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Remains of Oregon Family Who Vanished in 1958 Identified · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: I want you to put yourself in a very specific
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headspace for a minute. It's a deeply unsettling scenario, but
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stick with me. I want you to imagine you're leaving
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your house this coming Sunday for you know, a completely
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routine errand right, nothing special exactly. You're running out to
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pick up groceries, maybe grabbing a coffee or heading to
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the hardware store. And before you walk out your front door,
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you do what we all do.
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Speaker 2: You leave your life on pause. Oh, for sure, you
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toss a.
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Speaker 1: Load of laundry into the washing machine, hit start. You
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leave the breakfast dishes sitting damp on the drying rack.
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Your bank accounts are secure, your bills are paid. Your
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winter coat is you know, just hanging in the closet.
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Your entire existence is just sitting there. You fully expect
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to return in a couple of hours to make dinner.
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It's not a hope, right, it's a certainty. But you
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don't return. Wow, not that night, not the next day,
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you don't come back that year. In fact, your front
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door remains close to you for the next sixty seven years.
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Speaker 3: It's I mean, it's a terrifying thought exercise, really, because
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it completely violates our brains fundamental wiring for cause and effect.
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We are so conditioned to expect disruption to arrive with
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warning signs, you know, sirens or a phone call in
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the middle of the night, screeching tires. Yeah, some kind
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of alarm exactly. But in the scenario you're describing, that
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disruption is absolute. It's completely silent, and it leaves behind
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this perfectly preserved diorama of a life interrupted mid sentence.
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Speaker 1: And that is exactly the chilling reality we are jumping
1:32
into today. Our mission for this deep dive is to
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take a really microscopic, exhaustive look at the nineteen fifty
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eight disappearance of the Martin family from Portland, Oregon. Yeah,
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a massive case if you grew up in the Pacific Northwest.
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I mean, this is the cold case, the ghost story,
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the mystery that hovered over every single family road trip
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for almost seven decades. It was a complete black hole
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until now, right until a miraculous, multi layered breakthrough was
1:56
just announced this very week on April sixteenth, twenty twenty six.
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Speaker 3: And our entire analysis today is built exclusively on the
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recently released very comprehensive reports detailing this resolution. They're collectively
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titled The Long Winter. Solving the nineteen fifty eight Martin
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Family Mystery.
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Speaker 1: We are going to explore how a picture perfect, i mean,
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almost painfully normal, nineteen fifties family simply evaporated.
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Speaker 3: Into thin air.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll look at how the police and the public
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invented these wild cinematic theories of foul play that were
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frankly completely wrong, and will break down how an unbelievable
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convergence of historical obsession, extreme deepwater river diving, and space
2:37
age DNA technology finally, seventy years later brought this family home.
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Speaker 3: And what we really need to understand here is that
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this isn't just your standard true crime procedural.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, not at all.
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Speaker 3: This case is a profound study in how nature violently
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conceals its own tragedies. It's an exploration of how the
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human mind, when faced with an agonizing information vacuum, will
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construct elaborate, terrifying conspiracies simply to avoid facing the unexplainable.
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Speaker 1: That's such a good point, And ultimately.
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Speaker 3: It's a masterclass in how modern forensic science is systematically
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hunting down and rewriting the endings to the twentieth century's
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most impenetrable mysteries.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because to truly understand the sheer
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shock wave of this disappearance sent through the culture, we
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have to start by taking a snapshot of nineteen fifty
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eight Portland. We have to meet the Martin family, right,
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because their absolute, undeniable normalcy is what made their vanishing
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so completely terrifying.
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Speaker 3: Normalcy really is the operative word. We are looking at
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Kenneth and Barbara Martin. Kenneth was fifty four years old.
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He worked as an electrician for the Eccles Electric Home
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Service Company. Okay, and Barbara was forty eight. She was
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the quintessential homemaker of the postwar era. Neighbors described her
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as running the household with this incredible warmth inefficiency.
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Speaker 1: It was a full house too. They had four kids.
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The eldest son, Donald was twenty eight. He was actually
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out of the house.
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Speaker 3: At the time, serving in the Navy, right.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, serving in the United States Navy and taking classes
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at Columbia University over.
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Speaker 2: In New York.
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Speaker 1: Then you had the three girls still living at home.
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Barbie was fourteen, a freshman at Grant High School. Virginia
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was thirteen and the youngest Susan was eleven. Both Virginia
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and Susan were at the local Rose City.
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Speaker 3: School and they lived in Portland's Roseway neighborhood at seventeen
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fifteen Northeast fifty sixth Avenue. If you want to understand
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the sociology of this era, you really have to picture
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this specific neighborhood.
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Speaker 2: Paint that picture for us.
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Speaker 3: It is the absolute epitome of post war suburban stability.
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I mean, the late nineteen fifties was a period where
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America was heavily invested in the concept of the nuclear
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family as a fortress.
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Speaker 2: Right coming out of the wars.
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Speaker 3: Exactly, you survived the depression, you survived World War Two,
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and now you build a quiet, tree lined enclave where
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everyone looks out for each other.
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Speaker 1: And Kenneth practically embodied that community spirit. He was an
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avid woodworker and he had this incredibly endearing neighborhood legacy.
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Speaker 3: Oh the candy cane.
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Speaker 1: Yes, he would go into his workshop and carve these
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massive four foot tall wooden candy canes. He'd paint them
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bright red and white, and every single Christmas he would
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just ham them out to the local children in the neighborhood. Wow,
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that's who we were talking about, the guys spending his
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evenings making giant wooden candy canes for the kids down
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the street.
