Date | December 7, 1958 |
---|---|
Duration | Missing for 66 years and 8 days |
Location | Hood River County, Oregon, U.S. |
Type | Disappearance; unexplained death |
Deaths | |
Missing |
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The Martin family of Portland, Oregon, United States, disappeared on December 7, 1958, in the Columbia River Gorge during a day trip to gather greenery for Christmas decorations. The missing included the husband, Kenneth Martin (aged 54); his wife, Barbara (48); and the couple's three daughters, Barbara ("Barbie"), Virginia and Susan (aged 14, 13, and 11, respectively). The family's eldest child, Donald, was in the United States Navy and stationed in New York State at the time of the disappearance. Several months after the family vanished, the bodies of Susan and Virginia were discovered downstream on the shores of the Columbia River, roughly 30 miles (48 km) apart from each other.
Police initially speculated that the family's car may have crashed into the river, though the circumstances surrounding the event could not be fully explained. Further complicating the case was the discovery of a stolen handgun and the arrest of two ex-convicts in the area the day after the family's disappearance; investigators were unable to determine if the incidents were in any way connected.
The whereabouts of Kenneth, Barbara and Barbie remain undetermined, and their vehicle has never been recovered. The family's disappearance has been described as one of the "most baffling" mysteries in Oregon history, [2] and it sparked the greatest manhunt the state had undertaken at the time. [3]
On the evening of December 6, 1958, Kenneth and Barbara Martin of Portland, Oregon, attended a Christmas party before returning to their home at 1715 N.E. 56th Avenue in the Roseway neighborhood of Northeast Portland. [4] The couple had made plans for a day trip into the country for the following day. [5]
In the late morning of Sunday, December 7, Kenneth and Barbara left their home with their daughters Barbie, Susan and Virginia in their 1954 cream and red-colored Ford Country Squire station wagon. [6] Barbie, the eldest daughter, was a freshman at Grant High School. [7] The family's eldest child, a son named Donald (aged 28), was in the United States Navy and stationed in New York State. [6] [4]
The Martins headed east for a drive into the Columbia River Gorge, where they intended to gather greenery to make Christmas wreaths and decorations. [6] The knowledge of where the family travelled specifically throughout the day is sparse. Dean Baxter, a gas station proprietor, reported that he encountered the Martins when they purchased 5 US gallons (19 L) [8] of gasoline from his store in Cascade Locks around 4 p.m., approximately 40 miles (64 km) from their home in Portland. [9] According to Baxter, he recalled their car continuing east after they had purchased gasoline. [9] The family was seen again shortly after at the Paradise Snack Bar in Hood River, approximately 20 miles (32 km) east of Cascade Locks, where a waitress named Clara York stated she served the family. [10] Other reports from passing motorists indicated that the family was seen in an unspecified location on the north bank of the Columbia River, in Washington State, at dusk. [2] [6] [11]
According to eyewitnesses who saw the family that day, Kenneth was reportedly wearing a tan zip-up jacket and dark slacks, [6] while Barbara wore a navy blue coat, a plaid jacket and a black print dress. [12] Barbie was reportedly dressed in jeans with rolled cuffs and a beige coat. [13]
On December 9, Kenneth failed to report to his job at Eccles Electric Home Service Company, while Barbie was noted absent from her morning classes at Grant High School. [14] Both Susan and Virginia were also reported absent by their teachers at Rose City School. [14] The family was officially reported missing that evening by Kenneth's boss, Taylor Eccles. [14] Police investigated their residence at approximately 11:00 p.m., [15] searching for any signs of foul play. [6] The house had been left undisturbed; a load of laundry was still in the washing machine, and dishes from the previous day were left on a drying rack in the kitchen; there was also a substantial amount of money in the Martins' bank accounts. [6]
Searches were undertaken by both Multnomah County and Hood River County police, but neither were able to produce substantial leads. A stolen white Chevrolet registered in Venice, Los Angeles, California, was found in Cascade Locks the day of the Martins' disappearance, but was quickly dismissed by police as it did not match their vehicle. [11] Also found near the site of the abandoned Chevrolet was a .38 Colt Commander handgun, which had been disposed of in the bushes and was covered in dried blood. [16] The handgun was turned over to law enforcement but never processed for evidence. The gun's serial number was traced to a Meier and Frank department store, [9] and it was subsequently discovered that the gun had been among several sporting good items that the Martins' son Donald had been accused of stealing while working at a Meier and Frank two years prior. [16]
