After two days of dredging, a crane on Friday pulled from the Columbia River a Ford station wagon that officials believe belonged to an Oregon family who disappeared while on a trip 66 years ago to find Christmas greenery.
No human remains were found in the vehicle, which was pulled out of the water on Friday afternoon in a process that took about 10 minutes. The vehicle's body, which was visible in videos shot by divers, came off during the lifting and only the frame and wheels came out of the water.
The car will be wrapped and sent to a warehouse, where a forensic team will try to learn more about its owners, said Pete Hughes, a Hood River County Sheriff's deputy. But officials felt certain the found the car they were looking for, he said.
“Everything matches,” he said. “It appears to be the color, make and model of the Martin vehicle."
Disappearance made national news
The search for the Martin family was a national news story at the time and led some to speculate about the possibility of foul play, with a $1,000 reward offered for information.
“Where do you search if you’ve already searched every place logic and fragmentary clues would suggest?” an Associated Press article wondered in 1959, months after the disappearance.
The bodies of two of the family's children were found in the river later that year, though the remaining members never turned up.
Salvage efforts were called off just before dark on Thursday and resumed early Friday as crews tried to clear mud that buried much of the car.
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, Costello said.
“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, Costello said. Hughes, the Hood River County sheriff’s deputy, said one car had been previously identified and the second was an unknown Volkswagen.
Investigators will now work on finding identification numbers from the engine and chassis of the car to make sure it is the Martins’ vehicle. The rest of the car body will remain in the river for now, Hughes said.
An ill-fated Christmas trip
The Martins took their daughters — Barbara, 14; Virginia, 13; and Sue, 11 — on a ride to the mountains on Dec. 7, 1958, to collect Christmas greenery, according to AP stories from the time. The children left the Sunday newspaper comics scattered about their home. Dishes remained in the sink and a load of laundry in the washing machine.
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 pinpoint the family's movements.”
A waitress reported seeing a family that could have been the Martins at the Paradise Snack Bar, east of Cascade Locks, just before sunset. The family had been out looking for a Christmas tree. They ordered hamburgers, fries, milk and dessert. The bill came to $4.15.
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.
The Martins had a 28-year-old son, Don, who was a Marine veteran and graduate student at Columbia University in New York at the time and told the AP he believed his family was dead.
Vehicle found by longtime sleuth
“It's been a high public interest case,” Hughes 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.
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.
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Associated Press journalists Sarit Hand and Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.
Martha Bellisle, The Associated Press