HUAMANGA, Peru (AP) — An octogenarian couple in Peru has received the skeletal remains of their son from authorities more than three decades after he was taken away by soldiers during the darkest days of the Andean nation's fight with Maoist rebels.

The return was part of a renewed effort by Peru to bring closure to families of the more than 20,000 people forcibly disappeared during the conflict.

Maximo Cueto and his wife Gregoria spent the better part of their savings and retirement from a prosperous business raising livestock in the southern Andes looking for their son, Cesareo, ever since he was forcibly taken from his university dormitory one night in 1984. Their search took them as far away as the Amazon rain forest and a former island penitentiary off the coast of Lima.