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Speaker 3: Which is why the psychological impact of what comes next
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is so severe. You know, the martyrs were not reclusive.
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They weren't living off the grid or involved in high
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risk behavior. They were deeply embedded in the social fabric totally.
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The girls were polite, kind, typical preteens who are highly
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active in school. They were the benchmark for the American dream.
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Speaker 1: And their car was the ultimate symbol of that dream.
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They drove a nineteen fifty four Ford Country Squire station.
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Speaker 3: Wagon the cream in red one.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, this striking cream color with bright red accents. For
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people listening today trying to picture the cultural weight of
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that car, I mean, it's not just a vehicle to me,
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it's the night teen fifty eight equivalent of the modern
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day family suv or like a loaded minivan.
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Speaker 3: That's a great comparison.
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Speaker 1: It's that heavy steel bubble you buckle your kids into
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and you feel totally invincible.
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Speaker 3: Absolutely. The Country Squire with the wood grain paneling was
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the reliable family workhourse. It represented a new era of
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American prosperity where families suddenly had the means, the gasoline,
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and the leisure time to simply pack up and go
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for a weekend drive just for the fun of it.
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Speaker 1: Which brings us to Sunday, December seventh, nineteen fifty eight,
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the day that started out so incredibly mundane. Let's trace
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their movements, because every eyewitness account paints a picture of
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a family just enjoying a Sunday right.
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Speaker 3: So, the night prior, Kenneth and Barbara had attended a
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neighborhood Christmas party. They got home late, likely in great spirits,
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and they planned out their Sunday outing. The goal was
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to head east toward the Columbia River Gorge to gather
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Christmas greenery.
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Speaker 1: Now, wait, is that something people just did, like drive
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out into the wilderness to chop down bushes?
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Speaker 2: Oh?
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Speaker 3: Absolutely yeah. For families in Portland, the Columbia River Gorge
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was the primary destination for homemade holiday cheer. It's a
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breath taking, rugged landscape just to short drive east of
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the city.
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Speaker 2: Okay, that makes sense.
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Speaker 3: In the nineteen fifties, making your own wreaths and garlands
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from fresh, locally gathered fir cedar and holly wasn't just
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a quaint craft, it was a widespread, totally expected holiday tradition.
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The Gorge was basically their backyard supply store for this.
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Speaker 1: So late Sunday morning, Kenneth, Barbara, fourteen year old Barbie,
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thirteen year old Virginia, and eleven year old Susan all
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pile into that cream and red Ford Country Squire the
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head east and because they were so recognizable, we actually
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have a solid, verified timeline of their afternoon.
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Speaker 3: Correct, around four pm, they pull into a gas station
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in Cascade Locks, which is about forty miles east of Portland.
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The station intendant, a man named Dean Baxter, distinctly remembered
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them right. He pumped exactly five gallons of gas into
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the ford, and he noted they continued heady east.
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Speaker 1: And about twenty miles farther east, they stopped for an
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early dinner at a place called the Paradise Snack Bar
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in Hood River. A waitress named Clara York served them.
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Speaker 3: H what did she say?
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Speaker 1: She remembered the parents and the three girls sitting together
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having a meal, no tension, no arguments, just totally normal.
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Speaker 3: Yeah. After they ate, they got back in the car
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as dusk was falling. Other motorists reported spotting their recognizable
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cream and red station wagon driving on the north bank
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of the Columbia River over on the Washington state side.
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Speaker 1: I really want to focus on their clothing for a second,
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because the sheer normalcy of it makes the vanishing act
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that much more jarring. Kenneth was wearing a tan zip
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up jacket, Barbara had a navy blue coat over a
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plaid jacket, and Barbie, the fourteen year old, was wearing
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jeans with rolled cuffs.
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Speaker 3: Such a specific detail.
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Speaker 1: It's such an evocative image, rolled cuffs on the jeans.
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Speaker 2: It's so real. There were no.
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Speaker 1: Signs of distress, just a family heading home as the.
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Speaker 3: Sun went down, and then the timeline simply stops. They
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are spotted on the north bank at dusk and they
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never arrived back at seventeen fifteen northeast fifty sixth Avenue.
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Speaker 1: You know, it completely shatters that illusion of safety. You
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do everything right, You mow your lawn, you go to work,
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you carve toys for the neighborhood kids, you buy the safe,
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heavy car, and the universe.
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Speaker 2: Just deletes you anyway.
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Speaker 3: It's terrifying.
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Speaker 1: It meant the entire post war suburban fortress concept was
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practically useless as a shield.
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Speaker 3: That is the core of the panic that followed when
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the Martins vanished. It signaled to every other family in
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Portland that the rules they were following did not actually
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offer any real protection from.
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Speaker 1: The chaos of the world, and the alarm bells rang
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almost immediately. By Monday morning, December eighth, Kenneth doesn't show
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up for his shift as an electrician, Barbie, Virginia, and
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Susan don't show up for their classes at.
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Speaker 3: School, which for a family this regimented is an immediate
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red flag. By Tuesday evening, December ninth, Kenneth's boss, Taylor Echoles,
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is so alarmed that he officially contacts the police to
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report the entire family missing.
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Speaker 1: And this brings us back to that terrifying opening scenari
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Around eleven pm on Tuesday night, police officers arrive at
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the Martin home. They go inside, and they find a
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house in a state of suspended animation, like a time capsule,
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Exactly like a time capsule, freezing the exact moment their
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timeline stopped. The laundry is still sitting in the washing machine,
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the breakfast dishes are drying on the rack. The family
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bank accounts have a healthy balance and haven't been touched.
