Joseph Arthur Martin Jr.
Martin was last seen in the 300 block of South William Street in Newburgh, New York. The exact date of his disappearance is unknown, but it was probably sometime in early January, 1974. Martin had his brother drive him to the Dunkin' Donuts franchise on Broadway, saying he was going to hitch a ride there. He did not mention who with or to where. Martin has never been heard from again.
Martin was born in Newburgh and educated in Catholic schools in the area. He dropped out of school in the tenth grade and served two years in the U.S. Army in Germany. His mother says he had a serious girlfriend in Germany whom he may have planned to marry, but the relationship did not last.
He was discharged from military service after two years. Martin initially moved into his mother's home after his discharge, but then he moved to his grandmother's home on Oak Street. In 1972, he was arrested for petty theft in Ulster County, New York.
Martin's mother was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack at the time of Martin's disappearance; she believes he may have left voluntarily due to the stress of her illness. There has been no activity on his Social Security number since 1972, two years prior to his disappearance.
Detectives have been unable to locate Martin's father, who divorced his mother and moved away when Martin was a child. Some people theorize that Martin moved back to Germany after his disappearance, which would explain the lack of activity on his SSN.
Little evidence is available as to his fate, however. Martin's case remains unsolved. Joseph Arthur Martin Jr. – The Charley Project
Unsolved mystery: Detective haunted by missing man
Unsolved mystery: Detective haunted by missing man
By Kristina Wells,Times Herald-Record
Posted Jun 8, 2003 at 2:00 AMUpdated Dec 16, 2010 at 5:33 AM
Newburgh — Lorenzo D’Angelico is obsessed. Obsessed with the face of a stranger. And what happened 29 years ago to that stranger.
Is he dead? Is he alive? Or did the stranger simply disappear? He gets out of a car in front of a Newburgh Dunkin’ Donuts in 1974 and he just vanishes?
That makes D’Angelico scratch his head. It’s what he thinks about before he goes to bed at night. It’s what he’s thinking about when he wakes up.
It’s what he spends six hours of his eight-hour shift working on. Every day. Searching clues, most of them cold and leading nowhere.
But D’Angelico won’t rest until he finds the answer to this very simple question: What happened to Joseph A. Martin Jr.?
Lorenzo D’Angelico shed his beat cop uniform blues back in January when he earned his gold shield and was promoted to detective. In May, the young man with the prematurely graying temples, the guttural laugh and the gravely voice was handed the unsolved file on Joseph A. Martin Jr.
Now D’Angelico is wearing a yellow dress shirt, with matching tie. His badge is latched to his belt. He’s sitting at his neat-as-a-pin desk in the police department’s youth detectives bureau, a cramped space with a fine view of a parking lot. On D’Angelico’s computer screen is a photo of Martin — 5 feet 8 inches tall, 180 pounds, curly brown hair — standing in front of a Christmas tree. He has never met Martin. But the detective has gotten to know Martin very well.
D’Angelico already knew the nuts and bolts of the case. He’d met Martin’s mother, Irene Formes, a few years ago when she walked into the police station.
D’Angelico was a beat cop back then, patrolling the streets, answering calls, taking reports from people in the police department lobby, where Formes waited. D’Angelico went to the glass window and asked how he could help her.
Formes told D’Angelico about her Joseph. She told him her oldest son disappeared a long time ago. She wanted to know if there’d been any leads.
D’Angelico didn’t know where to start. The computer records didn’t go back that far. And a check of the hard copies in archives turned up nothing. All he could do was take another report.
Do you remember what day your son went missing, he asked. Formes couldn’t pinpoint a date; she only remembered filing a report back then. So, officer and mother decided to estimate a time — they came up with “after the holidays in 1974” and put this date on the report: Jan. 1, 1974. Joseph was 29.
Formes said she’d been in the hospital recovering from a heart attack in the weeks and days prior to Martin’s disappearance. Maybe he was having a hard time with his mother’s illness — maybe that sent him away, Formes told D’Angelico.
All Formes knew for certain was this: While she was recuperating, Joseph asked his younger brother, Robert, to drive him to Dunkin’ Donuts on Broadway. Martin said he was going to “hitch a ride” with someone. He never told Robert with whom or to where.
That was sometime during the evening hours around Jan. 1, 1974. No one around here has heard from Joseph A. Martin Jr. since.
Last month — on May 21 — Detective Lt. Santo Centamore saw Joseph Martin’s name on New York state’s monthly report on unsolved missing persons cases. Centamore had seen that name month after month, year after year. He decided they should take another crack at solving this mystery.
He gave the case to the new guy. And D’Angelico, says a colleague, became quickly “obsessed” by the case.
“I’d really like to get it solved,” D’Angelico says. “To find out if he’s alive and well or deceased. I think his mother wants some kind of closure on this.”
