The station wagon thought to belong to Ken and Barbara Martin was found last fall by Archer Mayo, a diver who had been looking for it for seven years, said Mayo’s representative, Ian Costello. Mayo pinpointed the likely location and dove several times before finding the car upside-down about 50 feet (15 meters) deep, covered in mud, salmon guts, silt and mussel shells, said Costello, who announced the find Wednesday.
“This is a very big development in a case that’s been on the back of Portland’s mind for 66 years,” Costello told The Associated Press.
Mayo found other cars nearby, which will need to come out before the station wagon can be pulled from the river, Costello said.
The Martins took their daughters Barbara, 14, Virginia, 13, and Sue, 11, on a car ride to the mountains on Dec. 7, 1958 to collect Christmas greenery, according to AP stories from the time. They never returned. Officials narrowed their search for the family after learning that Ken Martin had used a credit card to buy gas at a station near Cascade Locks, a small Columbia River community about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Portland.
“Police have speculated that Martin's red and white station wagon might have plunged into an isolated canyon or river,” the AP reported. “The credit card purchase was the only thing to pin-point the family's movements.”
Five months after their disappearance, the body of the youngest daughter was found “bobbing in a Columbia River slough,” according to the AP. “The body of Susan apparently floated free of the wreckage in the spring current and was washed to a back water slough near Camas, Washington," the AP wrote.
Virginia Martin's body was found the next day about 25 miles (40 kilometers) upstream from where her sister's was located. The other family members were never found, but the search continued.
“It's been a high public interest case,” Pete Hughes, a Hood River County sheriff’s deputy, told the AP on Thursday. After Mayo provided part of the license plate number and other vehicle identifiers, the sheriff's office and the Columbia Gorge major crimes team, along with the Oregon State Crime Lab, arranged to have the car pulled out, he said.
“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.”
Mayo runs a business that finds things that were lost in the river, like watches and rings, but also helps with the recovery of drowning victims, Costello said. He had been looking for a research vessel that sank in 2017 when he learned about the Martin family, Costello said.
Mayo began digging up material on the family and used modeling to pinpoint the possible location, he said.
There is a road near where the cars were found underwater. Authorities haven't said whether they think they might find the remains of other missing people in any of the other vehicles being pulled from the river.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP