Image: Edwin Asher Orbituary

A set of skeletal remains that washed ashore on a remote Washington beach nearly two decades ago has been identified as Clarence Edwin “Ed” Asher, a former mayor of the small Oregon town of Fossil who vanished during a fishing trip in 2006. The identification closes a case that had long been presumed a drowning, but never formally resolved.Asher, then 72, disappeared on 5 September 2006 after heading out alone to crab and fish at Tillamook Bay, a narrow inlet on Oregon’s coast. According to contemporaneous reporting by The Astorian, Asher left Garibaldi’s Old Mill Marina at around 10am, telling his wife he planned to return by mid-afternoon. When he failed to come back, she contacted authorities that evening.The United States Coast Guard launched an extensive search involving multiple boats and HH-60 Jayhawk helicopters from Air Station Astoria. Crews later located Asher’s 21-foot boat idling about half a mile from the marina, with live crab still on board. Two of the three buoys he typically used were recovered, but no lifejacket was found. His wife told searchers that Asher did not usually wear one and did not know how to swim. Officials believed he had fallen overboard. After more than 11 hours covering over 200 miles of water, and with poor visibility preventing an underwater search, the operation was suspended the following day.Less than two months later, in November 2006, a collection of skeletal remains surfaced on a beach in Taholah, an unincorporated village on the Quinault Indian Reservation, roughly 185 miles north of Tillamook Bay. The Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office and the county coroner examined the remains but were unable to establish an identity. The case was entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System as Grays Harbor County John Doe, before gradually slipping into obscurity.That changed in 2025, when forensic evidence from the case was submitted to Othram, a Texas-based company specialising in genetic genealogy. Using forensic-grade genome sequencing, scientists created a detailed DNA profile from the remains and compared it with a reference sample from one of Asher’s relatives. The match confirmed that the skeleton belonged to Fossil’s missing former mayor, born in 1934 and presumed dead shortly after his disappearance.Asher’s wife, Helen, died in 2018 at the age of 85 after a long battle with cancer. According to her obituary, his sudden disappearance left “a large hole” in her life and prompted her to return to Condon, Oregon, where the couple had married in 1986. Together they had built a sprawling blended family, including children, 21 grandchildren and, by the time of Helen’s death, 17 great-grandchildren.In Fossil, a town of just a few hundred residents in Wheeler County, Asher was a familiar and widely respected figure. According to his obituary, he worked for nearly 50 years as a lineman at the Fossil Telephone Company, ran the Asher Variety Store, volunteered as a fireman and ambulance driver, and served a brief term as mayor before retiring in 1995. His obituary also recalls a man devoted to fishing, boating, antique cars and his black Labradors.The identification brings a measure of closure to a disappearance that had lingered unresolved for nearly 20 years. What was once a nameless set of remains on a distant shoreline has now been traced back to a life rooted firmly in a small Oregon community, finally linking a long-assumed fate with forensic certainty.