The Last Night: A Wedding, A Promise, A Missing Hour

The scene begins at the High Climber Lounge—overflow laughter from a best friend’s wedding, a bridesmaid in a black leather jacket over maroon silk, the kind of small-town warmth that suggests safety. Marty locks her purse in the trunk of the bride’s car, tells the party she’ll make a quick run to Warrenton, then meet up at the Hong Kong restaurant. Two plans. One truck. No purse.

– Time and route:
– Approximately 9:30 p.m., she leaves the lounge without her purse.
– She stops at the D&D Market (then a gas station setup), calls her brother—her battery is dead.
– He jumps the borrowed 1984 Ford Ranger, gives her $4 in gas. License: PNB 1116. Dents. A 7-Up sticker.

– The intention:
– A stop in Warrenton to see her boyfriend.
– Then back to Astoria, to the Hong Kong restaurant, to rejoin the party.
– She tells different people variations of the same plan—Warrenton now, reunion later.

– The last sighting:
– Headed toward town from the market.
– The brother expects to catch up, doesn’t. “She was booging it,” someone says. It’s the kind of casual phrase families repeat because it feels less terrifying than “gone.”

Nothing after that is ordinary. And almost nothing is confirmed.

 

The People Who Refused to Stop

The story persists because a family wouldn’t let it sink. It also persists because a search team learned to read water like a language—and kept coming back with sharper tools.

– Linda, the sister:
– The stubborn heart of the case. Carries rumors to riverbanks, tears them open, and discards what doesn’t belong. She’s met strangers who said too much, officers who said too little, and one night, a woman soaking in rain who climbed into Linda’s car to deliver a confession no court would accept.

– Mike, the brother:
– Jump-started her truck that night. Gave her gas. Spent the next three decades chasing leads that rearrange themselves. Found a barge tied into a secluded slough, ballasted with a hose. Heard a man in a bar swear: “You’ll never find your sister.”

– Volunteer searchers:
– They started with kayaks and graduated to RC sonar boats, side-scan, down-scan, and live scope. They sweep lakes, canals, sloughs, trestles, and boat ramps, each pass collapsing old theories into data points.

This is how you investigate a coast that eats evidence: slowly, repeatedly, with better tools and worse sleep.

 

The Truck: A Moving Crime Scene That Never Reappeared

Disappearing people is tragically common. Disappearing people with vehicles is rare. Vehicles float up. Tires betray hiding places. Even in silt-heavy rivers, sonar finds the geometry of a frame.

– Why the missing truck matters:
– Most foul-play vehicle disposals are imperfect. Tires, axles, frames hold signatures on sonar. A truck can be buried in forest or impounded and re-tagged—but coastal water is a truth-teller. If it’s in, it’s findable.

– The Ranger’s identifiers:
– Make/model: 1984 Ford Ranger, Oregon PNB 1116, 7-Up window sticker, multiple dents.
– Fuel: $4 added—enough for short-range chaos, not a long exit.

– What the absence suggests:
– If water didn’t keep it, land did.
– If land kept it, someone did the kind of work that leaves you quiet for the rest of your life.

 

The Map That Refuses to Be Simple

The case is a geometry lesson written in tidewater. The lines crisscross predictable points: last sighting near the D&D Market; routes to Warrenton; the boyfriend’s place south of Fred Meyer; mom’s house; returns toward Astoria; side arteries where panic or planning could turn a steering wheel.

– Key zones and logic:
– D&D Market (now an office): last known contact with family.
– Warrenton corridor: boyfriend’s apartment across from Camp Rilea (Camp Leo). Several ponds, sloughs, and channels behind Fred Meyer—many now shallow, bottomed out, visually ruled out.
– Bridges and boat ramps: John Day River ramp, Aldridge Point, Napa docks—areas with historic vehicle entries.
– The Five-Mile Rings: around home, around last sighting, around the boyfriend’s address—because most disposals stay within a comfort radius.

– The narrow pivot:
– The intersection toward mom’s house vs. the dyke road straight into dark water. Locals swam there. Others misjudged it. The searchers ran that angle with fresh sonar.

This is not a map. It’s a series of bets about fear, rage, and convenience.

 

The Searches: What Water Told Us

Each sweep is a scene: electric motors humming on quiet lakes; a ranger checking parking permits; a side-scan screen etching shadows of logs, tires, and anomalies that could be fenders—or branches.

– Tools and how they’re used:
– Side imaging (favorite): 75 feet left/right, high-resolution shadows that reveal shape and height via absence (shadow length).
– Down imaging: bottom definition and structure under the keel.
– Live scope: real-time movement and angular clarity for target confirmation.
– RC boat: safe, quiet, surgical passes in tricky shallows.

– The reads:
– Tires: visible and undisturbed—if a truck were here, its tires would be too.
– Trees vs. trucks: trunks cast tapering shadows; vehicles cast blocky, symmetrical shadows with clean right angles and distinct gap lines where windows/bed meet body.
– Object size heuristics: vehicle-length returns will fill most of a 15-foot grid bracket on the side-scan display; logs won’t.

– The passes:
– Coffenbury Lake: viewer tip; depths checked; sections shallow and clear; no vehicle geometry.
– John Day and adjacent canal: multiple scans; earlier “target” resolved as a sunken dock; vehicle-negative.
– NAPA docks zone: dock removed years ago; bed scanned farther than typical nearshore; tires on bottom suggest vehicles would not submerge completely—truck-negative.
– Swenson Island slough: extremely shallow, sticky mud; two small sunken barges visible; the slough likely too shallow to hide a truck unseen; negative for vehicle geometry.
– Trestle area near the “Moore brothers” rumor: re-scanned; found a sunken boat and what appears to be an excavator or crane; no Ranger silhouette; truck-negative.

Water keeps records. Here, those records say: not here. Not yet.

 

The Rumors: Violent Whispers, Partial Truths

Every cold case grows a rumor forest. Some rumors are wishes dressed as logic. Others are confessions in disguise.

– The barge threat:
– “You’ll never find your sister. She was taken out on a barge and dumped in the ocean.” Said in a bar decades ago. Memory holds it like a splinter.
– Relevance: barge access exists along working sloughs; tying off a barge to cover a submerged object is mechanically plausible. But tide, current, and draft constraints make permanent concealment complicated. Searchers found barges—small, shallow, visible.

– The concrete slab:
– A story about a fresh pour behind a suspect’s property after the disappearance. No public record of excavation correlation; no warrant-backed dig cited. Without ground-penetrating radar and a warrant, it stays a rumor.

– The paper mill warning:
– A man erupts: “I have ways of making people disappear.” Perhaps bluster. Perhaps memory sharpening across years. It adds weight to the names that recur—then erodes under legal light.

– The midnight passenger:
– Linda picks up a woman in the rain; the woman claims to know the truck sat for days by a house; that the “Moore brothers” killed Marty; that a slough near Hunts Market hid something. The searchers find a slough. They find a barge. They do not find a truck.

Rumors matter when they locate. Here, they locate places that can be searched—and have been.

 

The Boyfriend Variable: The House Near the Base

Most circles close around people who saw the missing last. The boyfriend’s proximity to water made early searches inevitable.

– Locations checked:
– Pond behind Fred Meyer: bottomed-out; visual clearance.
– Nearby channels: tidal and shallow; multiple low-tide visuals; negative.
– Camp-adjacent bridges and ponds: access constrained; some zones require permissions; key public-adjacent areas scanned; negative.

– The unanswered:
– Did she arrive? He says no. No documented sighting confirms or contradicts. Decades later, that binary remains the most galling absence.

If she reached Warrenton, we should see more traces. We don’t. That pushes weight back toward Astoria and the return loop.

 

The Dyke Road and The Nearly-Missed Turn

The simplest tragic theory keeps returning: she leaves the market, points toward home, misses the turn toward mom’s place, continues straight onto a dyke road locals used like a dare—and vanishes into water.

