Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Sisters Missing 45 Years SOLVED!

Episode Date: September 1, 2024

In 1973, Martha and Flora Helmick went to a family reunion with Martha's employer, World War I War Hero,  John Keyton. The trio left Bridgewater, Virginia on August 3, 1973, but never arrived in Kentucky for the family reunion. As word spread about the WW1 War Hero and sisters vanishing, a search was conducted, but nothing was ever found. On this episode of Body Bags Joseph Scott Morgan will explain how a bone found in a car that was found by firefighters during a training exorcise in the Kentucky River helped solve a 45 year old mystery.   Transcript Highlight00:12.74 Introduction - Vanishing act circa 197305:00.88 Discussion of World War I veteran, Hero    09:42.25 Discussion of Ford Fairlane, driving at night    14:05.07 Discussion of 3 people vanishing on a trip     20:07.28 Talk about finding a bone    25:26.24 Discussion calling in expert    30:05.68 Discussion of broken bone not healing properly    35:01.86 Discussion of confirmatory evidence     40:02.16 Talk about sisters vanish, firefighter helps solve case    42:15.31 Conclusion remains tell the final tale     See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Moore. Ain't there just something liberating about traveling through the night in a car that's got a lot of power? It's at your beck and call underneath your foot as you press down. And it's particularly thrilling if you're riding where the wind is down. You don't care what your hair looks like. You don't care what else is going on in front of you. And if you've got the radio cranked up with your favorite tunes on there,

and it's transporting you back, perhaps, to some place that you love and remember. I often think where I live, it's got one particular stretch of road that winds over the top of the mountain that's literally right behind my home. And I remember even as a young kid coming over that mountain to get to Jack State. I used to have a 1970 Forest Green. Two-door Monte Carlo. Love that car. Tunes playing. Cutting through the night. But, you know, the thing about being behind the wheel and having all of this stimulation

going on. All these good things. Suddenly that can change in the twinkling of an eye. It can take us to an absolute place of terror. Today on Body Bags, I want to talk about a case involving three people in a beautiful green 1967 Ford Fairlane that couldn't quite stay on the road. As a matter of fact, it launched off of a bridge and created one of the biggest mysteries in the history of the state of Kentucky. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Packs. Dave, I'm going to start this conversation off by giving you a great big old fat thank

you. Mm-hmm. giving you a great big old fat thank you. This case or cases that you dropped on me, brother, is unlike anything else that I think to date that we have done on body bags. And I'll go ahead and tell everybody out there that this is not a homicide. All right. But it's every bit the mystery as a matter of fact we're talking about decades man decades a 45 year old missing persons case joe that included a world war one war hero yeah when you dropped that knowledge on me i was thinking you know did let me ask you something in your young age do you recall ever meeting a world war one veteran joe when we used

to go to parades when i was a little kid yeah there would be the spanish-american war guys would lead the pack you know on the parade for then, it was called Armistice Day, I think. Yeah, yeah. It was always in. Now, it's not Veterans Day. It's in November. Memorial Day? No, November.

Anyway, that's Veterans Day. November and Veterans Day, they've changed that. Okay, just to be really historically correct here. Yeah. It was Armistice Day for a long time because it was the end of World War I, you know, the 11th month, the 11th day, the 11th hour. That's the hour, yep. And that's what all that meant,

and that's why we do Veterans Day on November 11th. And going to those parades as a kid when I was very young, and I think about this every now and then because you're talking about like 1970. You know, I'm a little kid. And we would see there were still men who were alive then. They were granted, they were 90, but they were in these before world 20, you know, 15 years before World War I, you know. And I learned to shoot pool from a guy who actually was too old to serve in World War II. You know, when you get to that point in life, you look back at this and go, yeah, this guy,

