The Martin Family Pt. One

following evening. Just under five months later, the bodies of Susan and Virginia are discovered at separate locations in the Columbia River, and some evidence suggests that the Martin station wagon crashed into the water. However, other evidence, such as the discovery of a blood stained gun which is traced back to the Martin surviving son, points to the family being victims of an elaborate murder plot, but this is never proven and no trace of Kenneth, Barbara, and Barbie are found.

The bodies of two of the Martin children would eventually be found floating in the Columbia River, but the rest of the family, as well as their vehicle, had never been located. Now I know what you're probably thinking here. The Martins obviously drove the car into the water, the missing victims are still submerged underwater, and the whole thing

was nothing more than a tragic accident. Well, I'll admit that when I first came across this case on the Charlie Project website a long time ago, I thought the exact same thing. But there's been renewed interest in the case in recent years, thanks largely to the publication of a book which came out during the summer of twenty nineteen, which is titled Echo of Distant Water, the nineteen fifty

eight disappearance of Portland's Martin family. The author JB. Fisher wanted to do a deep dive into the Martin case and went through the original case files, where he made some interesting discoveries to suggest that there's a lot more of this story than a tragic accident, and that the

family may have been victims of foul play. A pair of ex convicts just happened to be frequenting the area where the Martins were last seen, but most intriguingly, a gun would be found which was linked to the family's surviving son, Donald, who was serving the Navy and station in New York at that time. Donald apparently did not have the best relationship with his family, so there has been suspicion that he may have helped orchestrate their disappearance.

A number of different theories have been formed about what ultimately happened to the Martins, and we're going to explore all of them on today's episode.

an infant or anything. When you talk about the gun being linked to Donald, were either of the girls that were found Were either of them shot?

year old wife, Barbara. Kenneth works as a supervisor for the repair department of the Eccles Elector Home Service Company, and the couple have four children, including three daughters, ten year old Susan, twelve year old Virginia, and fourteen year old Barbara, who goes by the nickname Barbie. In addition, the Martins also have a twenty eight year old son named Donald who's serving in the Navy and currently stationed on the other side of the country at Fort Schuyler

in New York. Sometime between one thirty and two p m. On the afternoon of Sunday, December seventh, Kenneth, Barbara, and their three daughters decided to climb into the family vehicle, a cream in red nineteen fifty four Ford Country Squire station wagon, to take a road trip. They were planning to travel east to make an excursion into the Columbia River Gorge, a canyon which stretches eighty miles throughout Oregon.

In Washington State, the trip would likely involve picking up a Christmas tree and collecting some other fresh greens to put together reefs and other holiday decorations. Before they left, the Martins had been invited to a friend's home for Sunday dinner, but they declined because of the trip, with Kenneth's stating quote, we'd better do as planned. But sometime over the course of the next several hours, the Martins

would vanish without a trace. On Monday morning, December eighth, Kenneth failed to show up for his job at the electric company, and all three of the Martin daughters were absent from school that day without any notice from their parents. Since it was very out of character for Kenneth to miss work, he was reported missing later that evening, and the police decided to check the Martin residence. Neither the family nor their station wagon were there, and everything appeared

to be undisturbed. The dishes from their Sunday morning breakfast were in the sink and the load of laundry was in the washing machine. Kenneth was known for playing Santa claus for the neighborhood children, and a Santa suit he'd worn to a Christmas party on the evening of December

sixth was still laid out. An extensive search effort would be launched for the Martin family, and since a considerable amount of money had been left behind in their bank accounts, it seemed very unlikely that they took off voluntarily.

out for Christmas goodies. This is December and they were trying to get ready for the holidays, and then somehow they don't make it back to this quaint little home that's so loved and lived in. You can tell from the description and the fact that the money is still left behind in their bank accounts, like you said, very much indicates that they were most likely not planning to not return to their normal life.

