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Remains discovered in a submerged vehicle in the Columbia River have been confirmed through DNA analysis as belonging to an Oregon family that vanished in 1958 during a trip to gather Christmas greenery, officials announced on Thursday.
The Hood River County Sheriff’s Office revealed that the state medical examiner has positively identified the remains as those of Kenneth and Barbara Martin and their daughter, Barbie. The remains were recovered from the wreckage of their vehicle in the river.
Concluding their investigation, the sheriff’s office stated that there was no evidence pointing to foul play in the family’s disappearance.
The family’s Ford station wagon, long suspected to have gone missing with them, was finally located in 2024 by a dedicated diver who had been searching for the vehicle for several years.
In the subsequent year, authorities successfully retrieved a portion of the car from the river, bringing closure to the decades-old mystery.
The family vanished in December of 1958.
The bodies of two of the family’s children were found months after the disappearance, but the other members never turned up.
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 asked in 1959, months after the disappearance.
Only the frame and some attached components were retrieved from the water because of the “extent to which the vehicle had been encased in sediment,” the sheriff’s office said.
Analysis of those items allowed investigators to conclude that it was indeed the Martin family’s car.
Later in 2025, the diver located human remains that were ultimately turned over to the state medical examiner’s office.
Scientists developed DNA extracts from the remains and generated a profile that was compared with relatives of the Martin family, allowing for the identifications, authorities said.