PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Skeletal remains that washed up on a Washington beach nearly 20 years ago have finally been identified as a former Oregon mayor who was declared dead in 2006.
On Tuesday, the Grays Harbor County Coroners’ Office in Washington announced that the skeletal remains, which washed up on a beach in the Washington village of Taholah in 2006, were identified as Clarence Edwin Asher, former mayor of Fossil, Oregon.
When the remains first washed up, the coroner’s office said they investigated alongside the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office and determined that they belonged to an adult man “likely aged 20 to 60 years old” and standing about 5 feet 9 inches.
However, despite the investigation, officials said they were unable to identify the remains at the time, and the case was labeled as “Grays Harbor County John Doe (2006).”
Nearly two decades later, in 2025, officials in both Washington and Oregon submitted their evidence to a lab operated by the forensics service Othram, Inc., in Texas.
“Othram scientists successfully developed a DNA extract from the provided evidence,” the Grays Harbor County Coroner’s Office announced Tuesday. The Othram team then built a profile for the deceased, and used it to complete a “genealogy search to develop new investigative leads that were returned to law enforcement,” the office said.
The skeletal remains were ultimately identified as Clarence Edwin “Ed” Asher, a former mayor of Fossil, Oregon, who was declared dead in 2006 after going missing the year before. Asher, 72, was “presumed to have drowned while crabbing in Tillamook Bay on Sept. 5, 2006,” according to the coroner’s office.
Asher’s identity wasn’t the only news that the Grays Harbor County Coroner’s Office shared Tuesday. George Kelley, the county coroner, also said a “second cold case” had been solved with the help of Othram’s forensics services.
The case dated back to 1995, when a human jawbone was found at a Grays Harbor Beach. With the help of Othram’s forensic services, officials were able to link the remains to a man named Bruce Joel Andrews, who went missing while fishing in 1974.