Pepita Madalyn Redhair called her mother every single day.
It didn’t matter that she lived 140 miles away in Albuquerque, two hours down the road from her home in Crownpoint, New Mexico, deep in the heart of the Navajo Nation. It didn’t matter that she was building her own life — working at Hot Topic, taking classes at the University of New Mexico, chasing a future she had designed for herself. Every day, without fail, she called. “Mom, what are you doing? What are you up to? Do you need anything?”
On March 24, 2020, Anita King dropped her daughter off at her boyfriend’s house on Clements Street in Albuquerque’s South Valley and watched her walk to the door. She drove home to Crownpoint. And on March 27, 2020, the calls stopped.
Pepita Madalyn Redhair has not been seen since.
Who Was Pepita?
Born on August 4, 1992, Pepita grew up in Crownpoint — a small, tight-knit community in McKinley County, New Mexico, within the sovereign boundaries of the Navajo Nation. From a young age, she was a force. A passionate skateboarder who chased adrenaline and didn’t much care what anyone thought. A cook who fed the people she loved as an act of devotion. An artist. A social butterfly. Someone who walked into a room and made it louder and brighter just by being there.
Her older sister Shelda Livingston called her “the light of the family.” That was not a platitude. By every account, it was simply the truth.
After graduating high school, Pepita did what her restless spirit had always pushed her toward — she left for Albuquerque. She found work at Hot Topic, enrolled at UNM, and began building the life she had always imagined. She wanted to work in education or engineering. She wanted to build something that lasted. And through all of it — the new city, the new job, the coursework — she never let go of home. She called Anita every single day. She drove the 140-mile stretch back to Crownpoint regularly, just to be with her family.
She was 5’1″, brown-haired, brown-eyed, and covered in ink that told her story — a dinosaur on her right forearm, a koi fish on her left, a butterfly on her shoulder, a moon with lightning on her left leg, and her last name, Redhair, tattooed on her body. Two beauty marks on her chin. A scar on her left eyebrow.
She was someone who mattered deeply to the people who knew her. And she deserves to be known that way first, before anything else.
The Relationship
By around 2016, Pepita had entered into a relationship with a man named Nicholas Kaye. Within six months, she had moved into the home he shared with his parents on Clements Street. For over three years, that house was her home base in Albuquerque.
But Pepita began confiding in her mother and sister about what was happening behind closed doors. Nicholas, she told them, had a serious problem with alcohol. And when he drank, things turned violent. Police were called to the Clements Street home more than once for domestic disturbances. In the weeks before she disappeared, Pepita was hospitalized as an assault victim. Her family received a photo of her in those final days. The bruises were visible.
Anita begged her to come home. Shelda pleaded with her to leave. Pepita said no. She had a life in Albuquerque. She had a job and a university enrollment and a future she was working toward. She didn’t want to go backwards. Her family understood that, even if it terrified them.
On March 24, 2020 — just days after that hospitalization — Anita drove Pepita back to Albuquerque. Before they left Crownpoint, they stopped for lunch together at a McDonald’s. Just a mom and her daughter. Neither of them knew it would be the last meal they shared.
As Pepita got out of the car at Clements Street, she turned back to her mother and said: “Mom, I love you. Take care of yourself. Drive home safely.”
Anita drove home. And on March 27th, when the calls and texts went unanswered, she called Nicholas Kaye directly. He told her Pepita had left. He didn’t know where she had gone.
The Disappearance
Nicholas Kaye’s account of Pepita’s last known hours is the only account that exists. According to Kaye, on the evening of March 26th, he and Pepita went out drinking together. They met another man. The couple argued. Pepita walked out — on foot, into the night, in Northeast Albuquerque, miles from their home in the South Valley. He says he watched her walk away.
The following day, March 27th, Kaye says he received a text from Pepita’s phone saying she was with another man — possibly the same man they had encountered the night before.
On March 28th, Anita filed a missing persons report with the Albuquerque Police Department. On March 30th — just six days after she had last seen her daughter — Anita texted Pepita’s number again. A man answered. He told her he had purchased the phone from someone else.
Pepita’s phone had been sold. Six days after she was last seen.
Nicholas Kaye did not file his own missing persons report until April 19, 2020 — nearly a month after Pepita vanished, and three weeks after Anita had already raised the alarm.
The Investigation — Or Lack Thereof
What followed was a masterclass in institutional failure.
The APD told Anita that Pepita was an adult, free to travel, free to be missing. They told her to call the Navajo Nation police. The Navajo Nation police told her it was out of their jurisdiction — Pepita had gone missing in Albuquerque. When Anita went back to APD, she was told that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they could not conduct in-person interviews with potential witnesses. They could not execute a search warrant. The man who had last seen Pepita — a man with a documented history of physical violence toward her — was interviewed by phone. For eleven minutes.
