The car from Columbia River could have belonged to the Oregon family who disappeared in 1958

The authorities will try again on Friday to shoot a break from the Columbia river which would have belonged to an Oregon family of five people who disappeared almost 70 years ago when they were looking for Christmas greenery.

The Martin family’s search was a new national at the time and led some to speculate on the possibility of a unfair game, with a reward of $ 1,000 offered for information on their fate.

The recovery efforts were canceled just before night Thursday and the authorities said they could not provide a calendar for the withdrawal of the car.

The train cart belonged to Ken and Barbara Martin was found last fall by Archer Mayo, a diver who has been looking for him for seven years, said Mayo representative Ian Costello. Mayo identified the probable location and plunged several times before finding the car upside down at around 50 feet (15 meters) deep, covered with mud, salmon, silt and mussels, said Costello, who announced the discovery on Wednesday.

“This is a very great development in a case that has been in the spirit of Portland for 66 years,” Costello told the Associated Press.

Mayo found other cars nearby, which will have to go out before the station wagon can be taken from the river, said Costello. Pete Hughes, an assistant from Hood River’s county, said that a car had already been identified and that the second was an unknown Volkswagen.

“We don’t know what we will find,” said Hughes when he asked if those responsible thought the bodies were inside the cars.

The Martins took their daughters Barbara, 14, Virginie, 13, and Sue, 11, during a tour of the mountains on December 7, 1958, to collect Christmas greenery, according to stories AP of the time. They never returned. Managers have shrunk their family research after learning that Ken Martin had used a credit card to buy gas in a station near Cascade Locks, a small community of Columbia River at around 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Portland.

“The police hypothesized that the cart of the Red and White Station of Martin could have plunged into an isolated canyon or river,” said the AP. “The purchase of the credit card was the only thing to set up family movements.”

Five months after their disappearance, the body of the youngest girl was found “swinging in a swamp of the Columbia river”, according to the AP. “Susan’s body apparently floated without wreck in spring and was washed on a sough with back water near Camas, Washington,” said AP.

Virginia Martin’s body was found the next day at around 25 miles (40 kilometers) upstream of the place where her sister was. The other family members have never been found, but research continued.

The Martins had a 28 -year -old son, Don, who was a veteran and a graduate student at Columbia University in New York at the time and told AP that he thought that his family had died.

“It was a case of high public interest,” said Hughes on the AP Thursday. After Mayo provided part of the license plate number and other vehicle identifiers, the Sheriff’s Office and the Major Crimes team from Columbia Gorge, as well as the Oregon crime laboratory, organized to get the car out, he said.

“We are not 100% sure that it is the car,” said Hughes. “It is mainly locked in mud and debris, so we don’t know what to expect when we remove it from the water today.”

Mayo manages a business that has found things that have been lost in the river, such as watches and rings, but also contributes to the recovery of drowning victims, Costello said. He was looking for a research ship that sank in 2017 when he learned the Martin family, said Costello.

Mayo began to dig up family equipment and used modeling to identify the possible location, he said.

There is a road near the place where the cars were found underwater. The authorities did not say if they thought they could find the remains of other people who have disappeared in one of the other vehicles taken from the river.