this man that we're going to talk about today is one of three people that he had a heroic adventure in World War I as a young man. And he came home without a leg and without emotional strength. He was a shell-shocked veteran and was declared incompetent by 1932. I've got to pause you just for a second because this is something, this is a theme that we have hit on before on body bags. Isn't it amazing how, maybe this is kind of obvious, but isn't it amazing how one event that occurs in a person's life decades and decades before can not only impact that individual that was in the middle of it, but it spreads out. I always talk about throwing a stone into a placid lake, and you see the waves go out

from that moment. And it is like that. And I got to tell you, I think this is one of those cases. Right. Those events that happened all the way back in probably 1918, which is when I think our guys showed up or 19. I'm probably getting nailed by historians in the audience. But approximating that time, you know, that all those decades back. Right. It impacts what happened on that August night in 1973. And here we are in 2024 talking about how yesterday this story is in the news. Yesterday, the story that we're talking about today is because a term is being used that Joe and I don't like. It's called closure for family. Yeah.

And it may be one of these things because this did happen a long time ago before any of these individuals had really a personal contact on their living relatives now but they've been part of history think about it if you have a family member an aunt an uncle and cousin what have you that went missing in 1973 would you be talking about them all these years like whatever happened to john you know what whatever happened to him i mean yeah he was a little happened to him? I mean, yeah, he was a little crazy. The one-legged guy. I mean, he was, but where is, what happened? The adults from back then that would remember this individual, they're actually, they're, they're leaving us now. Yes. You know,

one of the things I lament, this is my grandparents' generation. I miss, I miss the greatest generation right now. I miss those people from that generation. There are very few World War II veterans. And, you know, the people that built us out, you know, going into the 50s. We're losing all of those people in our history along with them. But, you know, you said a mouthful about how, and you know, you have this event that there are still people that are around that remember these individuals and

that memory has continued on, you know, now all these years later. And how that kind of, it's almost like a, I don't want to use the term ghost, of it's almost like a i don't i won't turn use the term ghost but it's imprinted you know onto that family how do you get past it when you have this open end there is now this might be the one time yeah closure fits because there's not closed this is an open circle it is not full circle yet now we're going to give it to you today and tell you why the family and the extended family why they are excited about finding out what really happened because as we mentioned you know quick history lesson world war one for the united states we didn't get into the war until the end

it was 1917 before the united states got into the war, the war ended November 11th, 1918. Okay. Yeah. But that year and a half we were in it. Yeah. It destroyed a lot of lives. That's why we were not as aggressive against Hitler in the 30s. Right.

Because it was like we saw what happened to the generation that came home. Yeah. And they were unwilling to do that again. But you know what overcoming it and world war ii happened and it lasted longer for us think about it you know from december 7th 1941 until august of 1945 that's a long time compared to a year and a half yeah those guys those guys didn't do short tours right when you when you were drafted in it's like you're gonna come home but this is how you'll come home either deceased grievously injured or victory right

that's it that's it that's the only choices you don't do like points they would let them yeah they had this game you know they would get a number of points that they would earn if they did certain things and they're like yeah when you have 23 points you go home and like and that was the big joke hey you know they'd get a new guy and i only got to do four more of these and i go home like yeah i got that two years ago you know well you know that that goes to this gentleman that's that's operating this vehicle this ford fairlane i'd you know you think about, you know, obviously he was a young man, you know, when he went in, he was fighting age. Right. Think about how hopeless that would be to go.

And they didn't fly over there. Right. He went over in a boat with a bunch of other guys packed in like sardines. I think the guy was born in 1892. Yeah. Yeah. And then to get your leg blown off over there. Yeah, I'd say he's wrecked. He's wrecked. And back then, we

talked about it. They didn't even use the term battle fatigue, which became kind of popularized. World War II, Korea, that sort of thing. They used the term shell-shocked. And if you've never seen and i i i urge everybody if you have never seen these video clips of these guys after world war one that they were studying uh where these men are habitually shaking, and they crawl under tables, and they have video of them just sitting there, and they have this wild-eyed look. And how do you treat that?