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There is no sign of forced entry, no packed bags,
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no sign of a struggle.
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Speaker 3: It was a ghost ship scenario. Both the Moltnomah County
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and Hood River County Sheriff's offices immediately launched searches. Now,
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their initial logical assumption was a car accident. Sure, the
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Columbia River gorge is beautiful, but it is treacherous. The
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roads were winding, often slick with winter ice, and they
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run right alongside the massive, powerful, Columbia River. The tragic
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accident made perfect logical sense.
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Speaker 1: But they searched the roads. They search the embankments, and
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they find zero wreckage, no skid marks leading off a cliff,
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no broken glass, no bodies. And this is where the
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story takes a massive chaotic detour.
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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because.
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Speaker 1: When the simple explanation doesn't yield a bumper or a hubcap,
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people start looking for complex, sinister explanations, and the universe
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decided to provide some incredibly distracting evidence right at that
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exact moment.
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Speaker 3: The sheer volume of coincidental noise in this case is staggering.
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On Sunday, December seventh, the exact same day the Martins vanished,
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a white nineteen fifty one Chevrolet was reported stolen in Cascadelocks.
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Speaker 1: Cascade Locks being the exact town where the Martins had
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stopped to buy those five gallons of gas. Okay, a
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stolen car in the same town suspicious, but maybe just
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a coincidence.
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Speaker 2: But it gets so much worse. Near where that.
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Speaker 1: Stolen Chevrolet was eventually abandoned in the bushes, investigators find
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a point three to eight cult command or handgun and
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the gun is covered in dried blood.
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Speaker 3: Wow. As an investigator find a bloody weapon near an
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abandoned stolen vehicle on the route of a missing family
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is an alarm, belu, you can't ignore. So naturally the
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police run the serial number on this point three eight
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colt commander.
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Speaker 1: And when I read the source material on this next detail,
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my jaw actually dropped. The serial number on that bloody
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handgun traces back to a very specific Meyer and Frank
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department store. And why does that matter? Because Donald Martin,
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the twenty eight year old eldest son currently stationed in
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New York with the Navy, used to work at that
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exact Meyern Frank store ye, and not only did he
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work there, but he had previously been formally accused of
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stealing sporting goods from them.
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Speaker 3: I mean, if you calculate the statistical probability of that
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sequence of events, it borders on the impossible. A family disappears,
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a bloody gun is found hidden your stolen car on
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their route, and that specific gun is tied directly to
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the former workplace of the sole surviving family member, a
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family member who has a documented history of being accused
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of theft from that very location.
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Speaker 1: You look at these clues, the bloody gun, the stolen car,
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the son's connection to the store. If you were a
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detective in nineteen fifty eight, can't it be almost irresponsible
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not to assume a Hollywood style kidnapping or murder took place?
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I am looking for a hit man.
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Speaker 3: At that point, you absolutely assume it, which is the
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agonizing trap of patternifity.
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Speaker 2: Patternicity.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, the human brain is an aggressive pattern recognition machine.
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We evolved to connect dots to survive. If you hear
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a rustle in the grass and see a flash of orange,
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you assume it's a tiger, not the wind, and a
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weird flower.
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Speaker 2: That makes total sense.
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Speaker 3: In criminal investigations. This is the noise versus signal problem.
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You are trained to look for deviations from the norm.
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A bloody gun tied to the victim's family is a
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massive deviation. But the tragic reality is that sometimes entirely
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unrelated dots are sitting right next to each other purely
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by chance. Highly coincidental events can perfectly masquerade as causal evidence.
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Speaker 1: And the police had even more dots to connect. At
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the Paradise snack bar where the family had their early dinner,
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witnesses placed two ex convicts, a man named Roylite and
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an unnamed accomplice. They were known car thieves and right
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and a waiter noted that these two men left the
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restaurant shortly after the Martin family walked out.
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Speaker 3: So consider the narrative forming in the minds of the
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detectives in the public. Two ex convicts follow a wealthy
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suburban family out of a diner. A car is stolen
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in the same area. A bloody weapon tie to the
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eldest son's troubled past is found discarded in the brush.
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The media took these fragments and built an absolute bonfire.
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Speaker 1: The region went into a complete frenzy, A thousand dollars
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reward was offered, which was a massive sum. In nineteen
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fifty eight, over two hundred letters and hundreds of phone
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calls flooded the police switchboards. Everyone was convinced they had
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seen the ex convicts or they knew something about Donald's past.
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Speaker 3: But we really must pause and consider the immense cruelty
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of this paranoia. Think about Donald Martin. He is a
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young man, serving his country, trying to build a life
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in New York. He gets a phone call that his
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parents and his three little sisters have vanished off the
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face of the earth. Heartbreaking, and before he can even
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process the grief of that ambiguous loss, his name is
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being dragged through the mud. Connection with the bloody handgun
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and an old retail. Theft accusation. The psychological trauma of
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being unofficially suspected of orchestrating the slaughter of your own family,
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layered on top of the actual loss, is incomprehensible.
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Speaker 1: It's sickening, and for months, this dark cloud hangs over
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the entire Pacific Northwest. Winter turns into spring. The brutal
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freezing months of early nineteen fifty nine finally begin to thaw,
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and that is when the mighty Columbia River decides to
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yield its first secrets.
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Speaker 3: In the spring of nineteen fifty nine, the agonizing weight
15:32
took a grim turn. The bodies of the two middle daughters,
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thirteen year old Virginia and eleven year old Susan, washed
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up on the shores of the Columbia River.
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Speaker 2: But they weren't found together.
