Human remains recovered from car in Columbia River, diver says; mystery obsessed investigators for decades

A diver stated he has recovered stays of two adults from inside the car believed to belong to the Martins, a household whose disappearance in 1958 sparked dramatic information protection on the time and fueled years of hypothesis about their fate.

The invention seems to carry the 67-year-old thriller to an finish. Archer Mayo, the diver, has turned over the stays to the Hood River County Sheriff’s Workplace.

“There’s nothing extra that may be finished,” Mayo stated.

The Hood River County Sheriff’s Workplace wouldn’t verify or deny Mayo’s assertions, saying solely that the 7-decade-old case stays beneath investigation.

The Martin household left their Northeast Portland residence, at 1715 NE 56th Ave., on December 7, 1958, for a day journey to the Columbia Gorge, then disappeared.

The our bodies of the 2 youngest daughters — Virginia, 13, and Sue, 11 — have been discovered floating within the Columbia River the next 12 months. However few new clues appeared within the following many years that might assist investigators discover Ken and Barbara Martin, the oldest daughter, Barbara, 14, or the automobile they have been touring in that day. (The couple’s oldest little one, Donald, 28 on the time, was in New York.)

Authorities believed the disappearance and obvious deaths have been probably the results of an unintended crash that had despatched the automobile right into a distant ravine or the river.

However the thriller of the household’s destiny stored police on the case, and varied true-crime lovers developed varied theories through the years, together with that the household had been murdered.

A kind of who turned satisfied of foul play was Walter Graven, a Multnomah County sheriff’s deputy within the Fifties and Nineteen Sixties, who believed the automobile went over a cliff close to The Dalles. Such views fueled additional hypothesis and investigation, main native creator J.B. Fisher to publish a e-book in regards to the case, 2019’s “Echo of Distant Water.”

Mayo, a leisure and rescue diver, in addition to a sculptor and real-estate supervisor, acquired hooked on the thriller in 2018. At some point he discovered himself within the Oregon Historic Society archives, a late 1800s photograph of the development of Cascade Locks, which was simply upstream from the place one of many ladies’ our bodies was recovered.

The photograph confirmed that engineers had put an enormous “pit” into the underside of the river. That, Mayo surmised, needed to be the place the automobile ended up, as a result of the pit probably would have pulled in something heavy flowing over it. And the pit was simply downstream from a parking zone, the place a driver unfamiliar with the lot might have simply made a fallacious flip and tumbled into the water.

Mayo was proper.

After months spent acquiring the required permits and permissions, then doing 60 dives to clear particles with a dredge, he reached an upside-down Fifties Ford station wagon, about 60 ft beneath the floor. He informed the Hood River County Sheriff’s Workplace in regards to the automobile, and the company employed contractors to drag it out of the water.

That operation, in March, didn’t go as Mayo had hoped — the contractors pulled out the undercarriage and the engine of the automobile, however they couldn’t get the automobile’s physique and its contents out of the pit.

“I used to be disillusioned,” Mayo stated. He added:

“I’ve been dreaming, considering and obsessing about this for 7 years.”

The botched operation meant the automobile couldn’t be examined in a managed surroundings by professionals. So, if Mayo wished actual closure for the surviving Martin relations — and himself — he must hold diving.

In July, Mayo acquired again within the river.

With a dredge working on the river floor, he suctioned particles from the river and dropped it downstream. He constructed a workstation within the pit, in order that he wouldn’t always must floor for instruments. He fastidiously managed his divetime to verify he didn’t endure from decompression illness.

What remained of the automobile had break up between the passenger and driver’s seats, Mayo stated. That tear created a niche by which he might enter the automobile and take away particles.

Every single day, throughout a number of dives, he introduced out piles of particles.

Mayo stated it was harmful work, due primarily to the fixed danger that particles might fall onto him and bury him on the backside of the pit. The damaged springs of the seat cushions generally snagged and lower him, and he’s gotten caught in an previous, discarded salmon internet. Visibility ceaselessly would drop to zero.

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Then, Aug. 11, he got here throughout human stays, contained inside a plus-size nylon stocking. He has discovered extra stays since then, belonging to 2 adults. He believes it’s potential the stays he has retrieved additionally may embody a 3rd particular person.

Mayo has additionally introduced up from contained in the automobile what seemed to be a lady’s nylon sock, a toy cap gun, the automobile’s gasoline pedal and two seatbelts.

And he discovered a digital camera case with the proprietor’s title and most of his handle nonetheless visibly etched into the leather-based:

KEN MARTIN

…15 NE 56

PORTLAND, ORE

USA

He stated he plans to fill the automobile with gravel to stop different divers from getting into the damaging surroundings.

“I really feel like I acquired them out to be restored with their households,” Mayo stated of recovering the stays. “And that was the dream.”

— Fedor Zarkhin is a breaking information and enterprise reporter. Do you’ve got a narrative? Attain him by cellphone or textual content at 971-373-2905 or by e-mail at fzarkhin@oregonian.com.