His family long wondered what happened to the World War II veteran who vanished in 1965. Then the FBI knocked on the door

When Sandra Kalander heard a knock on the door of her coastal Oregon home, she figured someone was trying to sell her something. The 85-year-old never expected the woman in jeans and a sweatshirt was an FBI agent.

The agent asked her if she had any missing relatives.

“Who wants to know?” Kalander, who lives in the wooded hills of Astoria, recalls asking with a laugh.

FBI Special Agent Meagan Sharp told her a sample from an ancestry test her son Robert, who had died over a decade ago, had used linked him as a family match to a body found in 1972 in the woods of Bandon, Oregon. The FBI was now looking for a closer family-tree match.

That day in the spring brought the work of several tenacious investigators – with the assist of genetic genealogy – closer to identifying the remains. They were of Armas Henry Lahti – a World War II Navy veteran turned commercial fisherman who was a second cousin of Kalander’s husband, John. Finding Lahti’s family was the latest step in a half-century long effort to solve the riddle of what led to the veteran’s death from two bullet wounds to the head.

Kalander’s memories rematerialized despite the decades. Lahti, also known as Mousy despite being anything but meek, would come by the house after the peak fishing season. The “jolly and outgoing” man would get on the floor to play cards with Kalander’s then-toddler Robert, the same person who ultimately connected them through a DNA sample.

But sometime around 1965, Lahti vanished from their lives, Kalander said.

His disappearance had been shrouded in mystery for decades, punctuated with rumors of a bar dispute he had walked away from one evening, rifle in hand. The mystery has now deepened as investigators try to determine how he ended up in the woods off Highway 101 more than 60 years ago.

“It was shocking to find out, finally after all these years, what happened,” Kalander said.

With time dissipating memories of Lahti’s final days, there are few living people left to put into context the rumors of the bar fight, and even a less likely chance that the assailant is still alive. Despite the challenges, a deputy and other volunteers continue to push for answers in the hope of bringing a family closure.

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When Chancy Fabrizio started working on the case in 2024, there wasn’t much to work with.

There wasn’t a missing person report that matched the body’s description. The body itself was badly decomposed after spending an unknown amount of time exposed to the elements, with animals, bugs and rain, plus 50 years in storage. Still, it showed “marks indicative of homicidal violence,” the Coos County Sheriff’s Office said.

Investigators shared a drawing with the public that recreated what the victim most likely looked like but got no hits.

Detectives for decades had been trying to find something, anything, to push this case forward, but it seemed like every road was a dead end.

Little did they know their victim was a fisherman, constantly traveling from one place to the next, according to Kalander. Lahti’s wife had died years before he went missing around 1965, when he was in his 50s, and he didn’t have any children, Fabrizio said. His independence made it hard for investigators to track down who their victim was.

“(He) did a lot of stuff on his own. He ran his own boat by himself,” said Fabrizio, who volunteers as a special deputy at the Coos County Sheriff’s Office. It’s not that his family didn’t notice him gone; they just figured he was doing his own thing, she said. On top of that, it was commonplace not to report people missing at that time, Fabrizio added.

In 2024, there wasn’t much left of Lahti in the world either. Old newspaper articles show glimpses of his life – a 1942 article announcing Lahti’s enlistment as a boatswain’s mate, him and his wife participating in a wedding, his mother’s obituary. Some spellings of his name appear as Armes, an adjustment to the Finnish spelling Armas preferred by his family.

Kalander said their remaining possession of Lahti is a photo in his Navy uniform, showing him proudly wearing his regalia .

John Kalander, now 87, remembers fishing with Lahti in his youth, slowly getting to know him over the seasons. Sandra Kalander said Lahti was a family-oriented man who was “just a heck of a nice guy.”

Over half a century later, Fabrizio was left with only two viable options: use the serial code on the victim’s denture plates to try and find an identity or persuade someone to do a costly DNA test.

While previous investigators had gone to great lengths to look into the victim’s dentures, cold case procedure requires the investigator to start the case fresh. So instead of relying on the previous work investigators did, she started calling denturists in the area and kept going until she could find an answer.

She had suspicions that the victim might be a veteran because of a series of numbers on the denture plates, a practice often associated with military medical care. After many calls, she found a denturist who told her the code – her only lead – was actually just the size, shape and hue of the dentures.