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Speaker 1: They were found roughly thirty miles apart from each other.
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Speaker 3: Which immediately demonstrates the immense, terrifying power of the river's currents.
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They had been carried an incredible distance downstream from wherever
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they initially entered the water.
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Speaker 1: Now when they recovered the girls, the medical examiners performed autopsies,
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and the results completely shattered those grand conspiracy theories right.
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Speaker 3: The autopsies confirmed that the cause of death for both
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girls was drowning. Furthermore, the medical examiners noted that the
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physical trauma on the bodies was entirely consistent with a
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severe vehicle accident, not a violent assault or a shooting.
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Speaker 2: Wow, so much to the hip man theory exactly.
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Speaker 3: While the details were limited due to the severe decomposition
16:23
for months in the harsh aquatic environment, the findings effectively
16:26
closed the door on the wild theories involving the bloody
16:29
Colt commander and the two ex convis it wasn't a
16:32
hit man, it wasn't a robbery gone wrong.
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Speaker 1: Okay, but wait, I'm hung up on the geography here.
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If the girl's bodies washed up and they know what
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was a car crash, wouldn't searchers just calculate the speed
16:42
of the current, trace the drift pattern backward, and pinpoint
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exactly where the car went into the water.
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Speaker 3: In a placid lake or a slow moving, simple river, perhaps,
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But the Columbia River Gorge is not a simple system.
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It is a chaotic, massive, dynamic, hydrologic monster. It is
16:59
incredibly deep, characterized by wildly shifting cross currents, immense underwater pressure,
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and most importantly, it carries an unbelievable load of sediment
17:08
and silt.
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Speaker 1: So a four thousand pounds steel station wagon doesn't just
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sink and sit neatly on the bottom like a toy
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boat in a bathtub.
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Speaker 3: Far from it. When a heavy vehicle plunges into a
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river like the Columbia, especially during the high, slow winter months,
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the forces at work are violent. The current can toss
17:24
a two ton car and over end it can drag
17:26
it miles along the riverbed, push it into deep, dark,
17:29
underwater crevices, and then crucially, the river begins dropping its
17:33
sediment load on.
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Speaker 2: Top of it, meaning the car was buried rapidly.
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Speaker 3: The silt and rocks suspended in the water column settle
17:39
over the vehicle, packing it in over months and years.
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That sediment acts almost like concrete. It completely entombs the object,
17:48
smoothing over the shape, so it becomes virtually invisible to
17:50
divers and completely undetectable to the rudimentary sonar equipment they
17:55
were using in the late nineteen fifties.
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Speaker 1: Which explains the absolute despair of the searchers, because after
18:01
the girls were found, the official search efforts went into overdrive.
18:05
They had fleets of boats dragging the river, They had
18:07
low flying helicopters scanning the banks. They sent divers into
18:10
the freezing water.
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Speaker 2: And they found nothing, nothing at all.
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Speaker 1: No Creaman red Ford, no Kenneth, no Barbera, no fourteen
18:17
year old Barbie. I found a quote from an Associated
18:20
Press reporter who was covering the search in nineteen fifty nine,
18:22
and it just radiates frustration. The reporter wrote, where do
18:26
you search if you've already searched every place logic and
18:28
fragmentary clues would suggest, and.
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Speaker 3: That failure to find the vehicle berthed a different kind
18:33
of trauma for the community. We talk in psychology about
18:36
the concept of ambiguous loss.
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Speaker 2: What does that mean exactly?
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Speaker 3: In this context, Normal grief, as painful as it is,
18:44
has a process. There is a death, there is a body,
18:46
there was a funeral, there is an ending. The brain
18:49
can begin to heal because the fact of the loss
18:51
is concrete, right. Ambiguous loss occurs when a loved one
18:55
is gone, but there is no definitive proof of death,
18:59
no physical mains to bury, no geographic location to point two.
19:03
The brain cannot close the loop. It leaves families and
19:07
in this case, an entire region in a permanent state
19:10
of suspended animation. You are always waiting for the other
19:13
shoe to drop.
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Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting, because nobody, absolutely nobody
19:18
personified that inability to close the loop quite like Anne Sullivan.
19:21
She was a reporter for the Oregonian newspaper. She was
19:24
thirty nine years old when the Martin family vanished, and
19:26
she covered the story from day one. And the thing
19:29
about Anne is She simply never stopped looking.
19:32
Speaker 3: Her dedication was bordering on a lifelong obsession. For decades,
19:35
While the rest of the world moved on, Anne Sullivan
19:37
kept the files open. She would continuously revisit the treacherous
19:41
roads of the gorge. She tracked down and reinterviewed aging witnesses.
19:45
Speaker 1: Anne Sullivan was basically the analog version of today's Internet
19:49
true crime Sluice.
19:51
Speaker 3: That's a very apt comparison.
19:52
Speaker 1: Right today, if a mystery happens, thousands of people jump
19:57
on Reddit, they scour satellite imagery on Google Earth, they
20:00
pulled digital property records. And Sullivan was doing all of
20:03
that physically. She was driving her own car up those
20:06
icy roads, staring out at the churning water, physically cross
20:10
referencing massive paper maps, trying to find the glitch.
20:13
Speaker 2: In the matrix.
20:14
Speaker 3: And interestingly, despite the medical examiner confirming the girl's drowned
20:18
in an accident, Sullivan wholly rejected that conclusion. She remained
20:22
utterly convinced until her dying day the foul play was involved.
20:26
Speaker 2: Really, even after the autopsy, yes.