How do you treat these guys? And that's what they were faced with. And this guy comes home, not only is he damaged mentally, but he's damaged physically. I'm wondering how in the world would he even be capable of operating a motor vehicle if he's so damaged mentally and he's damaged physically? How does that happen? It didn't work out really well for him driving a car, Joe. You and I both were looking at this, and he was not known as a skillful driver. He had had his license taken away. He'd been in a wreck in 1973. The guy had so many wrecks, they took his license from him, but he kept driving.

The guy was he he's a war hero. He's incompetent and he's illiterate. You're not going to tell him what to do. And so he decides he's going to this family reunion. And he took the the sisters that were with him that day, Martha and Flora, Martha and Flora Helmick both went with him and they were both domestics, I guess, is the best way to put it. That was their career. And I have one of them took care of of John, Mr. Kenyon or keaton rather sorry um anyway they're on their way to a family reunion for mr ken and the battle is did keaton drive was he driving the car or was one of the women we know that he drove even though he didn't have a license yet and i'm thinking that you told me

about the ford fairlane before we started about it being a man's man kind of car, not a girly car. No. I'm thinking a World War I veteran with an attitude, he's going to be driving that car. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the thing about the Fairlane is that it came in varying degrees of beefiness, if you will, because Ford back then did not make what we think of as muscle cars so much. Yeah, the Mustang. But, you know, when it came to muscle, you're thinking a GM product like a Pontiac. Right. You know, or Chevy or even with Chrysler.

You know, how how could you not think about like the Roadrunner? You know, those cars like that or the Barracuda. We could do a whole show on that. You know, we could create a whole new thing of people who created a body bag out of their muscle car from the 60s. That's what we could do. Yeah, we could. But, you know, I would digress because I just I'm an admirer. I don't know enough about them.

But, boy, am I admiring. This was the standout car for Ford. So you're talking about a car with a lot of power with a guy that it was his car. If he had been driving, he's severely handicapped. I don't know. We don't know if he had a prosthesis. I'm thinking that he did not. And so if he is disabled to this point and he is disabled mentally to this great degree, suffering from what we would call now severe PTSD,

you really have to wonder on that dark night when they're heading out from Virginia to drive all the way to Kentucky, what did the night hold for them? They never made it to the family reunion. And for decades later, people wondered and families cried. Every now and then you will have an event in your life. Sometimes it can be something tiny, like Dave, if you ever pulled out a pair of old jeans, you put them on, and you stick your hand in the pocket, and you find a $20 bill? And it's like, oh, my gosh. It's like the heavens open up, and it's like this grand day. I've got to know, how did this go down where they're missing since august of 1973 right how how does this happen they've been missing all this time you know you think well one person can disappear right and people

will doggedly try to track them down but oh my lord if you have three people that go missing and you're sitting here and we're talking about one of the more isolated rural areas in America, that stretch from Western Virginia, not West Virginia, but Western Virginia, all the way through Eastern Kentucky, you're talking about driving through the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. How in the world do you make sense of this? The first week of August. And we were talking about whether or not they were driving with the air conditioning if they even had air conditioning yeah because the thing is is that they did go missing and i don't know of what type of search took place we know that they were expected and they're you know they were they were on their way to a family reunion so people expected them to be there when they didn't arrive calls were made uh way to a family reunion, so people expected them to be there. When they didn't arrive, calls were made.

There was a lot of assumptions being made that maybe John was driving. Maybe they did have an accident, but they couldn't find him anywhere. They tried to retrace the steps that they'd been on. But you know what? When nothing was found, it's not that people lose interest, okay? But they just have to have a reason to continue. And after a certain period of time of being gone, you don't think they've been kidnapped for money. You know, you don't think there's something.

