Authorities in Oregon said Thursday that a station wagon they’re poised to pull from the Columbia River may belong to a family who went missing in 1958.
The Hood River County Sheriff’s Office announced Thursday it would attempt to recover the nine-passenger Ford station wagon, which independent diver Archer Mayo discovered last fall after seven years of searching.
The family of five — Ken and Barbara Martin and their daughters, 14-year-old Barbara, 12-year-old Virginia and 10-year-old Sue — had set out to find Christmas greenery in the mountains east of their Portland home on Dec. 7, 1958. They vanished on their way back.
The shocking case stumped investigators and became an enduring mystery as it went cold. The puzzle deepened the following year, when the bodies of the couple’s two younger daughters surfaced near Bonneville Dam, The Oregonian recounted. Adding to the uncertainty was the discovery of a damaged gun near where the car had disappeared, KOIN-TV reported.
Nonetheless, the disappearance was ruled as a tragic accident under the assumption that the Martins’ car had accidentally plummeted into the river from the Cascade Locks parking lot.
“It’s been a high public interest case,” Hood River County Sheriff’s Deputy Pete Hughes told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Last fall, Mayo did a number of dives in the area he thought the car might be and found it upside-down about 60 feet from shore. He was able to supply a partial license plate number and other identifying characteristics that convinced police to pull it up.
Officials told KOIN-TV that they’re 99% sure the car belonged to the Martins, and a barge with a crane attached was ready to pull it up from its resting place.
“We’re not 100% sure it’s the car,” Hughes said. “It’s mostly encased in mud and debris, so we don’t know what to expect when we pull it out of the water today.”
“This is a very big development in a case that’s been on the back of Portland’s mind for 66 years,” Mayo’s representative told The Associated Press.