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Speaker 3: She fixated heavily on a specific, unexplained set of tire
20:32
traps she discovered near a very steep, remote precipice by
20:35
the Dallas. She also relentlessly chased a dark rumor from
20:38
the nineteen fifty nine search efforts.
20:40
Speaker 2: Oh the rumor about the crane Right.
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Speaker 3: Yes, there was a persistent whisper among the locals that
20:46
during the height of the search, a grappling hook had
20:49
snagged something incredibly heavy deep in the river. The rumor claimed.
20:53
They began winching it up, believing it was the station wagon,
20:57
but the cable snapped or slipped, and the massive object
20:59
plunged back into the dark depths, lost forever. Anne Sullivan
21:03
believed that was the car and that it held the
21:05
evidence of a murder.
21:07
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty six, which is almost thirty years after
21:09
the disappearance, Anne wrote this incredibly haunting line in one.
21:13
Speaker 2: Of her retrospectives. She said, the fate of the E.
21:16
Speaker 1: Kenneth Martin family still haunts this writer, especially on drives
21:20
up the gorge, for I'm convinced I know where the
21:22
car is.
21:23
Speaker 3: But she never found it. Anne Sullivan passed away in
21:26
two thousand and eight. She spent over half her life
21:29
chasing a ghost, and she died without ever getting the
21:31
resolution she so desperately saw it. Her daughter Dian inherited
21:35
this massive, towering archive of her mother's files.
21:38
Speaker 1: And Diane also inherited something else along with the file.
21:42
She kept one of the wooden candy canes that Kenneth
21:44
Martin had car for his family before they vanished.
21:46
Speaker 3: That is so sad.
21:48
Speaker 1: It's such a poignant, heartbreaking image, a daughter holding her
21:52
mother's life work and a painted wooden toy from a
21:55
dead man. While the entire case file gets officially uploaded
21:58
into NAMOUSE, the National Missing and Unidentified Person System as
22:03
a completely cold, unresolved mystery.
22:07
Speaker 3: It begs a very deep psychological question. Why did Anne
22:10
Sullivan and so many others completely reject the autopsy findings.
22:15
Why did they cling to the bloody gun and the
22:17
ex convicts for decades?
22:19
Speaker 1: I think it's because a murder conspiracy, even a gruesome,
22:22
terrifying one, requires human agency. Yes, it means someone somewhere
22:27
made a choice. And if a human made a choice,
22:29
there are motives we can dissect, there are rules of
22:31
behavior we can study, there are villains we can potentially
22:34
catch and punish.
22:35
Speaker 2: A conspiracy gives us an illusion of control, precisely, but a.
22:38
Speaker 1: Random accident heating a patch of black ice and plunging
22:41
into a freezing river while you're just trying to get
22:43
home for dinner. That represents the absolute, chaotic, indifferent randomness
22:48
of nature.
22:49
Speaker 3: It means tragedy is not a narrative with villains and heroes.
22:52
It is just a statistical probability that can strike anyone anywhere,
22:57
regardless of how good a person you are. The human
22:59
psych he is highly averse to accepting that level of
23:02
profound vulnerability. Clinging to a complicated conspiracy theory is often
23:07
a psychological defense mechanism. It shields us from facing the
23:11
terrifying reality of a random in different universe.
23:14
Speaker 1: And for nearly seven decades, that indifferent river kept its
23:18
secret perfectly. It swallowed the car, it swallowed the family,
23:22
and it silenced the rumors until a man came along
23:25
who refused to look at the water the way everyone
23:26
else did. This brings us out of the twentieth century
23:29
and into the incredible resolution of this case.
23:32
Speaker 2: Enter Archer Mayo.
23:34
Speaker 3: Archer Mayo is a truly fascinating figure. He is a
23:36
resident of White Salmon, Washington. By trade and passion. He
23:39
is a multimedia artist, but critically for this story, he
23:42
is also a highly experienced, deeply technical rescue and recreation diver.
23:46
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, Mayo catches the bug. He becomes fascinated
23:50
by the Martin case. But he knows what every other
23:53
searcher failed to realize. You can't just put on a
23:55
scuba tank and start swimming around the Columbia River hoping
23:58
to bump into a nineteen five fifty four Ford. His
24:01
methodology is what completely changed the game here.
24:04
Speaker 2: It is brilliant.
24:06
Speaker 3: Mayo understood hydrology and history. He recognized a fundamental flaw
24:11
in all the previous searches. The river you see today
24:14
is not the river the Martins drove into in nineteen
24:16
fifty eight. Wow okay, And more importantly, it's not the
24:19
river that existed before the massive hydroelectric dams were built.
24:22
The construction of the Bonneville Dam and others fundamentally altered
24:25
the water levels, the flow dynamics, and the sediment distribution
24:29
of the entire Columbia River gorge.
24:31
Speaker 1: So searching the modern underwater topography is completely useless.
24:34
Speaker 3: Landscape has changed exactly, so Mayo takes a completely unorthodox approach.
24:39
He doesn't start in the water, He starts in the archives.
24:41
He spends seven years collecting and meticulously analyzing historical construction
24:46
photographs of cascade locks dating back to the late eighteen hundreds.
24:50
Speaker 1: Wait, really, he goes back to the nineteenth century to
24:52
solve a twentieth century mystery. He is basically reverse engineering
24:56
the landscape.
24:57
Speaker 3: That is exactly what he was doing. By studying these
25:00
incredibly old cpatone photographs from before the dams permanently raised
25:04
the water levels, he could identify the original naked geology
25:08
of the river bed. He was specifically hunting for massive
25:11
drop offs, deep depressions, and ancient pits that were clearly
25:15
visible in the eighteen hundreds when the water was lower,
25:18
but are completely obscured by deep rushing water today.