You just think something happened and we can't find them now. And eventually people just tire of talking about it. To be honest with you, I don't know how long that lasted, but I do know this. In 2016, Lexington, Kentucky Fire Department is doing a training exercise on the Kentucky River. Now, they had used some sonar to find that there were some cars in the river and instead of just pulling them out or leaving their there to you know deteriorate they decided to turn it into an exercise to help teach their fire department how to do water rescues and things like that so taking there were several cars most of them were stolen joe and that yeah to this day i don't understand why people would steal a car only to toss it in the river you know well no no no no just let me because I have friends of mine that work for the FBI

task force relative to stolen vehicles and also state police friends of mine. What they do is they strip everything out of a vehicle. And then that shell that's left behind. They discard that. They discard it. And so, it's a legitimate question. But yeah's that's a great answer one of the things that happens and you'll find it's amazing what you'll if you've ever seen these people on on on youtube they're doing magnet fishing i love where they go the bridge yeah i'm fascinated i'll get stuck on that for hours when we stop taping today that's

my grandson and i will sit there and do that for hours. What'd you do all day, Dave? I was working. That's what I was doing, magnet fishing. Anyway, so there's all these cars and things they found using sonar. They decided to make it a training exercise, and they're out there training, and they're done. The different fire departments are packed up. They're ready to leave. Again, it's October of 2016, and they did find this Fort Fair Lane in the river, but it was so old and is so rusted in such bad condition. They couldn't even get certain numbers they needed. So they weren't really stressing over it as a vehicle. However,

as they were packing up, one of the firemen looks back and sees something. And it was obviously not a stick. And I think for those of you in this field, you know what a bone is. You know, when you see something that is a bone, it might not be human,

could be any number of things, but you know, the difference between a stick and a bone to me, I might not know the difference, but this fireman did. and they went and got it. They knew this was something that they might have disturbed while they were in the river. They find this, and they get it, and they go, okay, this is obviously a bone. They call in the county coroner, and this is actually what caught my attention about this story, Joe. They bring in the coroner and ask him to take a look at this.

Okay, he says it is a bone, but he can't determine if it's human or animal. Yeah. So my first question to you, Joseph Scott Morgan, how is that even an issue? I thought that would be an easy one.

No, not necessarily. I think that people would be amazed at the confusion that exists out there. And it's legitimate. And you should pay attention. If you, it's, there are certain times when you need to pay attention to confusion and to try to sort things out. I hate making assumptions, particularly when it comes to investigations. And it's very, very normal. You talk about the coroner that came out after the fire department found the single bone. There have been people, I've been on duty when this happens, I will get a call from the front

desk and they'll say, yeah, we need somebody in investigations. There's someone in a lobby with a bone. And that happens with great frequency. They're out in their backyard, they're digging, or they're wandering, walking down the road, or they're out in the woods on a hike, and they find a bone. And look, I encourage, if you find a bone, you don't know what it is, get it to somebody. There's no shame in it. The lion's share of the time when they would bring a bone to us, it would be one of two bones. It would are one of two species of bones, cow or hog.

And it's generally as a result of barbecuing, people cooking, and then they'll discard bones. Really? Yes. That's funny. I would never have guessed that. And, you know, the historian inside of me, one of the things that I always held out hope for is that during the Civil War, the Battle of Atlanta, the Confederacy had trench lines that literally ran right by the medical examiner's office, the southern perimeter around the city. And I always held out hope that somebody would be digging in their backyard and recover, you know, historic remains like that. Because for me, that's intellectually stimulating.

Right. Never happened, unfortunately. But you have to look at the bone and try to understand. That's why when people go through like when they go to the body farm and places like that or to the Maple Center down at the University of Florida or out to University of Arizona where they've got a fine program as well. They spend the anthropologists will spend a goodly portion of their time examining the skeletons of a variety of different types of animals. And that's so they can delineate between human versus non-human. Now I feel so much better about this because I really did think it was just,

because I don't know, I thought, how difficult can it be? So it really is. That's why this guy, Gary Ginn, the Fayette County coroner, when he could not determine exactly what it was, he called in a retired anthropologist, Dr. Emily Craig. Yeah. And she gets a look at it and says, not only is he human, I can tell you this is female. Yeah. Isn't that something? Yeah.