Anita and Shelda did what the police would not. They drove to Albuquerque. They printed flyers at their own expense and papered the neighborhood. They talked to strangers, knocked on doors, checked bus stops. Shelda stood at the concrete block fence outside Nicholas Kaye’s home and shouted her sister’s name until the family dogs barked back at her. Local news stations refused to broadcast Pepita’s photo.
Eighteen months after Pepita vanished, APD issued a brief statement. The case had gone cold, they said. There were no leads. In that same period, they reportedly told Anita that her daughter was “a drunk” — that she had simply gone and wasn’t important.
“I felt like my voice wasn’t important,” Anita told Reuters in September 2021. “My daughter wasn’t important because she was Native American.”
The Family Who Refused to Stop
In September 2021, the disappearance of 22-year-old Gabby Petito — a white woman who went missing under eerily similar circumstances — consumed the national media. Within weeks, her case was resolved. Anita King watched all of it from Crownpoint and made a decision. If the world wasn’t going to come to her, she was going to go to the world.
On October 3, 2021, she organized a rally at Tiguex Park in Old Town Albuquerque. She marched. She held signs. She said Pepita’s name in front of a crowd that finally showed up to say it with her. The week after the rally, the Albuquerque Police Department called the family for the first time and asked to hear their side of the story.
It had taken eighteen months and a public march through the streets of Albuquerque to get police to call Pepita’s mother.
The Bernalillo County District Attorney’s office took notice. DA Raúl Torrez announced his newly formed cold-case division would investigate. More rallies followed — June 2022, April 2023, and in March 2025, a 140-mile prayer run along Route 66, the same road Anita drove with Pepita on that last afternoon. Participants ran from their own neighborhoods across the country, submitting their miles online, collectively covering the distance between Crownpoint and Albuquerque.
In October 2025, KOB News ran a four-part investigative series called Beyond the Case, featuring newly released details — including the involvement of Quintin D. McShan, a retired New Mexico State Police captain who is working Pepita’s case for free. McShan has said plainly that he does not believe Pepita walked away. The sudden and complete silence of all communication, he says, points to foul play. He has also noted that the initial eleven-minute phone interview with Nicholas Kaye — conducted without an in-person component — was a significant detriment to the investigation. McShan arrived on the case four years in, knowing full well what that gap cost in terms of evidence and leads. He is working anyway.
In early 2026, The Fall Line podcast devoted two full episodes to Pepita’s case, bringing her story to a new national audience nearly six years after she vanished.
The Bigger Picture
Pepita’s case does not exist in isolation. It exists inside a crisis.
Eighty-four percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women — four out of every five — will experience violence in their lifetime. Despite having only the fifth-largest Indigenous population in the nation, New Mexico has the highest number of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women cases in the country. Albuquerque is one of the top ten cities in the United States for MMIW cases. And when Indigenous women go missing, they are far less likely to receive media coverage, far less likely to have their cases pursued with urgency, and far more likely to become a number in a database rather than a name in a headline.
This is the system Anita King walked into on March 28, 2020, when she went to the Albuquerque Police Department to report her daughter missing. It is the same system that bounced her between agencies, told her daughter was unimportant, and moved the case to cold storage while a mother printed flyers at her own expense and knocked on strangers’ doors.
Legislative steps have been taken — Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act were signed into federal law in October 2020. New Mexico established a MMIWR task force and created Missing in New Mexico Day. These are real steps. But the gap between legislation and implementation remains wide, and Pepita’s case — still unsolved, still active, still without answers — is evidence of exactly how wide.
Say Her Name
Pepita Madalyn Redhair. Born August 4, 1992. Member of the Navajo Nation. Skateboarder, cook, artist, student, daughter, sister. The light of her family. Missing since March 27, 2020.
Her room at her mother’s home in Crownpoint is untouched. Anita has left it exactly as it was, as if Pepita could walk through the door at any moment. “I have hopes that I will see her,” Anita has said. “She would just come back in and come home, walk in and say, ‘Mom, I am home.’ We are hoping for that. I feel her spirit. She’s here.”
Five years later, Anita King is still fighting. Still marching. Still saying her daughter’s name. And we are saying it too.
If you have any information about Pepita Redhair’s disappearance, please contact:
- Albuquerque Police Department: 505-768-2020
- Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office: 505-222-1101
- A $3,000 reward is available for information leading to answers in her case.
- To support Anita King’s ongoing search and awareness efforts: venmo.com/anita-king-86
Vanished Voices is a podcast dedicated to the under-covered, unsolved cases. New episodes every Thursday. Find us anywhere you listen to podcasts. If this episode moved you, share it. The most powerful thing any of us can do for the families still waiting is refuse to let the silence win.