The discovery was disappointing for a case with so few investigative options, Fabrizio said. The only option left was to pursue DNA testing.

The investigation’s best hope was utilizing investigative genetic genealogy, which uses DNA technology to test different genealogical platforms available to law enforcement to find a relative with a comparative match, and then track the missing family member by building out the family tree.

The practice was used in cases like the Golden State Killer and Bryan Kohberger , who previously pleaded guilty to killing four University of Idaho students, but is also frequently used in to identify unknown remains in cold cases. While it can open new possibilities in an investigation, it is also expensive and can take a long time to narrow down a match, Fabrizio said. The deputy had previously tried to pursue genetic genealogy through one grant process, but the results didn’t pan out. So, the deputy ultimately asked the FBI for help.

Most people imagine the process to be simple, Fabrizio said – upload the DNA and find a match. But the reality is much more complex, she said.

The FBI requires the case to be a violent crime with no match in their Combined DNA Index System, Fabrizio said. The DNA also has to be converted into a specific form called a single nucleotide polymorphisms profile, also known as a SNP, according to Oregon State Police.

The DNA profile in 2025 was submitted to genetic websites that cooperate with law enforcement. If a match is made, often with someone distantly related, investigators have to build the family tree through investigative measures and try to identify who might be missing, she said.

Fabrizio had gotten updates from the FBI on their process, sharing little pieces of progress over time. First, they found out the victim was 100% Finnish, and then they discovered matches with second and third cousins.

But one day she got an email saying, “Give me a call when you get a sec,” and she knew they struck gold. “The feeling never gets old,” she said, excitement ringing in her voice.

After speaking with the family, investigators were able to test another living relative closer on the family tree to confirm Lahti’s identity in June.

It took four months to identify Lahti, with two other agents helping to build his family tree after work and on weekends on top of their full-time jobs, Meagan Sharp, an FBI special agent with the Portland division, told CNN. They combed through publicly accessible genealogy services, birth certificates, obituaries and census records to try to put the puzzle together.

Everyone seemed to be accounted for, until they came across Lahti’s name.

“We found documentation of Mr. Lahti’s early life, but essentially nothing about him after the 1950s,” Sharp said.

That’s when Sharp visited the Kalanders.

“It seemed to take a little bit to get Sandra’s buy-in, but once I told her how much I knew about her family, or the family she married into, I think she really understood why I was there,” Sharp said.

Their chat illuminated “the kind of stuff that we don’t find in our law enforcement databases” – family stories, Sharp said.

Speaking with Sharp and Fabrizio, Sandra Kalander noticed their discernable sincerity in wanting to identify the victim and recognize their humanity, despite the time that had passed.

“They act like they really care,” Sandra said. “In fact, one of them got tears in her eyes when we were talking about it.”

Despite all the work that has been done so far, there are still many unanswered questions and barriers to overcome to solve the case.

When Fabrizio met with Lahti’s family, someone told her they had heard rumors he was involved in a dispute at a bar in Newport, Oregon, and left with a rifle. But it’s not clear what happened after that, or how he ended up in the woods over 100 miles south.

One of the biggest hurdles is a common enemy for investigators – time.

“A lot of people have passed away from that time frame, and you know, memories degrade,” she said. Fabrizio said she is hoping that anyone from the public who has information will come forward, “even third-party rumors of things that might have happened.”

The conflict is currently their biggest lead, even though they have no idea which bar he went to, Fabrizio said. But she isn’t figuring this out alone. Fabrizio is one of the founders of the Oregon Cold Case Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to solving cold cases in the state. They have eight members with varying backgrounds – from those with human remain detection dogs to cold case experts to analysis specialists.

She and the group are working to figure out what bars existed then and if they’re still around with different ownership, Fabrizio said. Even finding old photos that used to hang at the bar could help them narrow their search.

Other questions still linger, including where Lahti’s car went. His boat, which was named either the Carmen or the Carmon, is also missing, so Fabrizio said she plans to track it down through records at the Oregon State Marine Board. Hopefully they can figure out if the boat still exists and who has owned it, she said.

“Armas loved to come to Charleston,” Fabrizio said. “So, we don’t know if his boat was docked here, if it was docked in Newport, or Astoria where he lived, because he traveled so much.”

