Snohomish County detectives ID skeletal remains as Portland man missing for 28 years



STANWOOD, Wash. --  Snohomish County detectives have identified a man whose skeletal remains were found by hikers near 140th Street NE and Marine Drive near Kayak Point on January 20, 2016, as Roy T. Blair.

Snohomish County Major Crimes detectives, the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office and the Washington State forensic anthropologist, Dr. Kathy Taylor, responded to the scene and recovered the remains.

“In doing so, we ended up finding clothing that had a wallet in it,” said Snohomish County Det. Jim Scharf.

On May 3, dental records confirmed his identity. Blair disappeared from Portland in 1988 when he was 28, and Scharf was able to locate Blair’s sister and daughter in Portland.

“They were overjoyed to finally have some answers as to what happened to their dad and their brother after being missing for 28 years."

Roy Blair



Scharf says Blair had a minor warrant when he disappeared and had been in a little bit of trouble.

“He decided that he wanted to just take his sleeping bag and get on his motorcycle and get out of town for a while. They loaned him $20 and never saw him again,” said Scharf. There were no signs of injuries and his death is not considered suspicious.

If you have any information about this or any other case, please call the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office at (425) 438-6200.

Please check the website for this and other Snohomish County cases that remain unidentified at http://www.snohomishcountywa.gov/unID.

Call 911 to report someone missing.  If you have reported someone missing over 5 years ago and they are still missing, call the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office at (425) 388-3393 (then press “0”) with the person’s full name and date of birth to check that they are still entered as a missing person; older cases may have been inadvertently removed from the database.