– Why it fits:
– Fatigue + alcohol + emotion + darkness = catastrophic misjudgment.
– Historic incidents: multiple drownings; known accidents in the canal network.

– Why it’s resisted:
– Multiple passes with strong sonar on likely entry vectors show no truck geometry.
– Shifts in river bed and silt can obscure shapes—but tires and frames still echo under the right angles. Here, they didn’t.

This is the cruel trade of investigation: the answer that fits the heart is obstructed by the evidence; the answers that fit the evidence hurt the heart.

 

The Equipment Lesson: How You Tell a Story from a Screen

The searchers explain their read and it matters. Not because tech is magic, but because tech makes you honest.

– Side-scan truth:
– The clearest diagnostic for submerged vehicles. It turns water into a negative-space photograph. If a Ranger is in usable scan radius and not buried hard under years of silt, it will announce itself.

– Down-scan and live scope:
– Down-scan sharpens the texture of structure; live scope confirms in-the-moment identity when you hover. Trees wobble; trucks sit in stubborn geometry.

– Speed and coverage:
– New transducers allow 4.5–5 mph passes with crisp return. This turns days into half-days, widens lanes, and increases the chance of catching an edge you missed last time.

The search is a craft. The craft keeps improving. The places that say “no” now are saying “no” with more authority.

 

The Coast That Keeps Secrets (And the One That Doesn’t)

There’s a view here worth stating plainly: the ocean is the worst archivist. It shreds, drifts, devours. Inland water is better. Dyke canals are best. Yards and barns—if violence was organized—are better than all.

– If a barge burial happened:
– A truck would require lift or ramp access; saltwater corrosion accelerates; buoyancy and tides complicate permanence; witnesses multiply under light.
– It’s possible. It’s also the kind of story men tell to sound bigger than they are.

– If a logging-road burial happened:
– It explains the missing truck. It insists on heavy equipment, timing, and a secrecy that doesn’t fracture. It’s harder to disprove without a magnetometer pass on target grids or GPR on rumored slabs.

– If an accident happened:
– The Ranger is in water connected to a road. The sonar should have found it by now—unless the vector is outside the obvious lanes, or buried by an outlier slide.

Sometimes the coast protects secrets. More often, people do.

 

The Media Echoes and the Jawbone

Thirty-five years create a chorus: TV packages, local tips, internet experts. One detail sticks and then dissolves: a jawbone recovered near a trestle. The state says it’s not Marty—ancestry markers indicate a different origin. DNA genealogical work solved Linda’s aunt’s case after decades. It did not solve this one.

– What the jawbone proves:
– That the river is a ledger for many stories, not this one.
– That the state can and will identify remains with contemporary science.

– Why it matters anyway:
– Because every negative identification is a kind of progress. It deletes one false hope and leaves a clearer field.

 

The Human Ledger: What the Case Did to a Family

Cold cases don’t freeze; they silt. They layer. They scratch every calendar. Birthdays, holidays, anniversaries: each one asks the same question until you answer it or die.

– Linda:
– Organizes search days into narrative arcs: we weren’t successful; we learned; we’ll get targets; we’ll go again. She holds grief and logistics in the same hand.

– Mike:
– Keeps the rumor about the barge not because he believes it, but because it refuses to stop ringing. Anger is not proof; it is propulsion.

– The community:
– Adds stories. Offers maps. Points to depths. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it confuses. Always it testifies to what small towns do when someone vanishes—they build and rebuild the last day until the last day gives up.

