The remains of a Bridgewater woman who went missing nearly five decades ago will be returned to Virginia after further research and DNA analysis confirmed her identity.
According to The Associated Press, Gary Ginn, coroner of Fayette County in Kentucky, said remains pulled from a car discovered in the Kentucky River five years ago are those of Martha Smith Helmick.
In August 2018, Joe Simmons, then police chief of Bridgewater, said results from DNA tests at the time were inconclusive.
But on Wednesday, Ginn said diligent research by Lexington Fire Capt. Chris Warren and new DNA technology helped confirm the identification.
Remains of the other two people who went missing with Helmick in August 1973 still have not been found, Ginn said.
Helmick was last seen leaving Bridgewater with her sister, Flora, and John Ed Keyton on Aug. 3, 1973. They were driving to a family reunion in Dabolt, Ky., but never arrived.
Keyton served in World War I and lost a leg in France, according to a story in the Jan. 19, 1974, edition of the Daily News-Record. After the war, he came home, and many described him as “shellshocked.”
The article says Keyton, who was declared incompetent in 1932, would purchase appliances on credit, turning around to sell them at half-price. Because he was declared incompetent, he wasn’t bound to contracts and used his status to get out of payments, referring creditors to his guardian.
The 1967 Ford Fairlane that Keyton and the Helmick sisters took to Kentucky that day in 1973 was acquired on credit one month earlier. The story also said Keyton “was not known as a skillful driver” and would apparently take little-used roads to avoid police.
The story’s only information about Martha and Flora Helmick was that the two were raised in West Virginia, married a pair of brothers and were widowed by 1973.
Flora was Keyton’s live-in housekeeper in 1973, while her sister lived in Monterey.
The article described the trio as a “gruff-talking, one-legged World War I veteran, his tongue-tied housekeeper of five years, and her 200-pound sister, who was wearing red sneakers.”
Simmons was contacted in September 2017 by authorities in Fayette County, Ky., about remains found in the Kentucky River during a Lexington, Ky., Fire Department training exercise in October 2016.
Kentucky officials tracked down a different lead in late 2016 into 2017 that didn’t pan out before reaching out to Bridgewater.
Crews pulled the front half of a rusted 1967 Ford Fairlane from the water, the same type of vehicle that the missing trio was driving. Firefighters found fibula, tibia, femur and foot bones within a nylon stocking and another tibia in a stocking.
Officials determined the bones belonged to a woman.
Bob Holton, who served as town superintendent from 1973 to 2016, compiled several theories of the trio’s fate in the May 2004 edition of the Bridgewater Current, the town’s monthly newsletter.
The possibilities ranged from Keyton’s poor driving causing the car to go off a mountain on the way to Kentucky to his rubbing a businessman or “mountain residents” the wrong way and being murdered.
Another theory came from Ruth Kegley, Keyton’s neighbor, who thought he drove off the road into a deep lake.
Kentucky officials have said the car was found near the Valley View Ferry, which takes people across the Kentucky River from Fayette County to Madison County on the way to Richmond, Ky. The ferry is the only way across the river on the road near where the car was found.
At night, officials have said, the river is dark and could be confused for the road.
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