Kenneth Martin

On December 7th, 1958, a family woke up to a cozy Sunday morning in Oregon with a proposal to spend quality time together, relishing each other's company, and preparing for the holidays.

Kenneth Martin was a 54 years old contended man who liked meeting new individuals. He worked for an appliance firm, where he managed the repair division, and his steady character and stable income enabled his 48-year-old wife, Barbara Martin, to be a stay-at-home mother and focus on bringing up their three daughters: Barbie, Virginia, and Susan.

Barbie was 14 years old, the eldest daughter, and a freshman in Grant High School. The couple also had a son named Donald, who was a little older than the rest of the Martin children. He was 28 years old and worked as a pharmacist's mate in the U.S. Navy, tied with the Marine Corps. He was stationed in Fort Schuyler, New York—the almost exact opposite end of the country. The day that his family was getting ready for Christmas that year would later become an important part of his story.

For the rest of the Martins, Kenneth and Barbara had been to a Christmas party the night before, so they took their time getting up to enjoy a family breakfast with their daughters. Around 10:30 AM, the family received some visitors when Barbara Martin's cousin and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Evans, came over. They brought their seven-year-old daughter and her friend with them. The idea was that the children would play while the adults sat around and chatted for a while, and the two families sat around one another and chatted for a little while.

But the Evanses did not stay long—after all, they were on their way to a Sunday dinner.

Mrs. Evans actually invited the Martins along, something that could have changed the entire course of this case. But Kenneth and Barbara refused, saying that they wanted to spend the rest of their day going along the highway and foraging with the girls to find some greenery that they could later turn into Christmas decorations.

And so, the families went their separate ways.

Between 1 PM and 2 PM that day, the Martins piled into the family car and took off to see what they could find. This wasn’t unusual for the Martins. Other family members would later say that the family enjoyed spending time together, particularly outdoors, and that they would often take trips just driving around, hiking, or walking together out in nature.

It was December 7th, 1958, and it seemed as if it was going to be another one of those days.

The Martins were spotted around 4 PM at a Cascade Locks gas station about 64 kilometers from home. A little while later, they were seen eating at a Paradise Snack Bar in Hood River, another 32 kilometers from the gas station. No one reported anything unusual about them, nor did anyone notice anything suspicious happening around them.

The Martins were reported missing when Kenneth failed to show up for work and the girls missed their classes the very next day. Police were dispatched to the home around 11 PM on Monday night, where they found nothing out of the ordinary.

Magazines were still strewn across the floor from where the girls had been reading them the day before. The dishes from breakfast were still on the drying rack in the kitchen. There was a load of laundry finished and waiting in the washing machine. But there was no family car and no one in the house.

Friends and family hadn’t heard anything from the Martins since the Evanses had left them the day before, and neighbors hadn’t seen them or their car since Kenneth had driven it out with his family inside to go find Christmas decorations.

Fearing the worst, the police quickly began searching the area and the tracks of the highway where the Martins were last seen. What they found only raised more questions.

They didn’t find any trace of the family car, but they did find an abandoned and stolen white Chevrolet registered to an address in Los Angeles. Perhaps more threateningly, they found a bloody pistol and a female glove abandoned in the bushes beside.

Struggling to keep their focus, the police initially paid little heed to the Chevrolet because it did not match the description of the vehicle they were seeking. The Martins had a cream-and-red station wagon, and that was what they were largely focusing on

.

But the police had a second look at the Chevrolet when an analysis of the gun came back with some puzzling clues.

The serial number on the gun traced it back to a Meier & Frank department store, and the gun was listed among items that Donald Martin had once been accused of stealing—just two years earlier—when he worked there.

Donald had a firm alibi, as he was stationed in New York and accounted for that day. But what that gun did was tie the abandoned Chevrolet to the disappearances and give the police a new lead to investigate.

Looking at the dried blood covering the gun, the police had grim expectations. So, they kept an eye on the family’s bank accounts to see if any withdrawals were made—something that could indicate that they were still alive or even pinpoint a location where their potential attackers might be.

But there was no activity on any of their accounts, and the police had a theory as to why.

The very next day after the Chevrolet was discovered, two arrests were made in Hood County in connection to the stolen vehicle. Two ex-convicts—an unnamed man and a man called Roy Light—were arrested on suspicion of car theft, specifically that white Chevrolet. This put them firmly on the investigators’ radar.

The running theory was that the two men had gotten rid of the Martins and simply hadn’t had enough time to empty their bank accounts before they were picked up by officers.

Investigators honed in on the two and tried to build a connection between the stolen Chevrolet, the gun that Donald Martin had been accused of stealing, and the two ex-convicts’ potential ties to the Martins.

That connection became more concrete when a waitress from the Paradise Snack Bar came forward. She knew Roy Light and remembered seeing the two ex-convicts there at the same time as the Martins. She recalled that they had left shortly after the Martins.

With this new information, police put pressure on Roy Light and the man he had been arrested with, but they gave up nothing.

Investigators had their suspicions. They had their suspects. But what they lacked was any real physical evidence tying them to the disappearances—or even to the scene.

Meanwhile, sightings of the Martin family were still being called into the tip lines, some of them quite believable. If those sightings were correct, that meant the Martins were still alive, and investigators just had to find them.

With no bodies and no real evidence tying the two men to foul play, Roy Light and the other unnamed ex-convict were not charged with anything related to the Martin family.

The investigation stalled, and by February 1959, the most substantial lead was a set of car tracks leading off a cliff in The Dalles.

When police saw the tracks leading off the cliff, they thought that this might be where the Martins had ended up, their car plunging into the depths below.

But something did not feel right.

Yes, it was possible that the family had driven their vehicle off the cliff themselves, accidentally or intentionally, but there was no crash, no shattered glass, no debris at the bottom—nothing to indicate that a vehicle had driven off the cliff.It was just a set of tracks leading to the edge.

The police continued their search but didn’t find anything significant until May 1959, when a fisherman found a human body floating in the Columbia River near Bonneville Dam.

It was Kenneth Martin.

A few miles away, another body was found. It was Virginia Martin.

Both bodies had been in the water for months, and the remains were decomposed, meaning that it was impossible to determine the exact cause of death. However, Kenneth had experienced injuries that were consistent with a fall, and Virginia had a head wound.

Despite this gruesome discovery, there was no trace of the rest of the family, and the mystery only deepened.

As the years passed, the case went cold. The car was never recovered, and the bodies of Barbara, Barbie, and Susan Martin were never found.

With so many unanswered questions, theories abound.

Some believe that the Martin family met with foul play, possibly at the hands of the two ex-convicts, Roy Light and his unnamed accomplice. Others think they might have been in an accident, their car crashing into the river, with only two bodies subsequently rising to the surface.

Another hypothesis is that the family was targeted for something they possessed knowledge of or someone they had come into contact with—possibly even someone Donald Martin knew in his past, given the peculiar connection to the pilfered gun.

Whatever the reality may be, the disappearance of the Martin family remains one of Oregon's worst unsolved crimes.

The case, to date, has not been closed, and Barbara, Barbie, and Susan Martin's fate remains unknown.