which was known for selling Christmas trees. The property was located just off the old Columbia River Highway on Larch Mountain Road, over thirty miles outside of Portland. Since this was in the Columbia River Gorge area, it would have made sense for the Martins to visit that property, but when shown photographs of the family, neither the owner nor his wife could be one hundre percent certain they saw

them there. The next promising lead occurred two weeks later, when a credit card bill showed up in the Martin's mailbox which showed that Kenneth had purchased five gallons of gasoline on December of the seventh. The transaction took place at Dean's Chevron service station in the town of Cascade Locks,

and sure enough, Kenneth's signature was on the receipt. Cascade Locks was located in Hood River County, forty miles east of Poor Portland, and there would be another intriguing sighting which took place twenty miles east of there in the town of Hood River. Later that same afternoon, a waitress at a restaurant called the Paradise Snack Bar claimed that she served the Martin's food sometime between four thirty and

five pm. She said it was around dusk when they climbed in the station wagon and appeared to be heading west as they drove away. There would also be multiple reported sightings of the Ford station wagon between five point fifteen and five thirty that same evening. All of these eye windesses said they saw it parked by the highway at a cape called Trotter's Point, located eight miles east

of Cascade Locks next to the Columbia River. Some of them reported seeing a Christmas tree in the back of the station wagon, and one witness recalled seeing a second car park near it. One couple would also report seeing the station wagon parked on an access road and said that two young men appeared to be standing by the

vehicle and talking to the people inside. Interestingly enough, the following day, motors started noticing in a bit and in white nineteen to fifty one Chevrolet parked by the highway at Trotter's Point in almost the exact location the station wagon have been seen. Since it did not match the description of the Martin's vehicle, the local police paid little attention to the Chevy, and it would be ten days before it was finally towed away from that spot.

cliff into the Columbia River. It would later turn out that the tire tread seemed to match the tires on the martins Ford station wagon paint ships were also found on a nearby rock, and when sent to the FBI for analysis, a match was made to that particular station wagon's paint. By this point, the searches were conducted for the missing vehicle in the Columbia River near Cascade Locks.

The location was in close proximity to Bonneville Dam, but nothing could be found and the searches were called off when one of the divers nearly drowned. The investigation had to stand still, but there would be some shocking developments four months later. On May first, a dredging operation with a drilling barge was taking place near the dolls, which involved dropping large anchors into the river. On this particular day, one of the anchors wound up getting caught on a

large object deep beneath the water. While the crew attempted to bring the object to the surface, one of the deckhands stuck his pole into the water and struck something which he believed was metal, but before they could actually see it, the anchor came loose and the object wound up plunging back down over one hundred feet. The crew members believed they hooked onto a vehicle and would later say they saw what appeared to be a bundle of clothes surfacing in the water in the distance before it

floated downstream well. Only two days later, the crew of a tugboat came across the body of a young girl on the north bank of a waterway called the Columbia Slough. The location was near the town of Camas, Washington, approximately seventy miles west of the Dolls. When the body was recovered, dental records would positively identify the victim as Susan Martin.

On May fourth, just one day after Susan was found, another body of a young girl would be discovered floating in the river roughly twenty five miles east, this time in the Bonneville Dame Spillway. This time, dental records would be used to identify the victim as Virginia Martin. An autopsy found traces of food, including hamburgers and fries, in

both Susan and Virginia's stomachs. Since the waitress at the Paradise Snack Bar and Hood River had recalled serving the Martin family burghers and fries on the day they went missing, this seemed to clarify that her sighting was genuine. The digestion of the food indicated that the girls had eaten two hours before they died, placing their approximate time of death at around six thirty p m. On December seventh.