On December 8, Roy Light and another unnamed man—both ex-convicts —were arrested for car theft in Hood River County in connection with the abandoned Chevrolet, [17] which raised suspicion in relation to the Martins' disappearance. [9] A waiter at the Hood River restaurant where the Martins were last seen told law enforcement he saw Light (who was an acquaintance) and the other ex-convict in the restaurant at the same time; he also stated that the two men left at the same time the Martins did. [17]
Various other tips were submitted to law enforcement in the weeks and months following the family's disappearance, [18] including over 200 letters and hundreds of phone calls. [19] Among them were a report from an orchard owner east of Portland who claimed to have witnessed a man and woman on December 7, gathering greenery in a canyon where a Native American burial ground was located. [19] He added that the following week, he noticed a flock of buzzards flying in this direction. [19] The canyon was searched, but nothing was found. [19] On December 28, a woman's glove was discovered near the site of the abandoned Chevrolet, which family stated was "similar" to a glove Barbara "would wear"; however, it could not positively be identified as belonging to her. [20] Days later, on December 31, a man called police reporting he had seen a vehicle matching the Martins' Ford speeding on the Baldock Freeway. Police were alerted along the freeway, but the car could not be located. [11] A letter was also received from a witness who claimed to have seen a family resembling the Martins in Burlington, Iowa, on Christmas Eve. [19] One of the last reported sightings of the Ford came on January 7, 1959, from a truck driver who stated he had seen a car matching the Martins' description parked in Billings, Montana, with Oregon license plates. [21]
By February 1959, investigators had undertaken searches of various locations, including the greater Portland metropolitan region, as well as searches on Mount Hood. [19] During this time, a volunteer searcher found tire tracks leading off of a cliff near The Dalles, which reportedly matched the tires on the Martins' Ford. [6] Paint chips recovered at this location were sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for analysis, and it was determined that the paint was the same paint used on the make and model of the Ford. [16] Based on the possibility that the Martins' vehicle may have plunged into the river, the United States Army Corps of Engineers lowered the level of the river by 5 feet (1.5 m) in the lake behind Bonneville Dam, which was searched with sonar technology but yielded no results. [19]
On May 1, 1959, three months after the tire tracks were reported, a river drilling rig near The Dalles reportedly hooked something of substantial weight to its anchor; however, it became dislodged before it could be pulled to the surface. [6] [22] In the early morning hours of May 2, a fisherman and his wife reported seeing what appeared to be two bodies floating downstream near Cascade Locks; they later encountered them near Bonneville Dam. [23] On the afternoon of May 3, the body of Susan was discovered on the north bank of the Columbia River, near Camas, Washington, roughly 70 miles (110 km) west of The Dalles. [2] [24] Her identity was positively confirmed via dental records. [25] The following morning, the body of Virginia was discovered near Bonneville Dam, roughly 46 miles (74 km) west of The Dalles, [2] also confirmed via dental records. [26]
Susan's body was taken to the Clark County medical examiner's office before being transferred to Multnomah County in Portland for autopsies on both bodies to be performed. One of the technicians who had taken fingerprints prior to the autopsies indicated to the medical examiner what they believed to be bullet holes in the heads of each of the girls' bodies; however, according to the medical examiner's report, no such injuries were found and the cause of death for both of the girls was officially declared as drowning. [2] Traces of metal, including aluminum, were recovered from Susan's clothing. [27] Interestingly, the spot on the river bank where the drill rig encountered a submerged object, and where the car is suspected to have gone into the river, was directly opposite an aluminum smelting plant.