Two other paths investigators will explore is trying to speak with the local fishermen community in different areas, as well as the Finnish community as Lahti’s parents were immigrants from Finland.

As time marches on, it gets harder to solve the case. Fabrizio said while “there is no danger to the public” as the suspect is almost certainly dead, there is still an important public good in getting an answer for these families. “Even after decades, they still deserve answers,” she said.

For John and Sandra Kalander, finding out where their long missing relative has been all these years later has been quite the whirlwind.

“Everybody we knew is (saying) ‘where’s Armas?’ and there was never an answer,” Sandra said. “It was shocking to find out finally after all these years what happened.”

If her son Robert were alive all these years later, she thinks “he would be delighted” to know he helped identify Lahti, she said. “He always talked about Armas over the years,” she said.

The family is waiting to get custody of Lahti’s remains so they can give him a proper burial, possibly as a military funeral in a dedicated cemetery for veterans, to honor his service one last time.

Lahti being a Navy veteran is also a soft spot for Fabrizio, who said she previously served in the US Army. While they come from different branches, they are still connected through “a brotherhood,” she said.

“We have this bond because we are all willing to lay down our lives for each other,” she said, choking up as she spoke. “That transcends time.”

桑德拉·卡兰德听到俄勒冈州沿海住宅的门被敲响时，她以为有人想向她推销东西。这位85岁的老人万万没想到，站在门口穿着牛仔裤和运动衫的女人竟然是一位联邦调查局特工。

探员问她是否有失散的亲属。

“谁想知道？”住在阿斯托利亚山林中的卡兰德笑着回忆起自己当时问这个问题。

联邦调查局特工梅根·夏普告诉她，她已故儿子罗伯特十多年前做过的祖源测试样本显示，他与1972年在俄勒冈州班顿树林中发现的一具尸体有亲缘关系。联邦调查局目前正在寻找更精确的家族谱系匹配对象。

那年春天，几位锲而不舍的调查人员借助基因谱系学，终于离确认遗骸身份更近了一步。他们找到了阿马斯·亨利·拉赫蒂，一位二战海军老兵，后来成为一名商业渔民，他是卡兰德的丈夫约翰的远房表弟。找到拉赫蒂的家人，是长达半个世纪以来解开这位老兵头部中两枪身亡之谜的最新进展。

尽管已过去数十年，卡兰德的记忆却重新浮现。拉赫蒂，人称“小老鼠”（尽管他一点也不温顺），会在捕鱼旺季过后来到卡兰德家。这位“开朗外向”的男子会和卡兰德当时蹒跚学步的儿子罗伯特一起在地板上玩牌，而正是罗伯特最终通过DNA样本将他们联系了起来。

但卡兰德说，大约在 1965 年，拉赫蒂从他们的生活中消失了。

他的失踪几十年来一直是个谜，坊间流传着他某天晚上在酒吧与人发生争执后手持步枪离开的传闻。如今，随着调查人员试图查明他60多年前为何会出现在101号公路旁的树林里，这个谜团变得更加扑朔迷离。

“这么多年过去了，终于知道发生了什么事，真是令人震惊，”卡兰德说。

随着时间的流逝，人们对拉赫蒂最后几天的记忆逐渐模糊，如今能证实酒吧斗殴传闻的人寥寥无几，更遑论凶手仍然在世。尽管困难重重，一名警员和其他志愿者仍在努力寻找真相，希望能为拉赫蒂的家人带来慰藉。

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2024 年 Chancy Fabrizio 开始着手调查此案时，并没有太多线索可循。

没有失踪人口报告与尸体的描述相符。尸体本身已严重腐烂，具体时间不明，曾暴露在各种自然环境中，遭受动物、昆虫和雨水的侵蚀，并被存放了50年。尽管如此，库斯县警长办公室表示，尸体上仍然显示出“表明他杀的痕迹”。

调查人员向公众展示了一张根据受害者最可能外貌特征绘制的画像，但并未获得任何线索。

几十年来，侦探们一直在努力寻找任何线索来推动案件进展，但似乎每条路都走到了尽头。

据卡兰德说，他们当时并不知道受害者是一名渔民，经常四处漂泊。法布里齐奥说，拉赫蒂的妻子在他大约1965年失踪前几年就去世了，当时他五十多岁，而且他没有孩子。他的这种独立性使得调查人员很难追踪到受害者的身份。

