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Almost 50 years after she disappeared, Marion Vinetta Nagle McWater’s body was identified through DNA.
McWhorter was 21 years old when he was last seen in an Oct. 1974 at a shopping mall in Tiguard, Oregon, according to CBS News. Her sister, Valerie Nagle, now 62, lives in Seattle, but she said she was 11 when her sister disappeared.
“I was very surprised that they called,” she said. “I was so happy they found me through my DNA.”
McWhorter’s body was discovered in 1976 when Moss Hunter found a skull with several teeth near Wolf Creek by Swamp Mountain, warning Linn County authorities on a per-CBS basis. Investigators later recovered additional skeletal remains, along with Levi’s jeans, a worn leather coat, a leather belt with beadwork, two metal rings and clogged-style shoes.
Oregon State Police said the “Swamp Mountain Jane Doe” case has progressed in stages over the years.
In 2010, bone samples went to the Human Identification Center at the University of North Texas, and profiles were added to Nams. Additional testing in 2020 generated more detailed genetic marker profiles. In 2023, Valerie Nagle submitted her DNA through her ancestors, hoping it would help.
The breakthrough occurred in April 2025. Once the first cousin was deleted, he uploaded his profile to FamilyTreedna, allowing genealogists to refine McWhorter’s family tree to identify Nagle as a surviving relative.
Authorities confirmed their identification in June 2025 and made it publicly announced this week.
Nagle told CBS that on the day her sister disappeared, McWater called her aunt for a ride near Tiggard Mall, but they learned they didn’t meet. Almost 20 years later, my aunt revealed that McWater had mentioned the man in the white pickup truck that offered her a ride.
In that new work, Nagle said he “started in earnest with more searches,” including communicating an online database of unidentified people.
“I remember spending a lot of time on those pages, just scrolling and looking,” she recalled.
McWhorter was the oldest of the five brothers. Nagle was the youngest. Their mother comes from the people of Athabascan, Alaska, and the family said McWater was named after an aunt who died in 1940 at a boarding school for Alaska’s Native children around CBS.
Nagle said her sister’s loss of failure reflects the wider crisis of missing Indigenous people, particularly women, amid limited public safety resources.
Lindsay Wasson/AP
In a statement, Oregon forensic anthropologist Hailey Colord Stutterer said the incident was “cold for 49 years.”
“That means the family lived and died without knowing what happened to their missing loved one,” she said, adding that McWater “probably did not go missing voluntarily.”
The Linn County Sheriff’s Office continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding her death.
For Nagle, confirmation ends a decades-long search. “I never forgot her,” she said.