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Resources:
Primary News Sources
Bañuelos, M. (2023, April 14). Families of Pepita Redhair, other missing loved ones hold rally at Tiguex Park. KOAT News. Families of Pepita Redhair, other missing loved ones hold rally at Tiguex Park
Jaramillo, C. (2022, October 21). Families of missing people in NM can urge action from law enforcement Saturday. Source New Mexico. Families of missing people in NM can urge action from law enforcement Saturday • Source New Mexico
KOB Eyewitness News 4. (2025, October 14). Beyond the case: Pepita Redhair. KOB. Beyond the Case: Pepita Redhair – KOB.com
KOB Eyewitness News 4. (2025, October 15). Beyond the case: Pepita Redhair pt. 2. KOB. Beyond the Case: Pepita Redhair pt. 2 – KOB.com
KOB Eyewitness News 4. (2025, October 17). Beyond the case: Pepita Redhair pt. 3. KOB. Beyond the Case: Pepita Redhair pt. 3 – KOB.com
KOB Eyewitness News 4. (2025, October 18). Beyond the case: Pepita Redhair pt. 4. KOB. Beyond the Case: Pepita Redhair pt. 4 – KOB.com
Krisst, R. (2022, March 15). ‘Missing a baby’: Family seeks help in finding missing loved one, Pepita Redhair. Navajo Times. ‘Missing a baby’: Family seeks help in finding missing loved one, Pepita Redhair – Navajo Times
Mather, K. (2025). After daughter’s disappearance — one mother’s 140-mile journey for justice. Albuquerque Journal. After daughter’s disappearance— one mother’s 140-mile journey for justice | News | abqjournal.com
Reuters. (2021, September 26). Amid attention on Petito case, Native woman seeks justice for daughter. RNZ News. Amid attention on Petito case, Native woman seeks justice for daughter | RNZ News
Television & Documentary Sources
Investigation Discovery. (2022, September 21). Navajo nightmare (Season 10, Episode 3) [TV series episode]. In Disappeared. Discovery+. The Disappearance of Pepita Redhair
Lewis, R. (Director), & Stobbs, C. (Writer). (2022). Navajo nightmare [Television series episode]. In Disappeared, Season 10, Episode 3. Investigation Discovery.
Podcast Sources
Bite-Sized Crime. (2023, July 17). Episode 083: Pepita Redhair [Audio podcast episode]. Episode 083: Pepita Redhair – Bite-Sized Crime
True Crime All the Time Unsolved. (2023, December 4). Pepita Redhair [Audio podcast episode]. In True Crime All the Time Unsolved. Pepita Redhair
Federal & Government Sources
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2025). Pepita Redhair — Missing and murdered Indigenous persons. U.S. Department of Justice. Pepita Redhair — Missing and murdered Indigenous persons
Savanna’s Act, S. 227, 116th Cong. (2020). https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s227
Not Invisible Act of 2019, S. 982, 116th Cong. (2020). Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act Signed into Law | Indian Law Resource Center
National Institute of Justice. (2016). Violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women and men: 2010 findings from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. U.S. Department of Justice. (Report) Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men: 2010 Findings From the Intimate Partner and Sexual Vi
Database & Missing Persons Registry Sources
National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs). (n.d.). Pepita Madalyn Redhair. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. https://www.namus.gov
The Charley Project. (2022, September 22). Pepita Madalyn Redhair. Pepita Madalyn Redhair – The Charley Project
Advocacy & Legislative Context Sources
Indian Law Resource Center. (2020, October 13). Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act signed into law. Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act Signed into Law | Indian Law Resource Center
National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. (2020, November). MMIW: Savanna’s Act and Not Invisible Act become law. Restoration Magazine. MMIW Savanna’s Act and Not Invisible Act Become Law | NIWRC
Seattle Indian Health Board. (2020, October). Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act: Addressing the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous people. Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act: Addressing the Epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People – Seattle Indian Health Board
Additional Written Coverage
Baxter, J. (2023, February 11). The tragic disappearance of Pepita Redhair. Medium. The Tragic Disappearance of Pepita Redhair | by Jenn Baxter | Medium
Crime Solvers Central. (2025, April 12). Vanished in the desert: The unresolved disappearance of Pepita Redhair and a mother’s relentless quest for justice. Vanished in the Desert: The Unresolved Disappearance of Pepita Redhair and a Mother’s Relentless Quest for Justice
Investigation Discovery. (2023, July 21). Have you seen Pepita Redhair? Family fears Navajo woman is a human trafficking victim. Have you seen Pepita Redhair? Family fears Navajo woman is a human trafficking victim
Jennifer. (2023, July 10). Missing person: The disappearance of Pepita Redhair. The Mystery Box, Medium. Missing Person: The Disappearance of Pepita Redhair | by Jennifer | The Mystery Box | Medium
The Cinema Holic. (2024, May 27). Pepita Redhair: What happened to her? Has she been found? Pepita Redhair: What Happened to Her? Has She Been Found?