25:21
Speaker 1: I love how we described it. He was looking at dry,
25:24
rocky landscapes from the eighteen hundreds to understand the invisible,
25:27
treacherous underwater traps of the twenty twenties. He was reading
25:31
the ghosts of the river.
25:32
Speaker 3: His working hypothesis was incredibly sound. He theorized that the
25:36
Ford Country Squire didn't just wash away smoothly and roll
25:38
down the riverbed. He believed it plunged in, got caught
25:41
in a specific current. It was violently shoved into one
25:44
of these deep ancient pits near the locks. Once inside
25:46
the pit, the intense river currents passing overhead would act
25:49
like a conveyor belt, relentlessly dropping decades of thick sediment
25:53
down onto the car until it was completely buried.
25:55
Speaker 1: And in late twenty twenty four, seven years of staring
25:58
at eighteen hundred's photographs and diving into freezing water finally
26:02
pays off. Mayo locates what he believes is an anomaly.
26:06
He is sixty feet underwater hovering over a massive sediment
26:10
pit near Cascade Locks, and he finds the vehicle. It
26:13
is resting completely upside down, deeply buried in the mud.
26:16
Speaker 3: He immediately surfaces and notifies the Hood River County staff's office.
26:20
They review his findings and by March of twenty twenty five,
26:23
they bring in the heavy machinery. They position a massive
26:26
crane over the river and carefully winch up a section
26:29
of the exposed undercarriage and the rusted frame of the vehicle.
26:32
Speaker 1: They clean off the mud. They look at the vehicle
26:34
identification details and they confirm it.
26:36
Speaker 3: Wow.
26:37
Speaker 1: The cream in red paint was long gone, scrubbed away
26:39
by seventy years of water and sand. But the ghost
26:42
ship was found. It was the nineteen fifty four Ford
26:45
Country Squire. But here is the agonizing part. The main
26:49
passenger cabin of the vehicle, the part that actually held
26:51
the family, was still deeply entombed in that concrete like sediment.
26:55
The crane couldn't just yank it up without destroying it.
26:57
Speaker 3: And this is where archer Mayo elevates from a clever
27:00
researcher to an absolute hero. The government resources were limited
27:04
in terms of delicately excavating a buried car sixty feet underwater,
27:09
So in August and twenty twenty five, Mayo takes it
27:12
upon himself. He begins a series of relentless, highly dangerous
27:16
solo dives to access the entombed passenger cabin.
27:20
Speaker 1: I really want us to pause and understand the physical
27:22
horror of what he is doing. If you aren't a diver,
27:25
sixty feet down might just sound like the deep end
27:28
of a very big pool.
27:29
Speaker 2: What does deep water river.
27:31
Speaker 1: Diving actually due to a human body in a place
27:34
like the Columbia River.
27:35
Speaker 3: It is one of the most hostile environments a human
27:37
can enter. First, you have the temperature, it is bone
27:40
chillingly cold, which rapidly SAPs your core body heat, leading
27:44
to exhaustion and hypothermy, even with protective gear. Right second,
27:47
you have the current. The Columbia River is incredibly powerful.
27:50
A sudden shift in the current can slam a diver
27:52
against wreckage, pin them against the riverbed, or sweep them
27:55
away entirely. And third, visibility because of the sheer amount
27:59
of silts suspended in the water, visibility is often absolute zero.
28:03
You are completely blind. You are hovering in freezing, violent darkness,
28:07
sixty feet underwater, trying to work entirely by touch.
28:11
Speaker 1: And he's not just swimming around. He has to dig
28:13
out a car that is encased in seventy years of
28:15
compacted mud.
28:17
Speaker 3: Which is why Mayo had to engineer a custom tool.
28:19
He can just use a shovel. He built his own
28:21
custom mini dredge, essentially a highly calibrated underwater vacuum system
28:26
that is wild. He had to take this dredge down
28:29
into the pitch black and methodically, millimeter by millimeter siphoned
28:33
away the compacted silt from the inside of the cabin.
28:35
Terrified that one wrong move might destroy the incredibly fragile,
28:39
degraded evidence hidden inside.
28:41
Speaker 1: He is down there doing multiple solo dives in a
28:44
single day, and during those dives in August twenty twenty five,
28:47
the reality of the tragedy finally surfaces. Through the freezing darkness,
28:51
his hands find what he's been looking for. He begins
28:54
recovering deeply buried human remains. He finds fragments of clothing, and.
28:59
Speaker 3: In one of the most emotionally resonant moments of the
29:01
entire recovery, his dredge uncovers a small, remarkably preserved item.
29:07
It is a camera case and stamp clearly right on
29:10
the front of it is the name and address E.
29:11
Kenneth Martin seventeen fifteen nertheests fifty sixth Avenue.
29:15
Speaker 1: It gives me chills. I have to ask, what does
29:19
it say about humanity that a diver in twenty twenty
29:21
five will risk his life, diving blind into a freezing
29:25
river over and over again to bring home a family
29:28
he never met, a family who vanished decades before he
29:31
was even born.
29:32
Speaker 3: I think it speaks to a profound intrinsic human need
29:34
for completion. We are a species of storytellers. When a
29:38
story is violently cut short, it leaves a psychological wound,
29:41
not just for the immediate family, but for the community. Yeah,
29:43
Mayo recognize that the River was hoarding a massive piece
29:46
of his region's history. His actions demonstrate a level of
29:49
empathy that simply transcends time. He wasn't just pulling bones
29:52
out of the mud. He was rescuing the fundamental truth
29:54
of the Martin family from the void of the unknown.