Since both bodies were heavily decomposed, the exact cause of death was difficult to determine, though the medical examiner would officially declare it to be drowning. However, a technician who fingerprinted the victims in photographed Virginia's body would later claim that he saw holes in both of the girl's skulls, though no mention of this was made in the medical examiner's report.

from a multitude of things. Is it a gunshot, Is it some injury that happened when it was you know, when that tug boat was pushing down on the car. Who knows. It does sound like though, while they're dredging that lake, maybe the station wagon is open in some capacity, the roof is torn off, the windshield's broken, something like that, which allows those bodies to float to the surface and then go elsewhere. Tell me how wild is it that they could still tell the food contents of their stomachs

even though the bodies were badly composed. Science amazes me.

sightings and missing persons cases could be reliable. But finding the burgers and fries in the two girls stomachs pretty much clarified that was the family that the waitress sough at the diner, so this was able to pinpoint the last time they were confirmed to be alive, and the fact that their approximate time of death took place less than two hours after they left the diner indicates that they were killed a short time later, and that makes the sighting of them next to the car with the

two men all the more interesting.

And this makes you think was this an accident because they had no reason to be driving that direction, or did someone intentionally rig it so that the station wagon went into the water.

It turned out to the location where the drilling barge caught the large object with the anchor just happened to be near the Rocky bluff where the tire tracks had

been found months earlier. So investigators were now convinced that the Martin station wagon had gone off the cliff into the river, and when the barge attempted to raise the vehicle to the surface, they wound up dislodging one of the doors, causing Susan and Virginia's bodies to come loose and float downstream to the locations where they were eventually found. While divers would perform a search of the area where the station wagon was believed to be submerged, poor visibility

made it difficult to see anything under water. While some investigators believed that the Martins had driven their vehicle into the river accidentally, others suspected that it was pushed off the cliff deliberately. This included the lead investigator on the case, Detective Walter Grave of the Multoma County Sheriff's Office, who became convinced that the family were victims of foul play.

There did seem to be any logical reason for the Martins to have driven to the dolls, and it was also strange that they were seen eating in hood river. According to Kenni's friends and family, he did not like to drive in the dark, but since the Martins were seen leaving the restaurant at dusk, this would have required him to make a sixty mile drive back to Portland

at night. Another odd detail is that a neighbor of the Martins were called seeing a black taxi parked outside their residence on the morning of December the eighth, the day after the family went missing, and it remained there for about an hour for unknown reasons. And remember that abandoned white shod which was seen at Trotter's Point on

December the eighth. Well, it turned out that the car had originally been stolen from Venice, California by an ex convict named Lester Kenneth Price, as his friend had apparently let him borrow the Chevy, but Price never brought it back. During the time period the Martins went missing, Price would be seen in the presence of another ex convict named Roy Light. The two men had served time together at

San Quentin, and Light lived in the Dallas. The owner of the Paradise Snack Bar, who was personally acquainted with the two men, claimed that he saw Light and Price together in the restaurant on December the seventh while the Martins were there, and the two men and the family

all left at approximately the same time. According to a local informant named Clifford slim Bennett light and price mean a few days staying out of brothel he ran in Dallas Port, Washington before they both left the area after December the tenth.

like that. They see four women and one man. Could they have tried to, let's say, assault the girls or you know, hurt the family in some way, robbed them to have money while they you know, have recently been released from prison, and then leave their car, abandon that car because it stays put, and drive that family station wagon after they've injured them to the location where they push it off and then go along with their you know, with their business.

to use his transportation? But if they hijacked the Martin station wagon and had them drive in the opposite direction, then it seems logical that they could have used that opportunity to drive it off the cliff into the water.

Even though the man turned in the gun to the Hood River County Sheriff's office, for whatever reason, it was not process's evidence, and the sheriff just gave him the gun back. Well. Interestingly enough, one of the crew members from the drilling barge would tell Detective Graven that roy L had once attempted to sell him a beat up

thirty eight Quolt Commander handgun. Even though the gun had not been kept as evidence, its serial number was still recorded and this information would help take the case in a surprising direction. Graven wound up tracking the gun to a Meyer and Frank department store, and it turned out it had been stolen in September of nineteen fifty five.

