‘I Am Her Voice,’ Sister Says Of Missing Indigenous Woman Pepita Redhair

A Navajo woman disappeared in New Mexico in spring 2020, and her family wants answers.

“I know someone out there knows what happened. I will not stop searching for her,” Anita King said of her daughter, Pepita Redhair.

In March 2020, Pepita, then 27, traveled from King’s home in Crownpoint, Navajo Nation, to Albuquerque, where she was visiting her boyfriend, Nicholas Kaye, The Lilly reported.

Pepita always responded to her mother’s messages, so King worried when her daughter didn’t text her back during the trip.

“My sister went missing March 27, 2020,” Shelda Livingston, recently said, alleging her sibling “is a domestic violence victim” and “was beaten” days prior to disappearing.

Now, Livingston said, “I am her voice.”

On April 19, 2020, Kaye also reported his girlfriend missing. A police report obtained by The Lily states Kaye told officers that he and Pepita were out for a drink on March 26 and got into an argument. She then, he alleged, left and sent a message the following day, writing she was with a man he speculated could have been someone they met the prior evening.

In a statement, Albuquerque police said investigators were aware “of a domestic history with the boyfriend and are checking into it” and that although the “case had gone cold,” they are “currently working some new leads.”

Livingston said she and her sister’s loved ones “just want answers and we want to bring her home.”

Until then, King said she struggled with not having around her “bright” daughter, who hoped to continue her education and become a teacher or engineer someday. “I try to keep myself strong by praying, by having faith,” she noted, adding, however, that since Pepita went missing “my life has changed.”