D’Angelico jumped right in, scouring the limited paper trail that is all that is left of Joseph A. Martin Jr. — some military records, birth and baptismal certificates. He’s searched databases and the Internet trying to piece together what could have happened to Martin. Here’s all he knows so far: Joseph A. Martin Jr. was born Nov. 19, 1944, in Newburgh.
He was raised in the family home on Washington Street. He was baptized on Dec. 17, 1944, in St. Patrick’s Church on Grand Street. His childhood, so far as D’Angelico can tell, was normal.
At some point, Joseph’s father left and moved to San Jose, Calif. D’Angelico doesn’t know exactly when or why. And he’s not sure it has anything to do with Joseph’s disappearance.
Joseph attended the Catholic church’s school for his elementary education. Then he went to Newburgh Free Academy. He went as far as the 10th grade and then decided to serve his country.
Joseph enlisted in the U.S. Army on Feb. 18, 1963. He was stationed in Germany, at the same base with Elvis Presley. Formes recalled her son telling her about the King.
Formes told D’Angelico her son had a girlfriend, who may have even been a fianc?, in Germany. But it didn’t last all that long. And after two years, one month and 12 days, Joseph Martin was discharged May 3, 1966.
He returned home a man and wanted more space than there was in his mother’s cramped Williams Street apartment, the one she shared with her other son, Robert. Joseph moved in with his grandmother in a larger house on Oak Street.
He got a job, although his mother can’t remember where he was employed. D’Angelico learned there has been no activity on Martin’s Social Security account since 1972. That might be a clue, too, D’Angelico suspects.
That same year, Martin had a minor arrest for petty theft in Ulster County.
Perhaps, D’Angelico surmises, Martin decided to return to Germany. But would Martin do that and never communicate with anyone again?
D’Angelico called the San Jose Police Department a few weeks back. He asked them to check out an old address for Joseph A. Martin Sr., the missing man’s father. Maybe, the detective thought, Martin decided to live with his dad.
No dice. No one lived there by that name. And no one could remember if a Joseph Martin Jr., Sr. or otherwise ever did.
D’Angelico ran a search on the Internet for Joseph A. Martins.
“It’s unbelievable how common a name that is,” the detective says. “The Social Security records ... there’s thousands of results for Joseph Martin.”
Formes told the detective how much her son loved New York City. He had a fascination with the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple. Maybe that’s where Martin’s been all these years.
“First, I have to find out if he ever left Newburgh that day,” D’Angelico says, with a hint of frustration. “I don’t know if he got on a bus and went to New York.”
So far, calls D’Angelico’s made to the New York City Police Department haven’t been answered. The detective wants to find out if the police down there have any unsolved cases that might lead to Martin.
Martin’s got no notable birth marks. No tattoos. No scars. That made it hard when D’Angelico started searching law enforcement databases chock full of cases where victims, or their remains, have never been identified. So far, there have been no matches.
But Martin did have an unusual injury. At some point during the eight years after he got out of the Army, he had surgery. He was rough-housing with his brother and broke his jaw. Martin went to what was then the Stewart military base hospital for surgery.
Doctors inserted a metal plate in the roof of Martin’s mouth. On the metal plate was inscribed military identification numbers. So far, D’Angelico hasn’t found any unidentified bodies here or elsewhere with the same mark.
That could be a good sign. It might mean Martin is still alive.
D’Angelico stares at the only two photos Formes has of her son. Some nights, he admits, he lies awake wondering where Martin is or what could have happened that evening in 1974.
He has hit a dead end. But he won’t stop.
Instead, D’Angelico asked Formes for permission to go public with her son’s case. Maybe it will jog someone’s memory. Maybe someone will recognize Martin’s picture in the newspaper.
Formes, 78, agreed, but declined to be interviewed for this story. She’s ailing and her other son, Robert, is fighting for his life in a local hospital.
So, Joseph Martin’s story is being told by a stranger. A man obsessed. And, right now, this is the only way Detective Lorenzo D’Angelico knows how to end the story of Joseph A. Martin Jr.:
Anyone with information about this case or Joseph Martin can contact Detective D’Angelico at the Newburgh Police Department at 561-3131.
Unfortunately Joseph Arthur Martin's mother Irene Formes and his brother Robert Martin passed away without answers. Her obituary makes no mention of Joseph. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/recordonline/obituary.aspx?n=irene-f-formes&pid=14667976&fhid=5796
- Missing Since 01/01/1974
- Missing From Newburgh, New York
- Classification Endangered Missing
- Sex Male
- Race White
- Date of Birth 11/11/1944 (76)
- Age 29 years old
- Height and Weight 5'8, 180 pounds
- Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian male. Brown hair, brown eyes. Martin has a metal plate inserted in the roof of his mouth inscribed with a U.S. Army identification number; he received the plate after breaking his jaw. He has a two-inch scar on his right knee, a vaccination scar on his upper right arm, a tattoo of a swastika on his left arm and a tattoo of a cross on his right arm. Martin's nickname is Joey.
