A Virginia family has closure 45 years later after their loved one's remains were identified and returned following their discovery in the Kentucky River.
It was a normal training exercise for the Lexington Fire Department on Oct. 22, 2016. Several dive teams spent the day removing vehicles from the Kentucky River off Old Tates Creek Road near Valley View Ferry.
After crews had packed up, one firefighter noticed something sticking out of the water. "One of my guys comes over and says, 'Hey, what is this?' And I walk over to the edge of the water, and there's a human bone laying there," district chief Christopher Warren recalls with the Lexington Fire Department Station 2.
Unknowingly, finding the bone would jump-start an eight-year investigation for Warren. "There was something that connected me to this. Even from the very beginning, I was one of the divers that was on the car, and I had a weird connection with the car even underwater."
That's when Fayette County coroner Gary Ginn was brought into the mix to confirm the bone was human. However, he wasn't 100% sure and reached out to retired anthropologist Dr. Emily Craig, who is an expert in bones. From there, she confirmed the bone was not only human but female.
After the bone was found, investigators pulled out a light-green 1967 Ford Fairlane from the river, where several more bones were found that would unravel a 45-year-old missing persons case out of Bridgewater, Virginia.
On Aug. 3, 1973, three individuals—John Edwin Keyton, 81; Flora Smith Helmick, 52; and Martha Smith Helmick, 57—were reported missing. Investigators believe the three were on their way to a family reunion when they accidentally drove into the river due to the darkness outside.
"So we think that John pulled right up to that and pulled right out into the water, and the car sank, and we believe all of them died from drowning," explains Ginn.
On Nov. 2, 2016, after the initial find, the vehicle was thoroughly examined, where multiple items that would lead to the identification of Martha Helmick were found. Items such as bones of a foot inside pantyhose, an elevated shoe that Martha used to wear, a coin purse with items inside the family confirmed, a gray dress Martha wore at the time of her disappearance, and a key that was traced back to a trailer Martha had lived in, but had been disposed of years ago.
A fractured tibia bone that had never healed correctly was discovered, which was a piece of the puzzle toward confirming her identity.
“From the family that Martha had one leg shorter than the other, and she had an elevated shoe on," said Ginn.
After a year with no investigation, Warren began to dedicate his every waking second to discovering the identity of Martha Helmick. He began sifting through hundreds of missing person cases from 1968 to 1975 and located a missing persons case in Ohio, but the DNA markers were inconclusive.
"Thousands and thousands of Google searches and reading missing persons reports until one day I found a blog that somebody said was one of my family members," admits Warren. “It switched—something inside of me switched from ‘I’m not doing this in the capacity of the Lexington Fire Department dive team and being a part of that.’ It became personal to me, and I wanted to make sure I did it for them.”
In July 2018, Warren discovered the blog post and connected with the family. He shared with them what he found and slowly connected the dots. He was able to obtain DNA from a third-generational niece of Martha's that was sent to NamUs for comparison; those results were inconclusive.
“In order to match DNA, you have to have another person who has DNA on file, and if you don’t have the file, you’ll never find the person," said Ginn.
“The day that I got confirmation, the DNA was proven. That was an amazing phone call I got to make—to call Kathy and her family and say, it’s over, like they’re coming home," said Warren.
In June 2020, bone structures and DNA samples were sent from DNA Labs International in Florida to Parabon NanoLabs in Virginia for additional profiling. It wasn't without complications, though. The first round of DNA sent to the lab had exploded during the transition, completely compromising the samples. It took another year before a second round of DNA could be sent back to Parabon NanoLabs for testing.
It was like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for Warren when he received the results that the DNA was a match for Martha Smith Helmick and her sister, Flora Smith Helmick. “The day that I got confirmation, the DNA was proven. That was an amazing phone call I got to make—to call Kathy [a niece of Martha's] and her family and say, it’s over, like they’re coming home," Warren says with a smile on his face.
Ginn says that besides the fact it takes months, and even years, to track down the correct case that correlates with found items or, in this case, human remains, it takes four to six weeks for a toxicology report to come back and anywhere from a month to three months for autopsies to be completed. "It's not like the movies where everything is done in an hour."
“With a bony structure, there are autopsy solves and things of that nature that they can use to actually cut into the bone and take samples out," explains Ginn. “Autopsy has to happen, and tissue samples and sometimes bone samples—all of that has to be collected. Then that has to be placed, it has to go through histology and placed on slides and looked at under a microscope.”
"So many moments throughout the entire investigation that if one thing had not happened, if this one thing hadn't happened, there would be no case," admits Warren. "She's like an aunt to me at this point. Like my Virginia mom. That whole family is fantastic. I love being around them and talking to them. We'll always be in touch; there's no doubt."
In August 2024, Martha's remains were returned to her family in Bridgewater, Virginia. The family held a small funeral and laid her to rest in the family cemetery.
This story was originally published by Kayleigh Randle at Scripps News Lexington.