But the shocking revelation was that the alleged culprit was the Martin's surviving son, Donald, who had been employed in the store's boarding goods department at that time, who was fired after he was accused of stealing over two thousand dollars worth of items, including that very handgun. Since Kenneth Martin reimbursed the store for the stolen merchandise, no charges were ever filed, but the gun was one of the

items which was never recovered. Donald would soon be sent to a religious college in Connecticut before he enlisted in the Navy, in an apparent attempt to set him straight. Even before he was linked to the gun, there was already suspicions about Donald, who seemed to have a strained relationship with his family. During the initial search efforts for them, he did not even bother to travel back to Oregon, and only allowed himself to be interviewed by Detective Graven

over the phone. Donald's first trip out west did not take place until March of nineteen fifty nine, and that was in order to help settle his family's estate, as he was the sole beneficiary. When the bodies of Susan and Virginia were discovered two months later, Donald did not attend a memorial service and later claimed that he'd gotten the dates mixed up. Susan and Virginia would both be cremated, and their remains were not claimed for over ten years,

though it's unclear who actually claimed them. Donald's first face to face interview with Graven finally took place in June, and while he expressed his belief that his family's deaths were not an accident, he could not think of anyone

who would have had the motive to harm them. Donald claimed that the theft of the department store took place because he was experienced seen great personal strain at the time, as his parents had recently found out about a relationship he was having with another man and did not approve. When asked about the missing handgun, Donald denied, ever having it and said that a friend of his name Wayne, took it. At the time, Wayne was also employed at Meyer and Frank and he and Donald were sharing a

basement apartment together. By nineteen fifty nine, Wayne was married and working as a physical education teacher at Cascade Locks High School.

do not approve of his lifestyle. They're sending him to that Christian college, they're trying to get him into the military, like all of these very hyper masculine or conservative things. I could see where that really did divide him away from his family at the point that no one's survived, though, I almost feel like you could overlook that and step forward and say, hey, I still want to know what happened to him, Right, I don't have to deal with my mom and dad, I don't have to deal with

my sisters. Everyone's gone, So let me try to help figure out what happened. But on the other hand, like I said in nineteen fifty eight nineteen fifty nine, if he's looking back at all the things his family tried to quote help him with after discovering he was in a relationship with a man, I could see that being incredibly difficult. I could see it being something that created a lot of chaos and frustration and a disconnect between his parents, especially, and the girls were so little at

the time. He's a grown man, he's been through college, he's been in the military. It's possible he just didn't have a close relationship with the younger children and might have felt like he was in a kind of a different stage of his parents' life. And then they have the girls, which is kind of their second phase at life.

But is it possible he was having a relationship with Wayne, and then because the parents despised Wayne so much or didn't approve of that relationship, that Wayne had a motive And yes, a year later he's married and working in all these other things. But if they were sharing the basement together and they were working together, is it possible that was a young man that he had had a relationship with.

and Wayne had been working together. And I know Jules brought up the the idea potentially that maybe Kenneth still had the gun and was keeping it in the car, and that maybe these two guys could have taken it and used it on the family. But now I'm reminded that Kenneth, when Donald was accused of stealing, he reimbursed the store for all the stuff he stole, and one

of the items wasn't recovered was the gun. And I think Kenneth, being the honest man, he did that if he ever found the stolen gun, he would have given it back to the department store and wouldn't have still had it in his car years after the fact.

So it's highly concerning if Donald's claiming Wayne had it wayn could have had a motive to get rid of Donald's family even without Donald's knowledge, just saying look at everything they put my friend through or my lover through, look at what they did to him, and having that kind of disdain and frustration for the family who just

simply couldn't accept Donald for who he was. I could see a lot of anger and kind of fear associated with that, because back in nineteen fifty eight, having someone uncovered that you were gay was a far scarier scenario, especially if Wayne had a heterosexual relationship also happening at the time that later resulted in marriage. There could be that whole complicated dynamic going on and resentment towards Donald's family or fear of Donald's family's information.