Martin was last seen in the 300 block of South William Street in Newburgh, New York. The exact date of his disappearance is unknown, but it was probably sometime in early January, 1974. Martin had his brother drive him to the Dunkin' Donuts franchise on Broadway, saying he was going to hitch a ride there. He did not mention who with or to where. Martin has never been heard from again.
Martin was born in Newburgh and educated in Catholic schools in the area. He dropped out of school in the tenth grade and served two years in the U.S. Army in Germany. His mother says he had a serious girlfriend in Germany whom he may have planned to marry, but the relationship did not last.
He was discharged from military service after two years. Martin initially moved into his mother's home after his discharge, but then he moved to his grandmother's home on Oak Street. In 1972, he was arrested for petty theft in Ulster County, New York.
Martin's mother was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack at the time of Martin's disappearance; she believes he may have left voluntarily due to the stress of her illness. There has been no activity on his Social Security number since 1972, two years prior to his disappearance.
Detectives have been unable to locate Martin's father, who divorced his mother and moved away when Martin was a child. Some people theorize that Martin moved back to Germany after his disappearance, which would explain the lack of activity on his SSN.
Little evidence is available as to his fate, however. Martin's case remains unsolved. Joseph Arthur Martin Jr. – The Charley Project
Unsolved mystery: Detective haunted by missing man
Unsolved mystery: Detective haunted by missing man
By Kristina Wells,Times Herald-Record
Posted Jun 8, 2003 at 2:00 AMUpdated Dec 16, 2010 at 5:33 AM
Newburgh — Lorenzo D’Angelico is obsessed. Obsessed with the face of a stranger. And what happened 29 years ago to that stranger.
Is he dead? Is he alive? Or did the stranger simply disappear? He gets out of a car in front of a Newburgh Dunkin’ Donuts in 1974 and he just vanishes?
That makes D’Angelico scratch his head. It’s what he thinks about before he goes to bed at night. It’s what he’s thinking about when he wakes up.
It’s what he spends six hours of his eight-hour shift working on. Every day. Searching clues, most of them cold and leading nowhere.
But D’Angelico won’t rest until he finds the answer to this very simple question: What happened to Joseph A. Martin Jr.?
Lorenzo D’Angelico shed his beat cop uniform blues back in January when he earned his gold shield and was promoted to detective. In May, the young man with the prematurely graying temples, the guttural laugh and the gravely voice was handed the unsolved file on Joseph A. Martin Jr.
Now D’Angelico is wearing a yellow dress shirt, with matching tie. His badge is latched to his belt. He’s sitting at his neat-as-a-pin desk in the police department’s youth detectives bureau, a cramped space with a fine view of a parking lot. On D’Angelico’s computer screen is a photo of Martin — 5 feet 8 inches tall, 180 pounds, curly brown hair — standing in front of a Christmas tree. He has never met Martin. But the detective has gotten to know Martin very well.
D’Angelico already knew the nuts and bolts of the case. He’d met Martin’s mother, Irene Formes, a few years ago when she walked into the police station.
D’Angelico was a beat cop back then, patrolling the streets, answering calls, taking reports from people in the police department lobby, where Formes waited. D’Angelico went to the glass window and asked how he could help her.
Formes told D’Angelico about her Joseph. She told him her oldest son disappeared a long time ago. She wanted to know if there’d been any leads.
D’Angelico didn’t know where to start. The computer records didn’t go back that far. And a check of the hard copies in archives turned up nothing. All he could do was take another report.
Do you remember what day your son went missing, he asked. Formes couldn’t pinpoint a date; she only remembered filing a report back then. So, officer and mother decided to estimate a time — they came up with “after the holidays in 1974” and put this date on the report: Jan. 1, 1974. Joseph was 29.
Formes said she’d been in the hospital recovering from a heart attack in the weeks and days prior to Martin’s disappearance. Maybe he was having a hard time with his mother’s illness — maybe that sent him away, Formes told D’Angelico.
All Formes knew for certain was this: While she was recuperating, Joseph asked his younger brother, Robert, to drive him to Dunkin’ Donuts on Broadway. Martin said he was going to “hitch a ride” with someone. He never told Robert with whom or to where.
That was sometime during the evening hours around Jan. 1, 1974. No one around here has heard from Joseph A. Martin Jr. since.
Last month — on May 21 — Detective Lt. Santo Centamore saw Joseph Martin’s name on New York state’s monthly report on unsolved missing persons cases. Centamore had seen that name month after month, year after year. He decided they should take another crack at solving this mystery.
