A woman's remains were found in Oregon in 1976. They've been identified 49 years later thanks to DNA

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Valerie Nagle spent decades wondering what happened to her older sister who was last seen in Oregon in 1974. She searched online databases of unidentified persons cases looking for her and sent DNA to a popular ancestry website in the hopes of finding a match.

That all changed in June when authorities in Oregon called Nagle “out of the blue” to ask about comparing her DNA to a cold case known as “Swamp Mountain Jane Doe,” she said. Nagle’s DNA ultimately helped confirm that the remains of a woman found near a mountain creek in Oregon’s Central Cascades in 1976 were that of her sister, Marion Vinetta Nagle McWhorter.

Oregon State Police publicly released the news this week after the remains were identified in June.

“I was very surprised that they called,” Nagle, a 62-year-old who lives in Seattle, told The Associated Press. She was 11 when her sister went missing. “I was really glad that they found me through DNA.”

McWhorter was last seen at a shopping mall in the Portland suburb of Tigard when she was 21.

She was the oldest of five siblings, and Nagle was the youngest. Their mother was Alaska Native of the Ahtna Athabascan people, Nagle said, and her big sister had been named for an aunt who died in a boarding school for Indigenous children in Alaska in 1940.

High rates of disappearances of Indigenous people, particularly women, have festered for generations amid inadequate public safety resources.

Nagle, who lived in New York with her parents and one of her brothers at the time of her sister's disappearance, said her mother may have contacted authorities but that she wasn’t sure of the exact extent of the efforts made by her parents to find her sister.

“I mean, there were, you know, efforts to search, but it was limited,” she said. “We didn’t have that much to go on.”

She does know her sister had come from California to Oregon with plans to continue on to Seattle and eventually Alaska when she called an aunt who lived near the Tigard shopping mall for a ride in October 1974 — but the aunt didn’t end up meeting up with her, Nagle said.

Nearly 20 years later, the aunt shared another detail with Nagle: When McWhorter called her that day, she told her that a man in a white pickup truck had offered to give her a ride. It was unclear why her aunt waited that long to share that information.

Nagle said that when she learned this puzzle piece, she “started in earnest with more searching," including by checking databases with unidentified persons cases.

“I remember spending a lot of time on those pages, just scrolling through and trying to look,” she said.

In 2010, a bone sample from McWhorter's remains was sent to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification, and a profile was created in the national missing persons database NamUs, state police said. An additional bone sample was submitted for DNA extraction in 2020, allowing for a unique genetic marker profile to be produced.

In 2023, Nagle did a DNA test when she signed up for Ancestry, a genealogy company with a DNA database, hoping it would yield a clue about her sister, she said.

But the breakthrough came in April when a first cousin once removed uploaded their genetic profile to FamilyTreeDNA, another genealogy company with a DNA database, Oregon State Police spokesperson Jolene Kelley said in an email Thursday. That allowed genealogists to get a better idea of McWhorter's family tree and led them to find that Nagle was a surviving family member.

“This case was cold for 49 years. That means that family members lived and died without ever knowing what happened to their missing loved one," State Forensic Anthropologist Hailey Collord-Stalder said in a statement, adding that McWhorter “likely did not go missing voluntarily.”

The Linn County Sheriff's Office is working to determine the circumstances of McWhorter's death, state police said.

For Nagle, an important piece of the puzzle is solved.

“I never forgot about her,” she said.

Family photos of Marion Vinetta Nagle McWhorter, who disappeared in 1974 in Oregon and whose remains were recently confirmed by DNA from her sister Valerie Nagle, are seen over notes taken by Nagle about McWhorter's disappearance Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

A family photo of Marion Vinetta Nagle McWhorter, back center in white, who disappeared in 1974 in Oregon, and whose remains were recently identified, is held by her sister Valerie Nagle Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Valerie Nagle, whose DNA recently helped to confirm the remains of her sister Marion Vinetta Nagle McWhorter, who disappeared in 1974 in Oregon, poses for a portrait Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

A school photo of Marion Vinetta Nagle McWhorter, who disappeared in 1974 in Oregon and whose remains were recently confirmed by DNA from her sister Valerie Nagle, is seen over notes taken by Nagle about McWhorter's disappearance Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Valerie Nagle, whose DNA recently helped to confirm the remains of her sister Marion Vinetta Nagle McWhorter, who disappeared in 1974 in Oregon, poses for a portrait with a photo of her sister Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. forces in the Caribbean Sea have seized another sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration says has ties to Venezuela, part of a broader U.S. effort to take control of the South American country’s oil.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on social media that the U.S. Coast Guard had boarded the Motor Tanker Veronica early Thursday. She said the ship had previously passed through Venezuelan waters and was operating in defiance of President Donald Trump’s "established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean.”

U.S. Southern Command said Marines and sailors launched from the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford to take part in the operation alongside a Coast Guard tactical team, which Noem said conducted the boarding as in previous raids. The military said the ship was seized “without incident.”

Noem posted a brief video that appeared to show part of the ship’s capture. The black-and-white footage showed helicopters hovering over the deck of a merchant vessel while armed troops dropped down on the deck by rope.

The Veronica is the sixth sanctioned tanker seized by U.S. forces as part of the effort by Trump’s administration to control the production, refining and global distribution of Venezuela’s oil products and the fourth since the U.S. ouster of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid almost two weeks ago.

The Veronica last transmitted its location on Jan. 3 as being at anchor off the coast of Aruba, just north of Venezuela’s main oil terminal. According to the data it transmitted at the time, it was partially filled with crude.

The ship is currently listed as flying the flag of Guyana and is considered part of the shadow fleet that moves cargoes of oil in violation of U.S. sanctions.

According to its registration data, the ship also has been known as the Galileo, owned and managed by a company in Russia. In addition, a tanker with the same registration number previously sailed under the name Pegas and was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for moving cargoes of illicit Russian oil.

As with prior posts about such raids, Noem and the military framed the seizure as part of an effort to enforce the law. Noem argued that the multiple captures show that “there is no outrunning or escaping American justice.”

However, other officials in Trump's Republican administration have made clear that they see the actions as a way to generate cash as they seek to rebuild Venezuela’s battered oil industry and restore its economy.

Trump met with executives from oil companies last week to discuss his goal of investing $100 billion in Venezuela to repair and upgrade its oil production and distribution. His administration has said it expects to sell at least 30 million to 50 million barrels of sanctioned Venezuelan oil.

This story has been corrected to show the Veronica is the fourth, not the third, tanker seized by U.S. forces since Maduro's capture.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a press conference, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks at a news conference at Harry Reid International Airport, Nov. 22, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Ronda Churchill, File)