re educate you type of a thing. And it sounds like the troubled teen industry of nowadays, you know, like the types of places that like Paris Hilton talks about, like on the podcast that she does. I don't know if she does it or if somebody else does it and she produces it, but anyway, she's constantly trying to take hits at the troubled teen industry because of her experience,

and it sounds like Donald experienced something similar. But as far as Wayne goes, are they still in contact because if Wayne is the responsible party, what type of murder would this have been? He would have had to stalk

the family for a long period of time. Would there not have been a more convenient way to have done this, And did he do this with the cooperation of Donald or did he do this on his own, Because I could see if there would be a financial motive if him and Donald were still in communication, and he said maybe,

he said something like, might they know your secret? And maybe if they're not here anymore, then nobody else will know except for me, And I'm not going to tell anybody because he might not want anybody to find out because he's married and has a job, and it's nineteen fifty eight and certain things that nowadays are very acceptable would have been seen as shameful back then, unfortunately, And there was maybe a financial motive because the estate was settled and Donald was the sole beneficiary.

get wealthy if he wiped out his entire family. So that's another sticking point against the theory that he did it. And in regards to Wayne, Well probably won't get into this toll part two, but I know that there's been speculation that he might have had an altogether different motive for harming the family, and that Kenneth may have had an ulterior reason for traveling to Cascade Locks more than just to get a Christmas tree, and that it might

have involved Wayne. Now, while getting back to Wayne, this character is a bit of an enigma. While researching the original case files for his book Echo of Distant Water, JB. Fisher found no indication that Graven ever interviewed Wayne, though he did mention his name several times in his notes. At one point, Graven wrote quote Wayne friend of Donald Martin, followed by the phrase quote put a grease on a

spot you don't want chickens to roost. Well. When KOI NTV in Portland did a fiftieth anniversary news story about the Martins disappearance in two thousand and eight, Wayne decided to come forward and do an interview with them. He claimed he had been questioned by Graven and discussed the possibility of Donald being involved in the murders of his family. Wayne stated that because of Donald's underground quote unquote lifestyle, he could have potentially found some professional killers to hire

for the job. When asked what he meant by lifestyle, Wayne replied, quote the gay lifestyle. According to Wade, Donald's parents had once caught him in the act with another gay man inside their home, and Wade acknowledged that even though he went on to get married and start a family,

Donald had once introduced him to the quote unquote gay lifestyle. Indeed, when Donald was caught stealing the items from Meyer and Frank, he actually told the managers that he was having a difficult time at home because his parents had recently learned that he was gay and did not approve of it. During his research, JB. Fisher also uncovered an old note in which Graven wrote quote had to be planned by before a name that was scratched out, followed by the

words quote no one else with motive. Computer photo enhancement would later show that the name which had been scratched out was Donald, But in spite of Graven's suspicions about Donald, the investigation would hit a standstill, as Graven was apparently told to leave the case alone and wrote in his notebook quote, even though I can get no cooperation from anyone, there is no murder that can't be solved. Graven passed

away in nineteen eighty eight. As for Donald, he would eventually get married and start a family of his own before moving to Hawaii, where he died in two thousand and four at the age of seventy three. According to Donald's children and grandchildren, he never spoke about his family, and they did not even learn he had lost his parents and three sisters until shortly before he passed away.

After six decades, Kenneth, Barbara, and Barbie Martin are officially still missing persons, and the exact circumstances of what actually happened to the Martin family remain a mystery. So I guess you could say the path when Chile.

And so I would think at some point, even a discussion from Donald's wife or something talking to the grandkids and talking to the children like you'll go, gentle on dad, he you know, has been through a lot in his life, or you know, lost everything at once and never got to reconcile with anybody. I mean, there was no conversation about this incredibly massive life changing event for Donald. It

didn't seem to change much for him. But you would think it would be a conversation that would have come up in the seventy three years that he was alive. It would be something when another family member passed away he could say, I've been through this. You know, our hearts are going to heal and they'll never come back, but we're going to get through this. No reference to them. That's very, very bizarre.

