days leading up to their disappearance.

The Peninsula Clarion, a local newspaper, reported that Rebecca Adams’ sister, Lanell Adams said when she last spoke to Rebecca it sounded as if she were in distress but would not say what was wrong. Rebecca’s mother also came forward to say that she saw her daughter and noticed “strange behaviour”. Rebecca appeared to have been crying and ascribed it to hormones.

The FBI were called in to help the investigation due to the ages of the young girls, but so far not trace of the family has been found.

“It looks like they just vanished during breakfast,” Neighbour Desiree Guillam told Your Alaska Link.

“Their food was still on the table and the counters and their jackets were on the back of the chairs.“

Their mobile phones however were turned off.

Rebecca Adams’s sad family history has been reported throughout the media. The father of her two girls, Jaramiah Hundley, died in a motorcycle crash on May 30, 2012.

And it is Jaramiah’s mother to who investigators have turned over the weekend. In a bizarre twist KTUU report that Lisa Marie Hundley aged 46, was arrested by U.S. Marshals in Tennessee, on contempt of court charges connected with a 2010 drug possession and trafficking conviction.

FBI spokesperson Steve Forrest explained Hundley is not being considered connected to the disappearance of the missing Kenai family, but Kenai Police Department investigators “hope to gain more perspective on the family itself.”

Social media are not quite as circumspect with rumours that the family had fallen out over money circulating.

The arrest of Hundley is giving hope to the family of Rebecca Adams.

It’s not the first time an entire family has made headlines after they vanished. In 2010 Joseph McStay, aged 40, and his wife, Summer, 43 and their two sons Gianni, 4, and Joseph, 3 went missing from their home in California. Evidence showed that they left hurriedly in the family car – a freshly made bowl of popcorn on a bench, raw eggs in the kitchen.

Their remains were found four years later in a shallow grave but the mystery of what happened to the McStay family remains unsolved.

There remains hope still for Rebecca, Brandon and these two little girls – with an entire town praying for their safe return.