 

The Investigator’s Table: What We Know vs. What We Can Prove

Here’s a clean synthesis you can hand to a detective on day one.

| Element | Status | Why It Matters |
|–|–|-|
| Last confirmed contact | D&D Market; brother jump-start; $4 gas | Fixes timeline and vehicle condition |
| Intended route | Warrenton (boyfriend), then Hong Kong restaurant | Creates decision tree and search corridors |
| Vehicle | 1984 Ford Ranger, PNB 1116, 7-Up sticker | Distinct sonar and visual profile if submerged |
| Dyke/canal vectors | Multiple passes with upgraded sonar | Vehicle-negative in high-probability lanes |
| Warrenton ponds/sloughs | Shallow, bottomed; visual/sonar cleared | Reduces likelihood of near-boyfriend dump |
| Trestle rumor zone | Re-scanned; found boat and crane; no truck | Weakens “pushed off” narrative here |
| Slough barge | Located; small, visible; unlikely cover for truck | Degrades barge-cover theory at that point |
| Coffenbury Lake | Cleared sectors; depth adequate; no vehicle | Narrows lake-based accident theories |
| Jawbone | Excluded via DNA markers | Not Marty; deletes misdirect |
| Violent rumor signals | Multiple, inconsistent, decades apart | Useful for target-generation, not proof |

The case remains open because the two most probable categories—accident vs. organized foul play—both survive the evidence. Accident survives because emotion and darkness are brutal. Foul play survives because the truck is gone.

 

The Next Pass: What To Do That Hasn’t Been Done (Or Needs Repeating)

Cold-case water work is repetition disguised as innovation.

– Magnetometer sweeps:
– Along forest service roads tied to excavation rumors; around the slab story if legal access can be obtained. Steel doesn’t vanish.

– GPR on slabs (with warrants/owner permission):
– If the “fresh pour” timeline can be tightened via permits, utility records, or neighbor testimony, non-invasive scans could confirm or dismiss.

– Roadside drainage culverts:
– Small, vehicle-sized culverts along the homeward return and near dyke entries. A missed angle at night can trap a truck under sediment and reeds.

– Re-scan at extreme low tides:
– Especially in the Napa dock zone and near the dyke intersection where entry vectors would align with historical accidents. Lowest annual tides change the angle of truth.

– Archival deep-dive:
– Towing records around February 1990, private salvage logs, scrap yard intake books; newspaper classifieds for post-incident quick sales of Ranger parts.

– Social graph reconstruction:
– Rebuild the 48-hour contact web with modern OSINT: calls from pay phones logged via business audits; off-the-books bar talk that’s now retirement talk.

The goal isn’t to “get lucky.” It’s to make luck irrelevant.

 

Platform-Safe, Victim-Centered, Evidence-First

– No graphic detail; no naming of living individuals as perpetrators; no operational how-tos for harm.
– Emphasis on documented searches, equipment use, and family testimony.
– Rumors handled as leads, not conclusions.

This balance respects both safety policies and the family’s reality: they want answers, not spectacle.

 

Why This Case Holds: The Hook Beneath the Tide

Because the facts keep arguing with each other:

– She wouldn’t leave her child vs. she left the party without her purse.
– A missing truck means planned disposal vs. a missed turn can erase a life in seconds.
– A barge that hides the truth vs. a barge that’s right there on side-scan, undramatic and small.

And because the images keep returning:

– A bridesmaid dress against rain-slick asphalt.
– A brother handing over four dollars and not catching up.
– A screen painting the bottom of a river with shadows that refuse to become a truck.

The coast near Astoria is crowded with stories. This one has a name: Marty Evans. Thirty-five years is not a reason to stop. It’s the reason you can’t.

 

Closing Perspective: The Work That Counts

Your heart wants a cinematic reveal. The real work looks like this: a ranger warns about parking permits; an RV dumps its tanks; a mouse steals crackers; the sonar pings; a crane reveals itself upside down; a barge is smaller than it sounded; the target you wanted is a log; you move the boat and scan again.

The lesson is not that mysteries refuse to be solved. It’s that they require a kind of love that keeps learning. The family has it. The searchers have it. The map does too, if you keep asking the right questions in the right places, long enough for the river to answer.

Which turn did Marty make in the three minutes after the market? Which rumor hides a coordinate instead of a boast? Which overlooked culvert or slab is waiting to be read by the right tool on the right day?

Until those are answered, the investigation continues—slow where dread gathers, sharp where evidence speaks, and relentless where love refuses to yield.