Martha Helmick

This individual was recently confirmed to have been identified. Some details may change as more information is released publicly.

Martha Helmick
Name	Martha Smith Helmick
Sex	Female
Age	54
Missing from	Bridgewater, Virginia
Disappeared	August 3, 1973
Discovered	October 22, 2016
Location	Lexington, Kentucky
Identified	December 2021
Span	5 years
Cause of death	Vehicle accident/Drowning

Martha Smith Helmick was a woman whose remains were recovered from a submerged car in the Kentucky River. She had gone missing alongside her sister and their employer in 1973 while he was driving them to his family reunion.

She was identified in late December 2021. The remains of her sister and their employer have never been found.

Case

In late October of 2016, firefighters in Lexington, Kentucky, were taking part in training when they discovered a car submerged in the Kentucky River. Inside of the car was the skeletonized body of a woman of which authorities immediately attempted to identify alongside a single corrective shoe. They were initially unsuccessful, though after testing consistently for 5 years they were able to identify the remains as Martha Helmick, who had gone missing from Bridgewater, Virginia, in 1973 alongside two others. As further confirmation of her identity, Helmick had an unset fractured tibia she needed corrective shoes for, tying her to the shoe found with her remains.

Helmick was an orphan alongside her sister who had married two brothers but the women were widowed by the year they disappeared. At the time, they were working as housekeepers for a war veteran named John Keyton. On the night they had disappeared, Keyton was driving the sisters to his family reunion in Dabolt, Kentucky, in his light green 1967 Ford Fairlane. Keyton was noted to have been poor at driving at the time as he had received several traffic citations and had gotten into an accident sometime before the trio's disappearance. The car found in the Kentucky River was concluded to have been the Ford Fairlane, and that Keyton may have accidentally driven into the river during their trip.

Authorities have now closed the cases of Helmick, her sister, and Keyton, after concluding that an accident had occurred. The bodies of Keyton and Helmick's sister have never been found, but it is suspected they had perished alongside Helmick in the Kentucky River.

Clothing

• Nylon stockings.
• A corrective shoe.

Sources

• Martha Helmick at the Charley Project
• WHAS 11
• Lexington Herald Leader
• The Washington Post