Police have recognized the stays of a household that crashed into an Oregon river in 1958, placing an finish to a decades-long hunt for solutions about their disappearance.
The Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Workplace identified Kenneth Martin based on DNA recovered from stays discovered within the Columbia River, whereas different proof discovered on the web site helped establish his spouse Barbara and their daughter Barbie.
“The Hood River County Sheriff’s Workplace has concluded its investigation, having discovered no proof of a criminal offense,” police wrote in a press release on Thursday.
The Martin family disappeared in December of 1958 throughout a go to to the Columbia River Gorge to gather greenery for Christmas decorations, police mentioned.
The bodies of two of their kids, Virginia, 13, and Susan, 11, had been discovered downstream months later, however the different three members of the family on the journey remained lacking.
The case set off “one of many best manhunts in Oregon’s historical past,” the Related Press reported the next yr. A $1,000 reward was provided to help within the search, which turned a nationwide information story.
Nonetheless, many years handed, and family had been no nearer to discovering out what occurred to the Martins.
“A fuel receipt in Cascade Locks, after which there was a witness that mentioned that they’d seen them at a restaurant in Hood River,” sheriff’s deputy Pete Hughes told Oregon Public Broadcasting of the standing of the previously chilly case. “However there’s by no means been any actual closure or something.”
In 2024, diver Archer Mayo, who had taken an curiosity within the disappearance, discovered the household’s Ford station wagon submerged in 50 toes of water in part of the river often called “the pit.”
“There was an enormous collapse in entrance of me, and it was fully darkish, and I could not see something,” Mayo told KATU. “And when the water cleared barely, I noticed a tire, and I knew, you recognize, inside a couple of minutes, I used to be ready to determine there was a balloon whitewall tire and that this matched it.”
That summer time, he discovered human stays close by.
“I actually simply ended up fixing it with clues and theories, hypotheses, and ultimately discovered them 10 toes beneath the underside of the river, 50 toes from the floor,” he added in his interview with KATU. “So actually, I got here up with a idea of the place they might be and began digging till I discovered them.”
The next March, police used a crane to take away components of the buried automotive.
“As a result of extent to which the car had been encased in sediment, solely the body and among the connected parts had been in a position to be pulled from the water,” the sheriff’s workplace mentioned in its assertion. “Evaluation of these gadgets together with different gadgets retrieved by the diver allowed investigators to conclude that this was in reality the Martin automotive.”
A DNA pattern retrieved on the web site was in contrast with dwelling family of the Martins, permitting investigators to establish Kenneth Martin’s physique. The opposite DNA recovered from the stays was too degraded to make a match, although investigators mentioned the “totality of the circumstances through which the stays had been recovered, and the anthropological evaluation of the stays” made them assured that officers had positively ID-ed Martin’s spouse and daughter.
Within the river, investigators additionally discovered remnants of a shoe, plus a digicam case with Kenneth Martin’s identify and tackle on it, in addition to digicam movie, based on Colby Lasyone of Othram, the DNA lab that assisted police within the investigation.
“Possibly there will be footage revealed in the future of what that’s, as a result of that is a fairly cool piece to a thriller,” he told KOIN.
