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Why Family Believes Indigenous New Mexico Woman Is Still Alive 10 Years After Disappearance
Melanie James' family last saw her when she walking with an unidentified man in Farmington, New Mexico.
Loved ones are appealing to the public for information about the whereabouts of a Native woman who disappeared in 2014, as detailed on a new episode of the Dateline: Missing in America podcast.
Then-21-year-old Melanie James, described as part-Walker River Paiute and Comanche, grew up in Farmington, New Mexico, nearly 200 miles northwest of Albuquerque. According to her mother, Lela Mailman, Melanie and her sister, Melissa James, loved listening to Native American music as children.
"She was funny, loved to dance,” Mailman told Dateline’s Josh Mankiewicz. “Her and Melissa loved to dance together, to make routines. I’d come home from work, ‘Look, Mom, I made this up!’ And they would start dancing and show me.”
However, according to Melissa, Melanie began hanging around a tough crowd in her teenage years, something her relatives disapproved of.
“She was hanging out with people that weren’t really good for her,” said Melissa. “People that would just get her into substances and drinking.”
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By age 18, Melanie was arrested on burglary charges after she and acquaintances attempted to break into a home and steal jewelry, her mother said. But later, after she left jail in November 2013, Melanie wanted to shift her life back onto the right track.
Shortly before she disappeared, she was filling out job applications and planned on enrolling in classes at Farmington’s San Juan College. Both her mother and sister believe she would have pursued a degree related to animals, possibly in veterinarian work.
“She loved animals,” said Mailman. “That’s where she was going.”
Melanie James' Disappearance
Melanie was last seen on April 20, 2014, when her sister, Melissa, spotted her with a man she “did not recognize.” Melissa said she was in the car and pulled over when she saw Melanie. They then spoke in an empty parking lot of a church, she told Dateline: Missing in America. Melissa did not catch the male’s name during the conversation.
“She just said that it was her friend and he kind of just stood quiet by the driver’s side,” said Melissa. “She was just telling me about how she wanted to go to Albuquerque because she just felt like she didn’t really want to be here.”
The unidentified friend was a slender, Black male who was about 6 feet tall with short hair and a beard. That day, he wore a navy blue muscle shirt with faded black pants and black and white sneakers.
When those closest to Melanie didn't hear from her for awhile, Mailman hit the ground running to find her missing daughter. She sacrificed her job and searched the streets in the middle of the night, looking for answers with only one goal: “I have to find her.”
Mailman said she soon submitted a missing persons report with the Farmington Police Department (F.P.D.). However, according to F.P.D. Chief Steve Hebbe, the missing person report came in June 2014, giving investigators a two-month delay.
“The reporting from the beginning is just a little harder for us,” Hebbe told Dateline. “We’re scrambling a little bit because nobody’s seen her for a little while.”
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There was little to no movement for several months until September 2014, when Sandra, a former coworker of Mailman’s, reported seeing Melanie at a Farmington Family Dollar. The female subject was gone by the time relatives reached the store, but according to Mailman, a manager showed her surveillance footage of a woman buying a single lollipop. Mailman claimed it “definitely was her.”
Mailman said her daughter “looked healthy” and “well-kept.”
However, when law enforcement was alerted to the alleged sighting, the tape had been erased.
Melissa wondered if the purchase of a single lollipop was a means of hiding out from someone following her, as the sisters had done in the past when they felt uncomfortable while out and about. Melissa speculated Melanie was trying to get away from an unnamed ex-boyfriend whom Melissa cited as “controlling.
“I know there was a few times where he did get physically aggressive and grabbed her and maybe, like, tossed her around the room,” Melissa told Dateline.
Mailman recalled an instance when Melanie called her from Aztec, New Mexico, and pleaded with her mother to pick her up. When Mailman arrived, it appeared an earring had been ripped from Melanie’s ear, and she “broke down crying,” admitting that the boyfriend threw her onto the floor and hit her with his fists, she claimed.
Melanie filed a police report, and on March 17, 2014, the boyfriend was charged with false imprisonment and domestic aggravated assault. But even after the alleged aggressor was jailed, he reportedly continued to write Melanie, according to Mailman.
An overlooked clue in search for Melanie James comes to light
Months and years went by without any significant leads, and Melanie’s loved ones said they “had to keep bugging” police before getting a response, growing unhappy with how law enforcement treated the missing persons case. Things changed in January 2024, however, when Chief Hebbe and Detective Daven Badoni put fresh eyes on the case.
