Body found by Oregon waterfall identified decades later. ‘Heartbreaking,’ family says
In 1979, while hiking near the bottom of Multnomah Falls in Oregon, two people found skeletal remains — a mystery that wouldn’t be solved until more than 40 years later, according to a news release from the Oregon State Police.
It was Sept. 14 and the hikers also found “degraded clothing, eyeglasses and a hair mass indicating the individual may have been of African American biological origin,” according to the release posted on OSP’s Facebook page. That’s all that was known about the case until 2006. Over the years more details emerged, eventually leading to the person’s identification.
The remains are those of Freeman Isaac Asher, Jr., who moved to Portland from California around 1976, according to the release.
“My Uncle Freeman Issac Asher Junior was missing for 40 plus years … we had no idea where he was or if he was alive or dead,” Christina Asher Jones, a relative of Asher, said in a Facebook post Tuesday. “So hurt as though it just happened … I’m glad for closure but it’s heartbreaking. Thank God for technology and the detective that followed through.”
The case involved numerous agencies across the United States.
In 1979, Oregon did not have an anthropologist on staff to examine the remains, so they were sent to The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., according to the release. The remains were re-inventoried in 2005 and re-examined in 2006, when analysis confirmed that the body belonged to someone of African American heritage, the release said.
Four years later, a sample of the remains was sent to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification in Fort Worth, where DNA was uploaded into a database.
In 2013 a forensic artist in Clackamas County created a composite drawing of what the man may have looked like.
In 2018, OSP’s medical examiner’s office received a grant “to perform innovative DNA techniques on unsolved, unidentified skeletal remains cases.”
“Because the DNA profile of the decedent had never ‘hit’ to a missing person case in the CODIS database after being entered into the system in 2010, and because the case was one of the oldest in Oregon’s medical examiner facility, this case was recognized as one that could potentially be resolved by DNA phenotyping and investigative genetic genealogy,” the release said.
OSP’s lab delivered a DNA phenotyping and genetic genealogy report in 2020, which gave a possible first and last name. Tests revealed that the remains likely belonged to Freeman Isaac Asher, Jr.
“After moving to the Portland area, Mr. Asher disappeared and was assumed to be dead by most of his relatives,” the release said.
The genetic genealogist found a photo from the 1980s on social media — a family portrait of the Ashers, where the only sibling missing was Freeman, the release said. Through interviews, searches and data pursuits, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office and the Portland Police Bureau were able to contact Asher’s family.
Officials reached out to a sister in California who agreed to an oral swab, which was compared to DNA from the remains’. On Jan. 29, the results confirmed a relation between the sibling and Asher’s remains.