29:56
He was giving them their ending back.
29:58
Speaker 1: He meticulously documents every single fragment, He turns all of
30:02
the remains over to the authorities, and he steps back.
30:06
The physical recovery is complete, but the scientific mountain is
30:10
just beginning. We are entering the final act of the story,
30:14
the molecular time machine.
30:16
Speaker 3: We are now in late twenty twenty five. The physical
30:19
evidence is finally on a lab table, but after sixty
30:22
seven years submerged in a volatile aquatic environment, visual identification
30:27
or standard anthropological identification of these remains is entirely impossible.
30:32
Speaker 1: Right, So the Hood River County Sheriff's Office and the
30:35
Oregon State Medical Examiner realize they are completely out of
30:38
their depth. They need absolute cutting edge science, so they
30:42
form a partnership with a highly specialized Texas based laboratory
30:45
called Authrum, Inc.
30:47
Speaker 3: Authoram is at the absolute forefront of forensic genetic genealogy,
30:50
and it's vital to note how this was funded. The
30:52
National Institute of Justice, acting through NamUs, the very same
30:56
database where the Martins had languished as cold cases for decades,
30:59
provided the critical funding to unleash this technology on the
31:02
recovered remains.
31:03
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? The contrast here is
31:06
just mine bending. Think back to section two of our dive.
31:09
It's nineteen fifty eight. The police are desperately trying to
31:12
solve this by running serial numbers on revolvers, interrogating waiters
31:16
at diners, and tracking stolen chevies. DNA forensics didn't even
31:20
exist in the realm of criminal justice. It was science fiction.
31:23
Speaker 3: And fast forward to late twenty twenty five. The scientists
31:26
at AUTHRUM are utilizing a process called ferentic grade genome sequencing.
31:30
Speaker 1: Okay, but I need you to explain the biology here.
31:32
How is it even physically possible to pull DNA from
31:35
bones that have been battered by river rocks, soaked in water,
31:38
and buried in mud for nearly seventy years.
31:40
Speaker 3: It is monumental achievement. Because water is the absolute enemy
31:44
of DNA. Over time, water causes a chemical reaction called hydrolysis,
31:48
which literally acts like microscopic.
31:50
Speaker 1: Scissors, wait, scissors like It actually cuts the DNA exactly.
31:54
Speaker 3: It cuts the long, beautiful double helix chains of DNA
31:57
into thousands of tiny, degraded fragments. On top of that,
32:00
the bones were subjected to massive bacterial contamination from the
32:03
river ecosystem. Bacteria produce enzymes that actively chew up cellular material.
32:08
Speaker 1: So there's almost nothing left right.
32:11
Speaker 3: If you tried to use traditional forensic DNA testing, which
32:14
requires relatively long, intact sequences of DNA to find a match,
32:19
it would fail completely. The biological text is too destroyed
32:22
to read.
32:22
Speaker 1: So how does Authrum's technology bypass the fact that the
32:26
DNA is shredded.
32:27
Speaker 3: By entirely changing the way they read the data. They
32:31
use a proprietary method to extract whatever highly fragmented microscopic
32:35
bits of DNA remain. Then they generate what is known
32:39
as a comprehensive SNP profile. SNP stands for a single
32:43
nucleotide polymorphism.
32:45
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, you're going to have to break that down
32:46
for me.
32:47
Speaker 3: Imagine a traditional DNA test is like trying to identify
32:49
a book by finding a perfectly intact full paragraph printed
32:52
on a page. If the page has been run through
32:55
a shredder, you can't read the paragraph, so the test fails.
32:57
SNP profiling doesn't look for paragrap It looks for hundreds
33:01
of thousands of individual microscopic letters scattered across the genome.
33:06
It measures the tiny single letter variations in the genetic code.
33:10
By utilizing massive computational power, they can take all those tiny,
33:13
disconnected fragments and essentially algorithmically reconstruct the unique genetic blueprint
33:19
of the individual, even from entirely shattered biological material.
33:23
Speaker 1: That is why I call it a molecular time machine.
33:25
They are taking cellular material that the Columbia River spent
33:28
seven decades trying to erase, and they are mathematically forcing
33:31
it to reconstruct a family tree exactly.
33:34
Speaker 3: And once authoram has successfully built these SMP profiles from
33:37
the skeletal remains, they moved to the final step, a
33:40
process they call KINNESSMP rapid relationship testing. They took these
33:44
newly generated sixty seven year old profiles and compare them
33:47
directly against fresh reference DNA samples provided by the living
33:50
relatives of the.
33:51
Speaker 1: Martin family, and the math doesn't lie. The results were undeniable,
33:55
which brings us to this week. April sixteen, twenty twenty six,
33:59
the Hood River County Sheriff's Office calls a press conference
34:03
and makes the official historical announcement the remains recovered from
34:07
the Upside Down Country Squire by Archer Mayo are positively identified. First,
34:11
they definitively confirmed the DNA belongs to Kenneth Martin, amazing,
34:15
and then, utilizing the contextual evidence of the recovery, the
34:18
anthropological assessments, and the totality of the circumstances, they officially
34:23
identify Barbara Martin the mother, and Barbie the fourteen year
34:26
old daughter.
34:27
Speaker 3: And buried within That profound announcement was the final definitive
34:31
closure regarding the wild rumors that plagued this case. The
34:34
Sheriff's official statement read the Sheriff's Office concluded its investigation
34:38
and found no evidence of a crime. The case was
34:41
officially permanently closed. Wow, there was no hit man. There
34:45
were no ex convicts from the diner. The bloody gun
34:48
was just a horrifying, statistically improbable coincidence. It was just
34:52
a family driving home in the dark, who met a
34:54
tragic end on a treacherous winter road.
