CADDO COUNTY UNSOLVED: MARTHA BELL KADAYSO - A MOTHER. A DAUGHTER. A SISTER. A FRIEND.
ANADARKO — This case was a little hard to research due to the very limited public sources available, but we did the best we could because her story deserves to be shared and her family deserves justice.
We relied on publicly available information from platforms such as podcasts, YouTube videos, and several other sources for this one. Our goal is not just to talk about Martha's mysterious disappearance, but to remind people of who Martha was and help keep her beautiful memory alive.
Martha Bell Kadayso entered this world on January 10th, 1957, and was only 28 years old when she sadly went missing. She was a loving mother of two daughters and she was Apache and Kiowa, but enrolled with the Apache tribe.
Those who knew Martha described her to us as a very kind soul. One individual said that when she smiled, it would spread across her entire face and make her blush. Others remembered her as a sweet, caring, and shy person.
Those may seem like small details, but after all these years, they are the pieces of Martha that live on in the community. They help us paint a picture of the woman she was and remind us that she is deeply loved, and that she is missed dearly.
Because at the end of the day, Martha is more than just a name in a headline. She was a daughter, a mother, a sister, an auntie, and a friend. And even though decades have passed, the search for the truth has never ended for her family.
According to several reports online, Martha was last believed to have been seen on August 15th, 1985, in Anadarko. And there have been no confirmed reported sightings of her since then.
And from what people have told us, Martha simply just vanished. A mystery that has left many wondering about what exactly happened to Martha to this day. Because very little is known about the circumstances, it was reported that a few years after her disappearance, the State of Oklahoma legally declared Martha deceased.
If you have any information that can help bring closure to Martha’s loved ones, we encourage you to call the investigating agency, the Caddo County Sheriff’s Department, and reference case number 92-09-153. Even the smallest piece of information could help finally provide answers after all these years.
Martha deserves justice, and her family deserves closure. While the answers may never take away the pain they have carried for all these years, maybe they can finally bring some peace to the people who have never stopped searching for her.
On a side note, while we were researching Martha’s case, we couldn’t help but notice several other unsolved cases that occurred in Anadarko during this same time period. Now, keep in mind that it is not known if any of these cases are connected, but the amount of cold cases from that decade definitely had our wheels spinning.
Between 1980 and 1988, there were at least six other unsolved cases in Anadarko, with one of those being nearby in Carnegie:
Herman Toppah (1980)
Josephine Smith (1982)
Jimmie Ray Shoemake Jr. (1983)
James Molinaro Kaywaykla (1984)
Teresa Kay Turner (1984)
Jack Beets (1988)
Several of the cases listed above involved some of the victims being attacked in places where they should have been typically safe, like their homes, bedrooms, or places of business. While that alone does not prove any connection between them, it was one of the things that stood out to us. Another thing that caught our attention was the level of violence involved in several of those cases. According to the available reports, a number of the victims were beaten during the attacks, and some of the cases were believed to involve robbery.
So, that poses this question: could there have been a serial offender operating in Anadarko at that time?
And this is something we simply do not know for a fact. There is currently no publicly available evidence or reports that confirm this theory. But when looking at the number of unsolved cases from that time, it is a question that naturally comes to mind.
Another question we had while researching these cases was whether investigators ever compared them to one another. Were any of the cases examined for possible connections? Did they share similar victimology, circumstances, or suspects?
Whether these similarities mean anything or are simply a coincidence is something we may never know. And unfortunately, decades later, many of those questions still remain unanswered.
Since these cases are still open and unsolved, we were unable to obtain official police reports to compare notes between them. Because of that, everything discussed here is based only on publicly available information. We are not suggesting that any of these cases are connected, only sharing some of the similarities we noticed while researching them.
But what we do know for sure is that too many families have spent way too long searching for answers, and we hope that one day each of these cases will finally be solved.