Detective Badoni looked through the files and learned about a clue that had been discovered nearly 10 years earlier. According to Badoni, on April 24, 2014, four days after Melissa James had last seen her sister, officers found a duffel bag and a purse belonging to Melanie James. The items were partially hidden in a Farmington alleyway behind a row of businesses on 20th Street.
“The officer found the bag and found two cell phones in there, called the last number that was called on there, and that was a guy named Brian,” Badoni told Dateline. “So, Brian said Melanie had left his place the night prior.”
The bag and purse were not connected to Melanie because when they were found, Melanie had yet to be reported missing, and the items were therefore filed under a “found property” report.
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In 2024, investigators re-interviewed Brian and his story remained consistent.
"He was staying with family at a residence on 21st Street here in Farmington,” said Badoni. “So, Brian recalled that Melanie was intoxicated, and she was knocking on neighbors’ doors, and police were called."
Brian subsequently kicked Melanie out of the home. Police theorized she took her belongings and walked to the 20th Street alleyway. But it was possible that she stashed the items away for safekeeping, something Badoni said was “common” for Melanie, as she couch-surfed around the city.
Brian did give a little more detail than he did in his statements in 2014.
“The only thing that Brian added was that a week later, he received the phone call from Melanie, and she was in Albuquerque, and was asking him for money to return back to Farmington,” according to Det. Badoni.
Melanie’s possible stay in Albuquerque would have aligned with what she told her sister on their last day together.
The fight for missing and murdered Indigenous Women
Indigenous women are murdered or go missing at higher rates than other U.S. populations, a human rights crisis that has led to the term Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
In 2022, Mailman interacted with Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland during a lecture at the University of New Mexico, as captured on video and reviewed by Dateline’s Mankiewicz.
“I don’t need sympathy,” Mailman told Haaland. “I need understanding.”
Haaland was behind the Missing and Murdered Unit (M.M.U.), which provides interagency work and investigative resources to help solve cases involving Indigenous individuals. According to Attorney Darlene Gomez, who took on Melanie’s case pro bono, missing and murdered Indigenous women should be a top priority.
“If you look back at the time of Christopher Columbus and the slave trade and the conquistadors that came into New Mexico, and then we have the federal government that made tribes go on reservations … we have boarding schools. We have the water being taken away. We have poverty; we have alcohol introduced to the Native Americans,” Gomez told Dateline. “And we just have had this ongoing system of failures when it comes to Native Americans.”
Gomez cited “victim blaming” to account for why police didn’t prioritize Melanie’s disappearance, given her criminal and domestic violence history, though Police Chief Hebbe said otherwise. He claimed Melanie’s lack of stable living and working conditions made the investigation “a little harder.”
“It doesn’t affect our response,” Hebbe maintained. “It just affects our ability to achieve the same results.”
Investigators need new leads in Melanie James case
In 2022, investigators submitted Melanie’s purse to the state lab in Santa Fe, but according to Det. Badoni, the lab would not perform the testing.
“They declined to process it because we did not have evidence of a crime,” Badoni told Dateline. “So that’s where we kind of ran into an issue.”
Law enforcement officials also cited a need for more resources, noting that there were about 105 sworn officers in a city of 45,000 people, according to Hebbe. In Farmington, Det. Badoni is the only person on missing persons.
“To this day, I think it’s terrible,” said Hebbe. “We’re gonna do all we can to see if we can bring this to [a] conclusion. We need leads. We need other people to help us try and locate her.”
Farmington officials determined that Melanie’s unnamed boyfriend — who in September 2014 pleaded guilty to aggravated assault charges related to the aforementioned domestic incident — was incarcerated at the time Melanie disappeared. Still, they hope to learn the identity of the male friend Melissa James saw with her sister on April 20, 2014.
For Melanie’s mother, she says the new detectives on the case are giving loved ones “a lot more hope.”
“I know she’s still alive,” Mailman tearfully said of her daughter. “I loved her before she was born, and I loved her more after she was born. So, in my spirit, I know she’s alive. I just know she’s alive in my heart.”
As for Melanie’s sister, she believes Melanie was possibly hiding at the Family Dollar store believing her ex-boyfriend had been released from jail, and it’s possible she’s hiding still.
“I think she’s either being held hostage or she’s hiding,” Melissa told Dateline. “I know she knows how to survive out there. She’s really smart. She knows which way to take, how to survive without a phone, without I.D., without a lot of things. She knows how to take care of herself.”
Melanie’s case is now featured on the New Mexico Department of Justice’s website, which was created in March 2024 for missing Indigenous people. Today, she would be 32 years old.
Anyone with information should reach out to the D.O.J.'s website or contact the Farmington Police Department at 1-505-334-6622 or their detective tip line at 1-505-599-1068.
