The Mysterious Disappearance Of 9-Year Old Anthonette Cayedito

Anthonette Cayedito was an Indian-American 9-year-old girl who suddenly went missing 36 years ago (1986) in Gallup, New Mexico.

We don’t know anything about her current whereabouts, and after gone missing many events suggested she was still alive, even years later.

This shocking disappearance reached the mainstream media a year later when a weird phone call reinstated hope.

Police and the FBI failed to solve this mystery, predominantly due to the difficulties of obtaining immediate answers from the family. Instead, new information kept appearing for years, in contrast to what police initially knew, only to perplex the investigation further.

As we dive into this mystery, know that we lack knowledge of crucial details to solve this case.

We specifically lack one crucial element, a single vital detail that will allow the truth to shine.

However, this clue may be impossible to locate anymore, since Anthonette’s mother, Penny Cayedito, died in 1999, and together perhaps the solution to this case.

I present the events in chronological order.

The Abduction Of Anthonette Cayedito

Gallup, New Mexico, is often described as “The Heart of Indians”, because of its proximity to the Navajo Nation and the large numbers of native Americans living in the city.

Penny Cayedito was also of Navajo descent. She had three daughters, Anthonette (9 years old), Wendy Montoya (5 years old), and Senida (or Sadie) (7 years old), with Anthony Montoya (Caucasian), whom Penny had recently divorced.

The Cayedito family is already complicated enough, as apparently, Penny’s children had a different biological father.

I extracted the information about the father from Wikipedia, although researchers believe Larry Estrada was the biological father of Anthonette, although unsure about Senida (Sadie).

Anthony Montoya is the biological father of Wendy, although this is yet another mystery Wendy could help to solve.

After her divorce from Anthony Montoya, Penny and her three daughters remained at 204 Arnold Circle, Gallup, New Mexico, where the events transpired.

April 5th, 1985

The night before, Penny Cayedito went out with friends at a local bar and returned home to her three daughters at around midnight.

According to her, a babysitter was responsible for her three daughters until she returned by midnight.

April 6th, 1986 (Saturday morning)

The following morning, Penny Cayedito woke up only to find her daughter Anthonette was not in her bed or anywhere in the house.

Penny got outside and started asking her neighbors if they had seen her but to no avail.

The worst scenario for a parent was unfolding before her eyes.

April 6th, 1986 (11 a.m.)

After searching the whole neighborhood, Penny Cayedito called the police, yet they informed her about the missing person procedure, which demanded eight hours to pass.

This lost time might have been detrimental to the chances of finding little Anthonette. However, Penny did not sit idle. Together with concerned neighbors, they started looking around the city.

Soon the police joined the search as Anthonette Cayedito was officially a missing person a few hours later.

Penny, with help from the police and the Gallup community, searched for three days, but nobody found a trace.

At that moment, the worst fears were growing valid. Anthonette was in grave danger.

The little girl had no reason to run away, but she was kidnapped from her home under mysterious circumstances while everyone else was asleep.

However, as we will discover later following the story, Anthonette’s little sister, Wendy, kept a secret only to reveal it five years later.

For months the investigation was ongoing in vain, whereas one year later, the police received an alarming phone call.

December 22, 1987 — A Terrifying Emergency Phone Call

Actual Police Recording:

This phone call with Anthonette screaming and the shouting of her alleged captor in the background is terrifying.

However, it also renewed hope that Anthonette was alive, as Penny recognized her daughter’s voice.

Twenty months after her disappearance, this mysterious case was in the news again, with new leads for the investigation to pursue and proof that the girl was still alive.

However, we can extract a few details from this shocking phone call that reveals Anthonette was still alive in 1987.

A) Most publications and video content consider the second voice to be a man’s voice.

A personal observation is that the second voice in this recording of the adult who shouts: “Who said you could use the phone” might belong to a woman.

Listening to this tape a good number of times, I can’t be sure this is a man, yet the prevailing opinion is this. However, as we notice on Wikipedia, there is no mention of gender but a reference to the second voice as a person.

Secondly, after hearing the voice in a headset many times, the accent sounded strange, in a sense that perhaps that person was not fluent in English.

B) This wasn’t a 911 phone call!

What raised questions (if this detail stands) is that whoever made the phone call didn’t call 911 but directly dialed Gallup’s Police Department.

Nobody does that under any circumstances. 911 is the emergency number to call at all times.

Plenty of thoughts and doubts emerge from this detail. The general opinion was always that this phone call was a hoax. If it was, it seems it worked toward a revival of a cold case, so at least it influenced positively.

However, by 1987, only 50% of the population had 911 access. Only by the end of the century 911 covered most locations.

So, we should consider it highly likely Anthonette had her local police number memorized, as 911 (probably) wasn’t available in her location during that time.

C) Newspapers covered the event extensively:

The 911 phone call made headlines and found extensive coverage by the news.

Concerns were increasing regarding the lack of transparency by members of the family.

Detective Amon Hinshaw explains how they suspected family members knew more than they shared, raising his concerns to the public:

“some may not be telling us all they know”.

Hinshaw also mentioned details not known to the public.

“Police didn’t know originally that a number of people had been in and out of the Cayedito home on the night before Anthonette’s disappearance.”

Other bits of information gathered by police and later confirmed by the family could have been provided by the family in the first place.

To summarize what the public learned about this case one year after the disappearance, the police began questioning all suspects and family members again, and the investigators couldn’t trust anyone anymore.

In case this was a staged call, it allowed police to allocate resources to what was becoming a cold case.

Still, the renewed investigation again led nowhere.

We can assume that Penny Cayedito had brought “friends” home after her night out. However, she didn’t mention it to the police immediately.

As time passed and the police kept asking questions, Penny apparently shared more details but arranged her new testimony to remain private to protect herself and her family from negative publicity.