How is this? And one guy can't even tell you if it's human. And she's like, oh, yeah. So as a matter of fact, I think it's Aunt Martha. You know what I mean? No, no, no. No. Listen, to the coroner's great credit. Yeah. I am more impressed with people that admit that they don't know than those that walk around saying that they do. I've learned so much more by saying I don't know something in life. And when you can call in an expert, you have the phone number of a physical anthropologist or a forensic anthropologist that's nearby.

Utilize it, man. Utilize it. I always tell when I'm teaching classes, for instance, I reach out. I tell police officers, you do not want to wait until the day that you have a catastrophic event in your jurisdiction to build a relationship with a forensic dentist or forensic anthropologist. That should have been done years prior to. Okay. You don't want to wait. And so the coroner obviously had this person maybe on speed dial.

I don't know. But the fact that they were able to look at the single bone and not only say that not only is it human, it's female. It goes into the discussion that we recently had with the Melissa Wolfenberger case. Oh, wow. Yeah. the Melissa Wolfenberger case, where when we examine human remains, skeletal human remains, there are two terms that are used pretty frequently. And that is, as it applies to male skeletons, we will refer to them many times their features as being robust. but with female skeletons, um, we, uh, use the term grass, which means fine. Uh, it's finer, more dainty, that sort of thing. And also some of the features are a little bit different, but you know, so even myself as, um, you know, as much experience as I've had around the dead, I'm not going to rely

on my own judgment relative to a skull to remain. I'm going to try to find the closest expert that I can, specifically a physical anthropologist that has experience not just in examining skeletal remains. But Dave, there's another element to this that is quite this remain, this single remain, had been in an aquatic environment for years and years and years. Therefore, even further increasing the degree of difficulty in assessing who this belonged to. I would wager that if you're trying to measure a degree of difficulty when it comes to processing crime scenes. When you get into an aquatic environment, it can either be 100 feet deep or knee deep. There is a level of difficulty that comes into play where all evidence is impacted. I know that, and I urge anybody that is listening to please seek out my good buddy, Bobby Chacon. And he's a retired FBI agent, and he headed up the dive team for

the FBI and became quite famous as an underwater crime scene investigator. He is a fascinating individual. I actually appeared with him on Dr. Phil's show, I think two years ago, and he is just remarkably bright and has great insight, things I don't normally think about. And Dave, when we're talking about this bone that was recovered, there's all kinds of things that can happen to bone underwater. A lot of it has to do with the chemistry of the water. For instance, you can have kind of a decalcification that takes place with the bone, depending upon, you know, what type of, you know, if you're, for instance, if you're downstream from some factory, for instance, the water is not as necessarily pure and pristine as a rocky mountain stream. You never know. And not to mention, things are going to be mud covered. Most rivers in the south have a lot of silt on the bottom of them.

And sometimes it's hard to make heads or tails. I got to ask, in this case, did they only find this single bone? You know, it's so funny, Joe. When they found the one bone that started all of this. You know, I mentioned it was in October. It was a couple of weeks before they identified it, first of all, as human and female, that they were able to arrange going back to the site to pull that Ford Fairlane out of the river. Oh. And when they got it out of the river,

they found more bones in the car. Now, remember we already kind of, we didn't bury the lead by telling you there were three people in the car. It's just, there were three people in the car. Cause we had to tell you that to tell you why they found it in the river to start with. But when they're pulling the car out,

they don't have the information we already have given you. They're blind to this they just know they found one bone belongs to a female pull the car out and find more now here's what they found um they found the vehicle identified martha helmick okay they found information now martha they found it and this is what really got me, Joe. They were able, they found bones of a foot in pantyhose. Wow. They found an elevated shoe, a shoe that has like a big heel on it.

Yes. Now, remember how we mentioned that John, the older man, that he didn't have a leg. Well, we're talking about a woman's shoe that was elevated. And then they found a coin purse that identified other family members. So they started figuring out they've got somebody here that they can identify by certain aspects of knowing her family background. And then they find a fractured tibia bone. Yes.