“（他）很多事情都是自己做的。他自己开船，”库斯县警长办公室的特派副警长志愿者法布里齐奥说道。她说，并不是他的家人没注意到他失踪了；他们只是觉得他是在做自己的事。此外，法布里齐奥还补充说，在那个年代，人们失踪后不报案是很常见的。

到了2024年，拉赫蒂在这个世界上也几乎销声匿迹了。一些旧报纸文章展现了他的一些生活片段——一篇1942年的文章宣布拉赫蒂应征入伍成为一名水手长，他和妻子参加婚礼的照片，以及他母亲的讣告。他的名字有时被拼写成Armes，这是对他家人更喜欢的芬兰语拼写Armas的一种修改。

卡兰德说，他们目前仅存的拉赫蒂遗物是一张他身穿海军制服的照片，照片中他自豪地穿着军服。

现年87岁的约翰·卡兰德回忆起年轻时和拉赫蒂一起钓鱼的情景，随着时间的推移，两人逐渐熟识起来。桑德拉·卡兰德说，拉赫蒂是个顾家的人，“真是个非常好的人”。

半个多世纪后，法布里齐奥只剩下两个可行的选择：要么利用受害者假牙上的序列号来尝试找到身份，要么说服别人进行昂贵的 DNA 测试。

虽然之前的调查人员曾竭尽全力调查受害者的假牙，但冷案调查程序要求调查人员从头开始。因此，她没有依赖之前的调查工作，而是开始联系当地的假牙专家，坚持不懈地寻找答案。

她怀疑受害者可能是退伍军人，因为假牙托上有一系列数字，这种做法通常与军人医疗保健有关。经过多次询问，她终于找到一位假牙技师，技师告诉她，这个代码——她唯一的线索——实际上只是假牙的尺寸、形状和颜色。

法布里齐奥说，对于一个调查手段如此有限的案件来说，这个发现令人失望。剩下的唯一选择就是进行DNA检测。

调查的最大希望是利用调查遗传谱系学，它利用 DNA 技术测试执法部门可用的不同谱系平台，找到具有比对匹配的亲属，然后通过构建家谱来追踪失踪的家庭成员。

这种方法曾用于“金州杀手”和布莱恩·科伯格（他此前已承认杀害了四名爱达荷大学学生）等案件，也常用于悬案中身份不明的遗骸鉴定。法布里齐奥表示，虽然这种方法能为调查开辟新的可能性，但成本高昂，而且需要很长时间才能缩小匹配范围。这位警员此前曾尝试通过一项拨款申请进行基因谱系学研究，但结果并不理想。因此，他最终向联邦调查局寻求帮助。

法布里齐奥说，大多数人认为这个过程很简单——上传DNA样本，然后找到匹配项。但她说，实际情况要复杂得多。

法布里齐奥表示，联邦调查局要求案件必须是暴力犯罪，且在其联合DNA索引系统中没有匹配的DNA样本。俄勒冈州警方称，DNA样本还必须转换成一种称为单核苷酸多态性图谱（简称SNP）的特定形式。

2025年，DNA样本被提交到与执法部门合作的基因网站。她说，如果匹配成功（通常是与远亲匹配），调查人员就必须通过调查手段构建家谱，并试图确定谁可能失踪。

法布里齐奥从联邦调查局那里了解到调查进展，随着时间的推移，他们会分享一些零星的信息。首先，他们发现受害者是纯正的芬兰人，然后又找到了受害者的远房表亲和远房表亲。

但有一天，她收到一封邮件，上面写着：“有空给我打电话”，她就知道他们找到了宝藏。“这种感觉永远不会过时，”她兴奋地说，语气里满是激动。

在与拉赫蒂的家人交谈后，调查人员得以对家族谱系中另一位在世的亲属进行测试，从而在六月份确认了拉赫蒂的身份。

据美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）报道，波特兰分局的联邦调查局特工梅根·夏普表示，为了确认拉赫蒂的身份，另外两名特工利用业余时间和周末时间，在全职工作之余协助他们构建他的家谱。他们仔细查阅了公开的家谱服务、出生证明、讣告和人口普查记录，试图拼凑出完整的家谱。

