Portland group following 1970s missing person case recovers cars from Salem pond

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    PORTLAND, Oregon (KPTV) — A Portland-based non-profit that specializes in solving cold cases pulled several long-submerged cars out of a Salem pond Thursday.

United Search Corps said the operation at Walling Pond was tied to two people who had gone missing in the Salem area in the 1970s and were never found.

Doug Bishop, the leader of the group, said his team used sonar to locate a Volkswagen and other submerged cars in the pond. They said the Volkswagen seemed to have been in the water since at least the 1980s.

While it was not immediately clear if the Volkswagen or other cars found in the pond were tied to the missing people, Bishop said these operations are critical.

“Six hundred thousand people go missing every single year, and thousands of those cases go cold,” Bishop said. “It’s providing answers for families, it’s really powerful. When you lose a loved and you have no answers and you don’t know anything, that is the ultimate form of a nightmare.”

Bishop said United Search Corps, which is completely supported by donations, has helped solve dozens of cold cases in just the last four years.

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