On the afternoon of Monday, August 15, 1977, an employee of the Portland Development Commission found a body floating in the Willamette River near the Ankeny Pump Station. Multnomah County Sheriff’s River Patrol recovered the man and he was identified as Allen James Hamilton, a 24-year-old Native American male. An autopsy determined the cause of death was drowning, and also found he had been stabbed; the death was classified as a homicide.

Investigators established that Hamilton was transient and struggled with alcohol. He was last seen on the evening of Friday, August 12. Witnesses placed him at about 5:00 p.m. that night at the Tacoma Tavern, drinking with three other men described as two African-American males and one white male; those men have never been identified. No arrests have been made and the case remains an unsolved cold case.

Did anyone in Portland in August 1977 know Hamilton or recognize the three men he was seen with at the Tacoma Tavern?