He gave the case to the new guy. And D’Angelico, says a colleague, became quickly “obsessed” by the case.
“I’d really like to get it solved,” D’Angelico says. “To find out if he’s alive and well or deceased. I think his mother wants some kind of closure on this.”
D’Angelico jumped right in, scouring the limited paper trail that is all that is left of Joseph A. Martin Jr. — some military records, birth and baptismal certificates. He’s searched databases and the Internet trying to piece together what could have happened to Martin. Here’s all he knows so far: Joseph A. Martin Jr. was born Nov. 19, 1944, in Newburgh.
He was raised in the family home on Washington Street. He was baptized on Dec. 17, 1944, in St. Patrick’s Church on Grand Street. His childhood, so far as D’Angelico can tell, was normal.
At some point, Joseph’s father left and moved to San Jose, Calif. D’Angelico doesn’t know exactly when or why. And he’s not sure it has anything to do with Joseph’s disappearance.
Joseph attended the Catholic church’s school for his elementary education. Then he went to Newburgh Free Academy. He went as far as the 10th grade and then decided to serve his country.
Joseph enlisted in the U.S. Army on Feb. 18, 1963. He was stationed in Germany, at the same base with Elvis Presley. Formes recalled her son telling her about the King.
Formes told D’Angelico her son had a girlfriend, who may have even been a fianc?, in Germany. But it didn’t last all that long. And after two years, one month and 12 days, Joseph Martin was discharged May 3, 1966.
He returned home a man and wanted more space than there was in his mother’s cramped Williams Street apartment, the one she shared with her other son, Robert. Joseph moved in with his grandmother in a larger house on Oak Street.
He got a job, although his mother can’t remember where he was employed. D’Angelico learned there has been no activity on Martin’s Social Security account since 1972. That might be a clue, too, D’Angelico suspects.
That same year, Martin had a minor arrest for petty theft in Ulster County.
Perhaps, D’Angelico surmises, Martin decided to return to Germany. But would Martin do that and never communicate with anyone again?
D’Angelico called the San Jose Police Department a few weeks back. He asked them to check out an old address for Joseph A. Martin Sr., the missing man’s father. Maybe, the detective thought, Martin decided to live with his dad.
No dice. No one lived there by that name. And no one could remember if a Joseph Martin Jr., Sr. or otherwise ever did.
D’Angelico ran a search on the Internet for Joseph A. Martins.
“It’s unbelievable how common a name that is,” the detective says. “The Social Security records ... there’s thousands of results for Joseph Martin.”
Formes told the detective how much her son loved New York City. He had a fascination with the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple. Maybe that’s where Martin’s been all these years.
“First, I have to find out if he ever left Newburgh that day,” D’Angelico says, with a hint of frustration. “I don’t know if he got on a bus and went to New York.”
So far, calls D’Angelico’s made to the New York City Police Department haven’t been answered. The detective wants to find out if the police down there have any unsolved cases that might lead to Martin.
Martin’s got no notable birth marks. No tattoos. No scars. That made it hard when D’Angelico started searching law enforcement databases chock full of cases where victims, or their remains, have never been identified. So far, there have been no matches.
But Martin did have an unusual injury. At some point during the eight years after he got out of the Army, he had surgery. He was rough-housing with his brother and broke his jaw. Martin went to what was then the Stewart military base hospital for surgery.
Doctors inserted a metal plate in the roof of Martin’s mouth. On the metal plate was inscribed military identification numbers. So far, D’Angelico hasn’t found any unidentified bodies here or elsewhere with the same mark.
That could be a good sign. It might mean Martin is still alive.
D’Angelico stares at the only two photos Formes has of her son. Some nights, he admits, he lies awake wondering where Martin is or what could have happened that evening in 1974.
He has hit a dead end. But he won’t stop.
Instead, D’Angelico asked Formes for permission to go public with her son’s case. Maybe it will jog someone’s memory. Maybe someone will recognize Martin’s picture in the newspaper.
Formes, 78, agreed, but declined to be interviewed for this story. She’s ailing and her other son, Robert, is fighting for his life in a local hospital.
So, Joseph Martin’s story is being told by a stranger. A man obsessed. And, right now, this is the only way Detective Lorenzo D’Angelico knows how to end the story of Joseph A. Martin Jr.:
Anyone with information about this case or Joseph Martin can contact Detective D’Angelico at the Newburgh Police Department at 561-3131.
Unfortunately Joseph Arthur Martin's mother Irene Formes and his brother Robert Martin passed away without answers. Her obituary makes no mention of Joseph. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/recordonline/obituary.aspx?n=irene-f-formes&pid=14667976&fhid=5796