似乎所有人都已清点完毕，直到他们看到了拉赫蒂的名字。

“我们找到了拉赫蒂先生早年生活的记录，但基本上找不到任何关于他 20 世纪 50 年代之后的事情的资料，”夏普说。

就在那时，夏普拜访了卡兰德一家。

“似乎花了一点时间才让桑德拉相信我，但当我告诉她我对她的家庭，或者说她嫁入的家庭了解多少之后，我想她真的明白了我为什么在那里，”夏普说。

夏普说，他们的谈话揭示了“我们在执法数据库中找不到的那种东西”——家庭故事。

桑德拉·卡兰德与夏普和法布里齐奥交谈后，注意到尽管时间已经过去很久，但他们仍然真诚地想要确认受害者的身份并承认他们的人性。

“她们表现得好像真的很关心我，”桑德拉说。“事实上，我们谈到这件事的时候，其中一个女孩都热泪盈眶了。”

尽管目前已经做了很多工作，但要解决此案，仍有许多问题尚未解答，还有许多障碍需要克服。

法布里齐奥与拉赫蒂的家人见面时，有人告诉她，他们听说拉赫蒂在俄勒冈州纽波特的一家酒吧与人发生争执，然后带着一支步枪离开了。但之后发生了什么，以及他最终如何出现在100多英里以南的树林里，目前尚不清楚。

调查人员面临的最大障碍之一是时间，这也是他们共同的敌人。

“那段时间很多人都去世了，而且你知道，记忆会随着时间流逝而模糊，”她说。法布里齐奥表示，她希望任何知情人士都能站出来提供信息，“哪怕是第三方流传的关于可能发生过的事情的传闻。”

法布里齐奥说，尽管他们不知道他去了哪家酒吧，但这场冲突目前是他们最大的线索。不过，她并非孤军奋战。法布里齐奥是俄勒冈州悬案联盟的创始人之一，该非营利组织致力于侦破该州的悬案。联盟共有八名成员，背景各异——从拥有搜寻遗骸犬的专家到悬案专家，再到分析专家。

法布里齐奥说，她和团队成员正在努力查明当时有哪些酒吧存在，以及这些酒吧是否还在营业但已易主。即使是找到以前挂在酒吧里的老照片，也能帮助他们缩小搜索范围。

其他疑问依然存在，例如拉赫蒂的车去了哪里。他的船，名字可能是“卡门号”或“卡蒙号”，也下落不明。法布里齐奥说，她计划通过俄勒冈州海事委员会的记录来查找这艘船。她希望他们能查明这艘船是否还存在，以及它的前任船主是谁。

“阿马斯很喜欢来查尔斯顿，”法布里齐奥说。“所以，我们不知道他的船是停泊在这里，还是停泊在纽波特，或者是他居住的阿斯托利亚，因为他经常旅行。”

调查人员还将探索另外两条途径：一是尝试与不同地区的当地渔民社区交谈，二是与芬兰社区交谈，因为拉赫蒂的父母是来自芬兰的移民。

随着时间推移，案件侦破难度越来越大。法布里齐奥表示，虽然嫌疑人几乎肯定已经死亡，“公众安全无虞”，但为这些家庭找到答案仍然具有重要的公共意义。“即使过了几十年，他们仍然应该得到答案，”她说。

对于约翰和桑德拉·卡兰德夫妇来说，时隔多年找到失散多年的亲人，对他们而言是一场旋风般的经历。

“我们认识的每个人都在问‘阿玛斯在哪儿？’，但始终没有人回答，”桑德拉说。“这么多年后终于知道真相，真是令人震惊。”

她说，如果她的儿子罗伯特这些年还活着，他“一定会很高兴”知道自己曾帮助确认了拉赫蒂的身份。“这些年来，他总是提起阿尔马斯，”她说。

拉赫蒂的家人正在等待获得他的遗体，以便能够为他举行体面的葬礼，可能会在专门为退伍军人设立的公墓举行军葬，以最后一次纪念他的服役。

拉赫蒂是海军老兵这件事也让法布里齐奥格外感动，她说自己之前曾在美国陆军服役。虽然她们来自不同的军种，但她们之间仍然有着“兄弟情谊”，她说。

“我们之间有这种纽带，是因为我们都愿意为彼此献出生命，”她说着说着哽咽了。“这种纽带超越了时间。”