Authorities will attempt once more Friday to drag a station wagon from the Columbia River that’s believed to have belonged to an Oregon household of 5 who disappeared practically 70 years in the past whereas they had been out looking for Christmas greenery.
The seek for the Martin household was a nationwide information story on the time and led some to invest about the opportunity of foul play, with a $1,000 reward provided for details about their whereabouts.
Salvage efforts had been referred to as off simply earlier than darkish on Thursday and authorities mentioned they may not present a timetable for the removing of the automotive.
The station wagon thought to belong to Ken and Barbara Martin was discovered final fall by Archer Mayo, a diver who had been searching for it for seven years, mentioned Mayo’s consultant, Ian Costello.
Mayo pinpointed the possible location and dove a number of instances earlier than discovering the automotive upside-down about 50 ft deep, coated in mud, salmon guts, silt and mussel shells, mentioned Costello, who introduced the discover Wednesday.
“It is a very large improvement in a case that’s been on the again of Portland’s thoughts for 66 years,” Costello instructed The Related Press.
Mayo discovered different automobiles close by, which might want to come out earlier than the station wagon could be pulled from the river, Costello mentioned.
Pete Hughes, a Hood River County sheriff’s deputy, mentioned one automotive had been beforehand recognized and the second was an unknown Volkswagen.
“We don’t know what we’ll discover,” Hughes mentioned when requested if officers thought our bodies had been contained in the automobiles.
AP
The Martins took their daughters Barbara, 14, Virginia, 13, and Sue, 11, on a trip to the mountains on Dec. 7, 1958, to gather Christmas greenery, in keeping with AP tales from the time.
They by no means returned.
Officers narrowed their seek for the household after studying that Ken Martin had used a bank card to purchase gasoline at a station close to Cascade Locks, a small Columbia River neighborhood about 40 miles east of Portland.
“Police have speculated that Martin’s crimson and white station wagon might need plunged into an remoted canyon or river,” the AP reported. “The bank card buy was the one factor to pin-point the household’s actions.”
5 months after their disappearance, the physique of the youngest daughter was discovered “bobbing in a Columbia River slough,” in keeping with the AP. “The physique of Susan apparently floated freed from the wreckage within the spring present and was washed to a again water slough close to Camas, Washington,” the AP wrote.
Virginia Martin’s physique was discovered the subsequent day about 25 miles upstream from the place her sister’s was situated.
The opposite members of the family had been by no means discovered, however the search continued.
The Martins had a 28-year-old son, Don, who was a Marine veteran and graduate scholar at Columbia College in New York on the time and instructed the AP he believed his household was useless.
“It’s been a excessive public curiosity case,” Hughes instructed the AP on Thursday. After Mayo supplied a part of the license plate quantity and different automobile identifiers, the sheriff’s workplace and the Columbia Gorge main crimes staff, together with the Oregon State Crime Lab, organized to have the automotive pulled out, he mentioned.
“We’re not 100% certain it’s the automotive,” Hughes mentioned. “It’s principally encased in mud and particles, so we don’t know what to anticipate after we pull it out of the water right now.”
Mayo runs a enterprise that finds issues that had been misplaced within the river, like watches and rings, but additionally helps with the restoration of drowning victims, Costello mentioned.
He had been searching for a analysis vessel that sank in 2017 when he discovered concerning the Martin household, Costello mentioned.
Mayo started digging up materials on the household and used modeling to pinpoint the doable location, he mentioned.
There’s a highway close to the place the automobiles had been discovered underwater.
Authorities haven’t mentioned whether or not they suppose they could discover the stays of different lacking folks in any of the opposite automobiles being pulled from the river.
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