Martin family believed to be identified

CASCADE LOCKS — A 67-year-old mystery is one step closer to being resolved, thanks to the efforts of a local man.

Seven years ago, Archer Mayo, an independent diver and multi-media artist living in White Salmon, began searching for the white, 1954 Ford station wagon which disappeared on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1958. That’s the last time anyone saw Kenneth Martin (54), Barbara Martin (48), and their children, Barbara (14), Virginia (13), and Susan (11), who left their Portland home in search of Christmas greenery.

Last November, Mayo located the undercarriage of the vehicle he believed belonged to the Martins. The rear wheel, gas tank, and rear bumper were visible, and the tailgate ajar, which indicated the vehicle was a white, 1954 Ford station wagon. The measurements he took of the car’s dimensions gave him further proof, and he was able to break off the license plate holder with small metal registration tags still attached.

An attempt to recover the vehicle by the Hood River County Sheriff’s Office (HRCSO) March 6-7 ended with just the chassis coming to the surface of the Columbia “due to the weight of the debris and condition of the vehicle,” as previously reported by HRCSO.

Mayo told Columbia Gorge News that he had returned to the site multiple times in July. He later issued a press release confirming he had “uncovered human remains and conclusive, physical evidence tying those remains to the Martin family within what was left of the car. That material has been turned over to investigators.”

Hood River County Sheriff Matt English said the case remains under investigation.

Decades of speculation

The Martins never made it home after leaving Portland that day in 1958. They were reported missing on Tuesday, Dec. 9, when Kenneth and Barbara failed to show up for work.

A receipt later mailed to the family home showed a gas station stop in Cascade Locks, and an eyewitness placed the Martins at a Hood River café later that day. The case prompted investigations involving five different police departments in Portland and the Gorge, but a lack of coordination and no consistent leads resulted in the case going cold.

Several theories on what happened began circulating after the family’s disappearance, from the benign — Kenneth accidentally drove into the locks after their stop for gas — to the sinister — the family had been hijacked and murdered by two ex-convicts.

One of the convicts was known in The Dalles, and both were known by the owner of the café where the Martins were last seen; the eyewitness placed the family and the convicts at the café at the same time. Circumstantial evidence in the form of an abandoned vehicle, reported to having been stolen by one of the convicts, fueled the story.

Then, in February 1959, undisturbed tire tracks on a bluff in The Dalles overlooking the Columbia River, along with paint chips determined to be from the same make and model as the Martin family’s car were located. Those tracks were located “not far” from the residence where one of the convicts reportedly had been staying.

More speculation came after an Odell resident found a gun beneath a rock in January 1959, the handle coated with dried blood. An empty bullet casing located in the chamber indicated it had been fired at least once. The gun’s serial number was traced to the department store Meier & Frank Co. by Multnomah County Police Department Detective Walter Graven.

The Martins’ oldest son, Donald, 28, worked at Meier & Frank. He was accused of and later admitted to — and fired for — stealing merchandise; his father paid for the $2,000 worth of unaccounted items, one of which was a .38 caliber automatic revolver. After being questioned, Donald, now living in New York, admitted having a strained relationship with his parents. He did not return to Oregon until three months after the family disappeared, reportedly to settle his parents’ estate, once again fueling rumors.

Location found

Those weren’t the only “clues” in the case. On May 3, 1959, almost five months after the family was reported missing, Susan’s body was discovered in the Columbia River near Camas; the following day, Virginia’s body was discovered near Bonneville Dam.

The two were discovered days after a tugboat reportedly dropped anchor in the Columbia River and snagged an object allegedly right in front of the cliffside where the tire tracks and paint chips were found in The Dalles. After freeing the anchor, workers of the tugboat reported to Detective Graven they witnessed an object floating up in the water near their barge before being carried downstream, describing it as a “bundle of clothes.”

Mayo’s first dive was on Dec. 7, 2022, in The Dalles. From there, he worked his way downstream. What led him to focus on Cascade Locks was that, also in May 1959, a man fishing at Cascade Locks reported what appeared to be two bodies floating close together in the Columbia — but his wife, located 100 yards upstream, did not.

“So to me, understanding the river as I do, that let me know that the car was very close by, possibly between the two people,” he said in a video posted on his website, martinmystery.com.

While diving, he discovered a feature in the canal at Cascade Locks: A pit he estimated to be 83,000 cubic-feet. With the help of historians at the Oregon Historical Society in February 2023, he looked at designs of the original locks, completed in 1896.

“Once I knew there was a feature that didn’t appear in any other 19th century locks, I knew where the Martins were,” Mayo said. “The question [was], how to get to them.”

He immediately secured the permits needed to dredge the pit, now filled with mud, rocks, and debris. He made a paper model and went through various scenarios, noting that floods in 1964, 1965, the mid-1970s and 1996 “all affected where the car was going to be,” he said.

He notified the Hood River County Sheriff’s Office (HRCSO) of his discovery and, on March 6, a crane and a team of divers attempted to recover the vehicle. But due to significant debris making recovery difficult, HRCSO suspended efforts until the following day.

According to HRCSO, on the afternoon of March 7, “while attempting to pull the vehicle out, the chassis detached from the rest of the vehicle due to the weight of the debris and condition of the vehicle.” Divers and crews from Advanced American Construction were eventually able to remove the chassis with the engine, which was transported to a secure location for further examination.

Find additional links and information — including his one-man show recounting his search for the Martin family car —at www.martinmystery.com.

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Former staffers Kelsie Cowart and Noah Noteboom contributed to this report. Though family artifacts and human remains have been found, this case is still under investigation, as per HRCSO. The story will be updated as information becomes available.