In the late summer of 1974, seventeen-year-old Martha Marie Morrison, a White female, disappeared from Portland, Oregon. She had a history of running away and had been in foster care near Eugene, Oregon. Morrison had recently been in Arizona for the Job Corps program where she met her boyfriend. The couple then moved to Portland. She was last seen in September 1974, leaving the apartment she shared with her boyfriend after they had an argument.
On October 12, 1974, the skeletal remains
of two young women were discovered in a densely wooded area of Dole Valley in Clark County, Washington. One set of remains was quickly identified as those of 18-year-old Carol Platt Valenzuela. The other victim, however, remained a mystery for decades. Investigators circulated forensic facial reconstructions, but they yielded no leads. For years, the unidentified remains were known only as "Jane Doe." In 2011, a breakthrough came when an operations manager at the Clark County Medical Examiner's Office realized the remains, once thought to be lost, had been mislabeled. In July 2015, through DNA comparison with her surviving relatives and the exhumed remains of her father, the second victim was officially identified as Martha Marie Morrison.
With her identity confirmed, the cold case investigation into her homicide gained new momentum. Over the years, several notorious serial killers, including Ted Bundy, had been considered persons of interest. However, the investigation eventually focused on Warren Leslie Forrest, a man already imprisoned for the July 1974 murder of another young woman. A crucial piece of evidence was a bloodstain on an air pistol that belonged to Forrest. In August 2017, DNA testing confirmed the blood on the pistol was Martha Morrison's. This breakthrough provided a direct link between Forrest and Morrison's death.
Based on the DNA evidence, authorities concluded that Forrest was responsible for the deaths of both Martha Morrison and Carol Platt Valenzuela, as their bodies had been found together. In 2020, Warren Leslie Forrest was charged with the first-degree murder of Martha Marie Morrison. He was subsequently found guilty in February 2023, bringing a long-awaited conclusion to a case that had remained unsolved for nearly half a century. Investigators had also sought to speak with Morrison's boyfriend from 1974, not as a suspect, but as someone who might provide valuable details about her final days. He was described as a slender African American man who worked as a welder in the Portland shipyards.