That had never healed properly, never healed correctly. Now, it was so bad, Joe, that it caused her leg to be shorter than the other. And all I'm thinking is, did she break that bone as a child and it was never set properly? They didn't take her to the doctor and it caused her to have a permanent lifetime of pain. I mean, if it doesn't heal right, that's got to cause serious pain. Yeah. And bones are fascinating, aren't they? Because they're going to mend. Yeah. And when you see like at autopsy, i've seen some of the most striking uh findings

when it comes to when we dissect out areas say if we've got an anomaly like a misshapen arm right many times we'll do a dissection on the arm just to see well why is it misshapen or to verify it and many times for instance the humerus, which is the large bone, the upper bone in the arm, I've seen where when bones kind of naturally mend, you'll see this kind of calcified area. It turns into many times like a big knot. And the bone is trying to fuse back together, and it does. But the problem is this um you won't have the same length to it and many times you won't have the same range of motion because it's all it everything impacts everything else the biomechanics that are involved in it and so when in forensics there's a term that we use called individualization. There's evidence that it has been previously broken.

And this could have happened. It could have happened in childhood or it could have happened in adulthood. And we know that she doesn't come from a lot of money. And there are people that walk around on broken bones. I've met them. And it's excruciatingly painful. Maybe it was never set properly. But this is the one thing that we would know if we were investigators going back to ask her history if we didn't know about the shoe for instance all right and we had this bone we could go back and those that are still living that remember martha did she walk with a limp did Did she favor one side? And here's the other thing. That bone in her leg, yes, it's shorter, and yes, it would have caused her.

Did you know that that impacts also, now that you have the tib-fib, which are the two lower bones in the leg, that impacts the knee. It impacts the femur, which is the the largest bone it's the largest long bone in the body that's from knee to hip it impacts the hip so like where the ball of the head of the fits into the pelvis you would have there would be markings on the interior of that pelvis because it's atypical, because of the shape of her leg. And the legs are asymmetrical. So, you know, she'd be dragging a leg behind her. It's going to impact her entire body.

So, if all you have are skeletal remains remaining, you can look for those little markers. If we're absent the shoe, but boy, the shoe the shoe i'm a dude i'm amazed by two things first off they found pantyhose yeah nylon right which is a synthetic uh and that contained a bag of bones you know that when we go out to recover skeletal remains some of the first things that disappear are the bones of the feet and the bones of the hands. And that's because they're so small and there's so many of them. The fact that they recovered multiple bones of the foot, and it's all contained in what remains of this pantyhose. And you know that they're made out of a synthetic, more than likely.

It's probably a synthetic blend of something because it's not just pure nylon. It's probably something else. It gives you an idea, I think, when you really scratch your head over how resilient these materials are. And if I'm not mistaken, they found her skirt or a dress as well. It was a gray dress that she wore. And just so we can be clear here um she was kind of a large lady and oftentimes when we're in our mid to late 50s if we're not people of means and we're large we don't have a big wardrobe no and martha was a person who didn't have much of a wardrobe and so people

knew her by her gray dress yeah and they found. They found enough of the gray dress that they were able to use that as part of the identification. Not the actual identification, but like backing up. They were talking about how everything they found in the car of hers. It just reinforced the fact that it was her. Yeah, it's a confirmatory piece of it. Yeah, you're absolutely right, man. But they didn't find anything from flora or from john what are the odds of that well i gotta tell you i've never been to the kentucky river all right

now my understanding is where the car went in is near uh an old ferry site and i think the ferry still actually exists this is wait a minute this is what you were talking to me about off air, that it would have been deeper there. Well, yeah, because it didn't go off. It's hard to understand. But let's say, for instance, it went off of a bridge. All right. Went off of a bridge, generally around the pilings of a bridge. You're going to have a lot more depth, perhaps.

And depending upon depth, first off, things are going to sink to the bottom. You're talking about a car. A car is not going to float. Here's what's kind of fascinating, I think. If we believe that that car did not have air conditioning, dude, it's August in the South. Guess what? The Fairlane is a two-door car. So they would have had both of those windows down. I think it had vent windows in the back.

