DNA identifies Oregon family missing since 1958 in Columbia River wreckage

The Columbia River gave up a Cold War-era mystery and, with it, a family name that had been missing from the record for nearly 70 years. DNA analysis identified the remains found inside a recovered car as Kenneth Martin, Barbara Martin, and their daughter Barbara “Barbie” Martin, closing one of Oregon’s longest-running disappearances.

The Martins vanished on Dec. 7, 1958, while driving through the Columbia River Gorge to collect Christmas greenery. Their disappearance quickly became a national story and drew a $1,000 reward, while speculation about foul play shadowed the case for decades. Virginia Martin, 13, and Susan Martin, 11, were found downstream a few months later. Kenneth and Barbara Martin and Barbie Martin remained missing.

The break came in 2024, when private diver Archer Mayo located the family’s Ford station wagon in a catch-basin near the original locks in Cascade Locks. In early 2025, investigators used a crane in a complex recovery operation to pull the vehicle’s frame and components from the river. Later dives in late 2025 turned up human remains inside the wreckage.

Those remains were sent into a modern forensic pipeline that did not exist when the Martins disappeared. The Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office, working with Othram, Inc., used DNA analysis and forensic genetic genealogy to build profiles and compare them with relatives of the family. The identification of Kenneth Martin, Barbara Martin, and Barbie Martin came after nearly seven decades of uncertainty.

The Hood River County Sheriff’s Office said the investigation is now officially closed and that it found no evidence of criminal activity or foul play. That finding resolves the case’s longest-running theory, even if it does not explain every detail of what happened on that river road in 1958. What investigators once could only speculate about now has a physical answer: the family’s car was in the river, and the remains in the wreckage belonged to the missing Martins.

The case also shows how far cold-case work has moved since the original search. With help from the Hood River County Sheriff’s Office, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, RTI, and financial support from NamUs to fund testing, a disappearance that once lived only in newspaper memory was finally brought back to the names of Kenneth, Barbara, and Barbie Martin.