Rupert Gillmouthe, the sheriff of Hood River County at the time, suspected that the drilling rig had overturned the Martins' car at the bottom of the river and dislodged one of the doors, allowing the bodies of Susan and Virginia to escape and surface downstream. Further searches of the water were undertaken by both sonar and helicopter but were unfruitful. The search for Kenneth, Barbara and Barbie was subsequently suspended after a search diver nearly drowned. [28]
Police theorized that the Martins may have died as a result of Kenneth crashing their vehicle into the Columbia River, while another theory held that the family had been abducted and forced off of a cliffside into the river. [6] [29]
In 1961, three years after the family's disappearance, a resident of Camas wrote a letter to The Oregon Journal stating that they were parked with a companion in Cascade Locks on December 7, 1958, and had witnessed a vehicle proceeding under the railroad tracks leading toward the locks. [30] Moments later, they heard screaming, but upon investigating, found nothing. [30]
In December 1966, eight years after the Martin family's disappearance, Donald—the only surviving member of the family—inherited the family's "modest" estate, which had been in mandated probate for seven years. [31] He later moved to Kapolei, Hawaii, and became a teacher at James Campbell High School, ʻEwa Beach. [32] Donald died on October 8, 2004 at the age of 73, leaving three children behind. [32] He is buried, together with his wife, at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. [33]
Multnomah County police consistently suspected foul play in the Martins' disappearance, based on the evidence of the tire tracks that indicated their vehicle was deliberately pushed from the cliff. [34] Also troubling were the reported sightings of the family at dusk on the north bank of the river in Washington state, while the tire tracks placed them on the south side of the river in Oregon; this would suggest that their car would have fallen over the cliff after nightfall. [34] The arrest of the two ex-convicts the day after the family's disappearance, for car theft, was also noted, though police were unable to determine if the incidents were related. [9] Walter Graven, a Portland detective who died in 1988, ardently felt the family had met with foul play and that their murders would be solved once their car was discovered. [16]
The cremated remains of Susan and Virginia remained at the River View Abbey Mausoleum in Portland, unclaimed for over a decade after their deaths. [35] On December 30, 1969, the urns containing their remains were retrieved by an unknown individual. [35] The girls' paternal grandmother, Margaret Martin, had died the day before, December 29, and the girls' cremated remains were claimed while funeral arrangements were being made for her. [35]
For most of the latter part of the 20th century, search efforts to recover the remaining three missing family members were not made. [36] In July 1999, however, Oregonian journalist Margie Boulé, who had become interested in the case, organized a dive search of the Columbia River near Cascade Locks, searching for the Martins' car. [37] This search utilized new sonar, Global Positioning System (GPS) and lidar underwater acoustic technology, but ultimately proved unsuccessful. [37]
As of 2024 [update] , the remains of Kenneth, Barbara, and Barbie remain undiscovered, and their vehicle has not been found. [9]
Cascade Locks is a city in Hood River County, Oregon, United States. The city got its name from a set of locks built to improve navigation past the Cascades Rapids of the Columbia River. The U.S. federal government approved the plan for the locks in 1875, construction began in 1878, and the locks were completed on November 5, 1896. The locks were subsequently submerged in 1938, replaced by Bonneville Lock and Dam, although the city did not lose land from the expansion of Lake Bonneville behind the dam some 4 miles (6 km) downstream of the city. The city population was 1,144 at the 2010 census.
The Historic Columbia River Highway is an approximately 75-mile-long (121 km) scenic highway in the U.S. state of Oregon between Troutdale and The Dalles, built through the Columbia River Gorge between 1913 and 1922. As the first planned scenic roadway in the United States, it has been recognized in numerous ways, including being listed on the National Register of Historic Places, being designated as a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, being designated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers, and being considered a "destination unto itself" as an All-American Road by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation. The historic roadway was bypassed by the present Columbia River Highway No. 2 from the 1930s to the 1950s, leaving behind the old two-lane road. The road is now mostly owned and maintained by the state through the Oregon Department of Transportation as the Historic Columbia River Highway No. 100 or the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department as the Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail.
The Sandy River is a 56-mile (90 km) tributary of the Columbia River in northwestern Oregon in the United States. The Sandy joins the Columbia about 14 miles (23 km) upstream of Portland.
The White River is a tributary of the Deschutes River, approximately 50 miles (80 km) long, in north-central Oregon in the United States. It drains a scenic mountainous area of the Columbia Plateau on the east side of the Cascade Range southeast of Mount Hood. In the 1840s, a section of the Oregon Trail called the Barlow Road passed through the river corridor. This section of the road is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Lolo Pass is a mountain pass 6 miles (10 km) northwest of Mount Hood and 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Zigzag, Oregon, on the Clackamas–Hood River county line. It divides the Sandy River watershed on the southwest from the Hood River watershed on the northeast.
U.S. Route 30 (US 30) in the U.S. state of Oregon is a major east–west United States Numbered Highway that runs from its western terminus in Astoria to the Idaho border east of Ontario. West of Portland, US 30 generally follows the southern shore of the Columbia River; east of Portland, the highway has largely been replaced with Interstate 84 (I-84), though it is signed all the way across the state, and diverges from the I-84 mainline in several towns as a de facto business route. Out of all the states US 30 traverses, it spends the most time in Oregon. At 477.02 miles (767.69 km), it is also the longest road in the state.
Columbia Gorge Community College is a public community college in The Dalles, Oregon, which is situated and surrounded by the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area.
