An Oregon mayor went missing on a crabbing trip in 2006. 20 years later, DNA testing has ID’d his remains

Nearly 20 years after skeletal remains washed ashore on a beach in the unincorporated town of Taholah, Washington, officials have finally put a name to the man long known as “Grays Harbor County John Doe (2006).”

New advances in DNA testing and the help of a Texas forensic lab allowed the Grays Harbor County Coroner’s Office to determine the remains belonged to Clarence Edwin Asher, a former mayor of Fossil, Oregon, the coroner’s office said in a Tuesday statement.

Asher, born in Salem in 1934, was raised in Astoria and moved to Fossil in 1952, where he worked as a telephone lineworker until 1995, the coroner’s office said. In 1965, he also opened a namesake store, called Asher’s Variety Store.

On Sept. 5, 2006, the then-72-year-old Asher went on a crabbing trip in Tillamook Bay. He was never seen alive again.

Although officials did not find his body, they eventually declared him legally dead and presumed drowned, the coroner’s office said.

Months after his disappearance, skeletal remains washed up in November 2006 on the Quinault Indian Reservation in Grays Harbor County, more than 150 miles away, the coroner’s office said.

The remains were too decomposed to identify at the time, but the coroner’s office said it worked with the King County Medical Examiner’s Office last year to submit a forensic sample to Othram, a lab in Texas that built a DNA profile of the previously unidentified man.

Washington state law enforcement used the resulting DNA profile to trace possible relatives, and they eventually tracked down a relative of Asher who provided a match, officials said.