34:56
Speaker 1: This represents such a massive paradigm shift for the U,
35:00
the entire concept of criminal justice and historical truth. What
35:04
Authorum and this technology are proving is that the concept
35:07
of a cold case is becoming obsolete. No matter how
35:10
old the mystery, no matter how degraded the evidence, We
35:13
now have the tools to force the past to speak.
35:17
I read that this is actually the third publicly announced
35:19
cold case in Oregon alone that Authoram has helped resolve
35:22
just recently.
35:23
Speaker 3: It forces us to completely reevaluate our relationship with history.
35:27
For thousands of years, if something was buried deeply enough
35:30
or long enough, it was permanently safe from discovery. That
35:33
is no longer true. Modern science has illuminated the darkest,
35:37
deepest vaults of the past.
35:38
Speaker 1: But beyond the science, what does this all mean for
35:40
the people left behind? I want you listening to this
35:43
right now to really consider the sole surviving son. Imagine
35:47
being Donald Martin. You are twenty eight years old. When
35:49
you lose everyone you love, your parents, your three little
35:52
sisters gone in a single night una meth. You have
35:55
to live your entire adult life, your thirties, your forties,
35:59
your retirement, all the way into your mid nineties, carrying
36:02
that massive, echoing void you had to live under the
36:05
shadow of neighbors whispering about stolen cars and bloody guns
36:08
tied to your name. How do you even begin to
36:11
process getting that phone call sixty seven years later, hearing
36:14
a voice tell you we finally found them.
36:17
Speaker 3: The emotional weight of that resolution is almost impossible to fathom.
36:20
For Donald and for the extated family. It brings a
36:23
profound piece that has been cruelly deferred for an entire lifetime.
36:27
The agonizing, open ended uncertainty is finally replaced with the concrete,
36:31
undeniable truth. The wooden candy canes Kenneth carved the Christmas
36:35
traditions that smiling family portrait from the early nineteen fifties.
36:38
They no longer represent a terrifying, unsolved mystery. They simply
36:42
frame a complete, albeit deeply tragic story of a family
36:45
that went out together and ultimately stayed together.
36:48
Speaker 1: And the closure ripples out far beyond the immediate family.
36:52
Think about Dianne Sullivan, the daughter of the reporter Anne Sullivan,
36:55
who spent her entire life chasing the ghost of that
36:57
station wagon. Following the announcement, Dean spoke publicly reflecting on
37:02
her mother's lifelong obsession. She imagined how incredibly excited and
37:06
validated Anne would have been to see the resolution, to
37:09
know that the gorgeous cold waters had finally yielded to
37:12
human persistence.
37:14
Speaker 3: It is an incredible synthesis of elements that finally close
37:17
this case. You have the quiet, hidden and profound dangers
37:20
of the beautiful Columbia River Gorge acting as the ultimate antagonist.
37:24
You have a stubborn journalist meticulously preserved files keeping the
37:27
memory alive for decades. You have a diver's unbelievable grit
37:31
and ingenuity in reverse engineering the river itself. And you
37:34
have a Texas Laboratory Space eight science piecing together shattered
37:37
molecules to finalize the truth.
37:39
Speaker 1: The remains of Kenneth, Barbara and Barbie have finally been
37:42
returned to their family for proper, respectful burial. The twisted,
37:47
rusted metal of the nineteen fifty four Ford Country Squire,
37:50
partially pulled from the depths, stands as a silent witness
37:53
to a tragedy that paused the city and back in
37:56
Portland's Roseway neighborhood. The community can finally look back on
38:00
the Martins, not as a haunting question mark, but simply
38:02
as a family fully accounted for.
38:04
Speaker 3: It is a truly profound journey into the realities of
38:07
loss and the relentless pursuit of truth.
38:10
Speaker 1: It is, and as we wrap up this deep dive,
38:12
it leaves me thinking about something much bigger. I want
38:15
to challenge you listening to this right now, to think
38:17
about the landscapes you drive through every single day. The
38:20
majestic mountains, the wide rivers, the dense, quiet forests that
38:23
we simply look at as scenic backdrops to our daily
38:26
commutes or our weekend getaways. They aren't just scenery. They
38:30
are vast, silent vaults. They are holding the hidden histories
38:33
and sometimes the deepest tragedies of the people who came
38:36
before us.
38:36
Speaker 3: The natural world is entirely indifferent to our human narratives.
38:40
It simply absorbs whatever falls into it, and it keeps
38:43
its secrets.
38:43
Speaker 1: Well it does, which leaves me with one final lingering
38:47
thought for you to mull over. If the mighty churning
38:51
currents of the Columbia River could take a two ton
38:53
bright cream and red station wagon and keep it completely,
38:57
perfectly hidden in sixty feet of water for sixty seven years,
39:01
despite the helicopters flying overhead, the fleets of boats dragging
39:05
the water, the thousands of frantic searchers looking for it.
39:08
What else is lying just beneath the surface of the
39:11
natural wonders we recreate in every single weekend and are
39:14
our wildest, darkest conspiracy theories, often just defense mechanisms, stories
39:19
we tell ourselves to avoid facing the terrifying simple indifference
39:23
of nature.
39:23
Speaker 3: That is a question that truly forces us to reevaluate
39:26
our place in the world around us.
39:28
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into
39:30
the long winter of the Martin family. Stay curious, stay safe,
39:33
and we will see you next time.