Interstate 84 (I-84) in the U.S. state of Oregon is a major Interstate Highway that traverses the state from west to east. It is concurrent with U.S. Route 30 (US 30) for most of its length and runs 376 miles (605 km) from an interchange with I-5 in Portland to the Idaho state line near Ontario. The highway roughly follows the Columbia River and historic Oregon Trail in northeastern Oregon, and is designated as part of Columbia River Highway No. 2 and all of the Old Oregon Trail Highway No. 6; the entire length is also designated as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Highway. I-84 intersects several of the state's main north–south roads, including US 97, US 197, I-82, and US 395.
Many steamboats operated on the Columbia River and its tributaries, in the Pacific Northwest region of North America, from about 1850 to 1981. Major tributaries of the Columbia that formed steamboat routes included the Willamette and Snake rivers. Navigation was impractical between the Snake River and the Canada–US border, due to several rapids, but steamboats also operated along the Wenatchee Reach of the Columbia, in northern Washington, and on the Arrow Lakes of southern British Columbia.
The Bailey Gatzert was a sternwheel steamboat that ran on the Columbia River and Puget Sound, in Washington state, US, from the 1890s to the 1920s. This vessel was considered one of the finest of its time. It was named after Bailey Gatzert, an early businessman and mayor of Seattle, who was one of the closest friends and business associates of John Leary – the person who financed the ship.
R. R. Thompson was a large sternwheel steamboat designed in the classic Columbia River style. She was named after Robert R. Thompson, one of the shareholders of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, the firm that built the vessel.
Charles R. Spencer was a steamboat built in 1901 to run on the Willamette and Columbia rivers from Portland, to The Dalles, Oregon. This vessel was described as an "elegant passenger boat". After 1911 this vessel was rebuilt and renamed Monarch.
Sarah Dixon was a wooden sternwheel-driven steamboat operated by the Shaver Transportation Company on the Columbia and lower Willamette rivers from 1892 to 1926. Originally Sarah Dixon was built as a mixed use passenger and freight vessel, and was considered a prestige vessel for the time.
Since the early 1980s, several non-steam-powered sternwheel riverboats have been built and operated on major waterways in the U.S. state of Oregon, primarily the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, as river cruise ships used for tourism. Although configured as sternwheelers, they are not paddle steamers, but rather are motor vessels that are only replicas of paddle steamers. They are powered instead by diesel engines. The Lurdine was, when launched in 1983, "the first passenger-carrying sternwheeler in decades to [operate] on the Columbia River". In the case of the 1983-built M.V. Columbia Gorge, the construction and operation of a tourist sternwheeler was led by local government officials who viewed the idea as potentially being a major tourist attraction, giving an economic boost to their area, Cascade Locks, Oregon.
Regulator was a sternwheel-driven steamboat built in 1891 which operated on the Columbia River until 1906, when it was destroyed by explosion which killed two of its crew, while on the ways undergoing an overhaul at St. Johns, Oregon.
Jeremy Doland Bright is an American teenager who disappeared under mysterious circumstances while attending the Coos County Fair in Myrtle Point, Oregon. At the time of his disappearance, Bright resided in Grants Pass and had been visiting family in Myrtle Point. On August 14, 1986, he attended the Coos County Fair with his younger sister. During the day, the pair separated, but Bright failed to meet her that afternoon, as arranged, at the carnival's ferris wheel. Several witnesses reported seeing Bright forcibly removed from the area by an unknown man, though these sightings were not confirmed.
Susan Elizabeth Pearson was an American heiress who went missing under mysterious circumstances in Missoula, Montana. A native of Portland, Oregon, Pearson was a graduate student and instructor at the University of Montana (UM) at the time of her disappearance. She disappeared days before she was scheduled to submit her doctoral thesis, as well as administer an exam for a business course she was teaching.
Columbia Area Transit (CAT), officially the Hood River County Transportation District, is a public transit agency serving Hood River County, Oregon, United States. It operates local bus routes in Hood River, as well as commuter bus routes to Portland, The Dalles, and other nearby communities. The "major" sources of funding include grants from the Federal Transit Administration, several different sources from the State of Oregon, local property tax, and user fees. The District was formed by a vote of Hood River County residents in 1992 and took effect July 1, 1993.
Nathaniel Holly Gates, also known as Colonel Gates for most of his life, (1811–1889) was an American pioneer lawyer and Oregon state legislator. He was an active Democrat throughout his life. He served four terms in Oregon's territorial legislature. This included one term as Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives during the 1858 legislative session. After Oregon became a state in 1859, he served one two-year term in the Oregon House of Representatives and one four-year term in the Oregon State Senate. Before immigrating to Oregon, Gates lived and worked as a lawyer in Ohio and Iowa. After moving to Oregon, he settled in The Dalles and opened a law practice there. He helped develop that community and served as the city's mayor five times in non-consecutive terms.