Featured Image Credit: KOIN 6
Topics: True Crime, True Life, US News
Jen Thomas
A case that confounded true crime fans and police alike for decades has finally been solved.
The mystery of the Martin family has been confusing people for more than 60 years, after they disappeared after a day out Christmas shopping in Northeast Portland in the US.
Parents Kenneth and Barbara Martin and their three daughters, one also called Barbara (but known as Barbie), 14, Virginia, 13 and Sue, 11, had been for a lovely family day out on 7 December 1958.
The family were believed to be driving home in their 1954 Ford station wagon, but they never made it back.
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They were eventually reported missing some two days later after both parents failed to turn up to work.
Authorities opened an investigation into the missing family.
A month after they disappeared, a .38 Colt Commander handgun was found in bushes near to where the car was eventually found.
Many people speculated that one of them had been shot, but it wasn't taken in as evidence.
Decades later, the widow of the gun owner revealed it had dried blood on it.
Five months after they went missing, a tragic discovery was made when the bodies of the two youngest girls, Virginia and Sue were found floating in a river.
Their deaths were ruled as drowning, but Ken, Barbara and Barbie were never found.
They had one surviving son, Donald, who was 28 and living in New York.
Donald insisted he didn't believe their death was an accident, especially after the gun was found.
Now, an answer has finally been revealed, thanks to a diver called Archer Mayo.
He used predictive modelling to narrow down an area where the car might be in the water, agreeing with the early prediction of the authorities that the car had somehow backed into the river, causing the family to drown.
Thanks to the diver's efforts, Mayo located the car in November of last year. He had completed hundreds of dives in the river so knew his way around.
He told the Columbia Gorge News: "I can move around with zero visibility in this giant pit, because I’ve spent so much of my lifetime trying to solve this mystery."
The car was in an area called Cascade Locks, and a mission to retrieve it began.
Unfortunately, it didn't go to plan, as when a crane tried to lift the car, the chassis broke off having rusted away to nothing in the water for decades.
This meant most of the car was left behind, buried in mud where it dropped, and it had split into several parts.
Mayo refused to give up though, and this summer he returned to the site again, and he successfully managed to retrieve belongings, items of clothing and human remains back to the surface, including bone in a nylon stocking.
He also retrieved a camera and case which had Ken Martin's name and address scratched into it.
“There’s a wooden suitcase in the back, but the wood’s all collapsed and that’s the handle off of it,” Mayo said.
“And then these are the remains of Barbara’s shoes, the mother, which I was able to get most of her body out of there.”
He reported his findings to the Hood River County Sheriff's Office, but is yet to hear official confirmation that it is the Martin family, but the vehicle matches one they were driving at the time they went missing.
Mayo has always believed that the family ended up in the water by accident.
The Hood River County Office says the investigation is still ongoing.