Remember vent windows? They would roll down. They're kind of triangle-shaped. So you've got this big, wide-open space. For some reason, Martha is perhaps – she may have been in the back seat. So that would facilitate her being wedged in the back seat. The other two, if they're not belted, which most people were not belted, and even if you were, I think most of those cars came with only lap belts.

Dude, with the flow and the volume of water in there, they're going to float out. And Lord only knows where they wound up. You know, those bodies wound up downstream somewhere, I think. But the fact that she was even found or what remained of her body was found inside of that vehicle is pretty fascinating i even think this was i don't know there's something it was kind of creepy chilling to me they actually found her coin purse as well i believe didn't they dave yeah and it still had coins in it but you'd mentioned something else that was kind of significant. It had a key. It actually had a key for a trailer. And you and I looked this up because the key was for a trailer. Like we were wondering, is it like a camper trailer or a house trailer?

No matter what it was, it was identified as this camper trailer or this trailer, rather, that she used to live in. It was a very significant find because everything they found just confirmed who they had found all the way from the shoe to the nylon, you know, the, the bone, the bone is what got me, the, the bone fracture that didn't heal the shoe that has to have a bigger heel, that little coin purse. I mean, how do you find that in a river after 40 years, you know, it just boggles the mind. You know, I'm wondering if when – this is a fascinating thing to me when they – because you've got to take great care, Dave.

You know, you had already said that this car is fragile. There's a picture of it that exists. And when you said it's rusted out, brother, it is rusted out, you would have to take – this is not something – you're not just lifting logs out of a river, a beaver dam, or stones that are – you're talking about the totality of that vehicle is evidence. And you would have to take such care with – it's so very fragile. This is an artifact almost to get it over to shore and set down carefully so that you could examine everything. And just so folks understand, when you pull something out of a river like this, your biggest obstacle, one of the biggest obstacles you're going to have is going to be mud and silt. It is going to be jam-packed with this stuff. So you would have to go in, and I can only imagine, depending upon the physical attitude of the vehicle in the water over all these years with water floods.

You can imagine all the years that rivers flooded since that fateful night in 1973. Things being washed in, washed out. Maybe trees have been hung up on it, all of this other stuff, it's all settling to the bottom. And maybe, just maybe, that's why they found the remnant of the foot in the nylon. Maybe it was buried beneath the silt contained within the car. All that deposition of stuff that was in there for years and years. But they can't find hide in the hair of these other two occupants.

They're gone. I mean, gone as in gone, gone. You'll never see them again because the Lord only knows where those bodies wound up. But, you know, Martha was there to tell the tale, Dave, And the tragedy of this, I think, and I'm not trying to diminish the World War I veteran, but you've got sisters here. Right. And the impact that that's going to have is far-reaching. And it's generational.

That's a sorrow that never goes away. It's something that people will remember. It becomes the stuff of lore and family for younger and younger generations. But the fact that this firefighter, this deputy chief, would be willing to engage in this. And he's becoming – you don't normally think of firefighters as investigators. Now, you think of arson investigators. But he begins on his own to do Google searches. And they wind up, actually, I think that he connected through a blog,

it turned out, where they found this family in Virginia from all these years ago, where these loved ones are missing. And can you imagine getting this thunderbolt out of nowhere of people, you know, saying, look, we might have information about this missing family member of yours. And this is quite amazing to me scientifically that these skeletal elements that they took such care with the recovery of actually yielded viable DNA. And these things had been submerged all of this time, Dave. out or they were able to go out and get a third generation DNA sample from a descendant of this family. And Dave, it was a spot on match. Spot on match to Martha's family. Can you imagine this just out of nowhere? Now, you know, we'll probably never know what actually happened to John Keaton and, unfortunately, Flora.

But we have established that they were all there together that night when that car went in to that river in Kentucky. In that blackness, driven off and began to sink to the bottom. But one witness remained, and that was the mortal remains of Martha Helmick. She bore testimony that they were there, and that in some way she was still there. And only all that remains told the final tale.

I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.