If he had a personality disorder, for example, he might not process motions in the same type of way, or any number of other things. It's just it's hard not to look at that and go, is this out of guilt? Is this out of you trying to distance yourself from what happened because you're partially responsible. I mean, there's just so many questions.

anything more than a tragic accident. But I'd say that echo of distant Water has caused me to look at these disappearances in an entirely different light. It's interesting to read JB. Fisher's account about how when he first learned about the story, he couldn't find very much online about it, aside from the profile pages of the three missing Martin

family members at the Charlie Project. While the profile pages have since been updated with new details, the original write ups were pretty basic because of the lack of available information, and it just sounded like a standard case of a vehicle driving into a river and the missing victims never being found. Whenever someone in their vehicle who goes missing at the same time, I usually suspect that they drove

into a body of water. But in this particular case, I think there's a pretty good chance the real explanation is not so simple, and that something a lot more

sinister happened. When you search from newspapers dot Com, you'll see that the Martin family disappearance got quite a bit of coverage at the time it originally happened, but it seemed to fade from the spotlight shortly after the bodies of Susan and Virginia were discovered, and it was mostly forgotten about for the next several decades, though there has

been a recent resurgence of interest in the case. JB. Fisher based his research on the original case files and notes from Detective Walter Graven, and it seems apparent that Graven faced considerable rest assistance from other members of law enforcement. At first, I cannot figure out why they would be so abverse to investigating the disappearance of an entire family, but again the impression that some of the investigators on this case developed tunnel vision and were convinced that the

Martin's deaths were accidental. There were also jurisdictional issues, since Graven was a detective from Moltnova County and the Martins technically went missing in Hood River County, but there has been speculation that some of the resistance may have been

due to connections to Clifford Slim Bennett. As you might recall, Bennett became involved in the investigation when he told police that the two ex cons Lester Kenneth Price, and Roy Lte stayed with him at a brothel he ran in Dollsport, Washington, during the time period the Martins went missing, while the brothel just happened to be located almost directly across the river from the cliff where the tire tracks have been found.

During the preceding years, Bennett had been involved in his fair share of criminal activities, including running a legal bootlegging joint in Portland, and the allegations that he had brought high ranking law enforcement officials to continue his operations unimpeded. Raven would tell his family he believed that members of the Moltnomah County Sheriff's Office and the Oregon State Police

have money tied up in Bennett's prothel. I have my doubts that Bennett was directly involved in the Martin family's disappearance, but I think there was paranoia that conducting a missing person's investigation in the dollars might cause some other unrelated criminal activities to surface, which is why certain people did not want Graven sticking his nose into their business.

no body cameras. Police had the ability to supplement their income with things like getting involved in criminal activities, drug rings, prostitution rings, benefiting from allowing these types of operations to go on, either financially or through access to drugs or

sex or whatever they wanted political influence. So I don't think it's completely out of the question to say, did the police say, oh my gosh, this guy's name came up, we need to shut this down, and it's a simple case of an accident, like truly believing in their gut this was an accident. It needs to be closed. We don't need an open murder investigation going on, and we sure don't need people poking around into these individuals backgrounds

that are tied to the case. So I think it's possible they had tunnel vision that it was an accident and that they were saying, listen, there's no need for people to keep poking their business in it. It's an accident, and if people are continuing to poke their no into this business, we're going to get uncovered. They we're doing something unlawful, and that's really the only way anyone would be able to find out that something illegal was going on.

for what happened in the Martins. But I do think they were just worried that if we don't write this off as an accident and we launch a homicide investigation, this is going to lead to possibly outside law enforcement agencies being brought in and they might uncover some of the shady stuff that we've been doing on the side. So I think this would be a good time to

bring an end to Part one. But join us next week as we present part two of our series about the disappearance of the Martin family, Robin, do you.

ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of UNSAWD Mysteries, where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was

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