Investigators suspected Penny kept one crucial detail from them, which could have had assisted in solving the case, as she failed a lie detector test with questions about Anthonette’s disappearance.

September, 5th 1989, A Bizarre Coincidence

In a rare twist of events in Anthonette’s case four years after her disappearance, a statistically improbable coincidence occurred.

Three years after the incident, a step-aunt of Antuanette, Louisa Estrada, also went missing.

Louisa Estrada was the sister of Larry Estrada (father of Anthonette’s and ex-husband of Penny Cayedito). Louisa was 25 years old in 1989, with mental disabilities.

Yet, police in Mexico found Louisa a month later and several miles away from home, in the city of Juarez, Mexico (a city bordering the State of Texas).

A strange coincidence as two people with family ties and living in the same city also vanished. Police and the FBI probably investigated this incident extensively, although they did not announce more details.

This new incident didn’t assist the search for Antuanette and seemed unrelated to her case. Years had passed with no substantial clues on the little girl’s whereabouts.

Yet, two years later, in 1991, a small shining beacon of hope emerged.

1991 Carson City, Nevada: A Possible Sighting (Time And Date Uknown)

In 1991, police released age progression images of Anthonette, as she should have been 15 years old.

Four months later, a Gallop officer received a phone call from a waitress from Carson City, Nevada, who had yet another scary story to share.

The waiter reported to the police how she witnessed a girl resembling the age progression profile of Anthonette during her shift at the restaurant.

She explained how the girl tried to attract her attention several times by dropping a fork from her table. As the couple with the girl left, she went to clean the table. That’s where she discovered a note left below one glass.

The message on the napkin was a cry for help:

Help Me!

Call Police

Unfortunately, the waitress, absorbed in her work, didn’t notice the signs of a child in danger. She had seen the new FBI age progression images, and thought the girl resembled Anthonette.

However, as with the previous incidents, this possible sighting didn’t lead the case anywhere either.

The mysterious circumstances don’t end here, though.

1991 Wendy Reveals She Witnessed The Abduction Of Her Sister

Five years after Anthonette’s disappearance, another shocking revelation emerged.

Anthonette’s sister, Wendy Montoya, was five years old when the events occurred. Yet, in 1991 and at the age of ten, she presented a different story than the one she told five years ago.

In 1986, the children and Penny Cayedito said they were sleeping and noticed nothing. Apparently, that was not true.

Wendy provided new details that restarted and reshaped the investigation, as she described how she listened to someone knocking on the front door in the morning hours of April 6th, 1986, right after 3. am.

According to Wendy, it was a man who claimed to be a relative, Uncle Joe. He was Penny’s brother in law, married to her sister.

Wendy followed Anthonette who opened the door thinking this was her uncle, and two men grabbed her while she was kicking and screaming to let her go.

According to her report, Wendy also testified how she witnessed the two male abductors putting her sister in a brown van and speeding away.

Wendy also mentioned she could not comprehend the danger when she was only five years old, but right after Anthonette’s abduction, she could not process the experience. She also thought she would get in trouble after watching her mom crying constantly about losing Anthonette.

While many will find this event peculiar, it can happen, and a similar incident has happened before (in 1984 and the abduction of Jessica Gutierrez).

Wendy’s brain could not process the situation.

Shocked and tired, she went back to sleep. The following morning, she might have felt guilt over the incident and not trying to wake up her mother, and as time passed she became more reluctant to open up.

Nobody would ever accuse Wendy or Sadie of anything, though.

An uncle Joe existed in the Cayedito family, and the police questioned him, but he had an airtight alibi and a witness backing his claims.

Although, five years later, who knows what happened?

The investigators excluded him as a suspect.

Still, Wendy heard of someone mentioning the name Uncle Joe suggests the abductors were no strangers.

In light of the new revelation, police initiated a new search and profiled more suspects, but nothing changed after this final incident.

What Was It That Sadie Heard That Night?

According to some publications, the other sister, Sadie (Senida), also mentioned she heard people knocking on the front door of her house while asleep. Sadie overheard Anthonette getting up to check the door. Although, she heard nothing else besides that.

Other versions of this story suggest Sadie heard a woman’s voice too.

Wild Speculation With Unclear Details

Some details here could have been distorted over the years. The current video content creators are competing to produce content they never researched.

YouTubers plagiarise each other to deliver the same story with the lowest possible level of research, as the algorithm will pay them nonetheless.

With all the video editing, content comes second.

Today we face a battle between quantity over quality of information.

Whom can we trust, and how credible is our source? It does not matter for the YouTube storytellers of the 21st century.

The 3 am issue doesn’t seem logical, but we should not concentrate on it. It is what it is, an approximation. Nothing exact.

We also learn from scattered reports and details that seem made up, yet they can affect our judgment.

However, we do not have an official investigation case. All we do is seek a needle in a haystack. Wild speculation surrounds this incident on the internet today.

Perhaps publicizing every detail or assumption by investigators would help us discover more, and allow us to reach closer to the truth.

The FBI, verified recently, 200 Native Americans as missing persons, from New Mexico and the Navajo Nation and publicized a list of these people in browser and pdf format. Perhaps there could be some similarities in these cases that could help with Anthonette’s disappearance as well.

Anthonette’s name is in there, although she seems to be the youngest victim and the earliest abduction in this list.

The Aftermath

The family was in desperate need of psychological help, as the children grew up in a difficult environment after the incident.

Age-progressed images from forensic artists depict an updated appearance. These images have anecdotal success, and systematic research has found they lead to accurate recognition rates comparable to outdated photos.

(Source: Science Direct)

Wendy explained her life story in 2016 and the hardships of growing up after her sister’s disappearance.

“I remember the police asking me what happened, and I had thought then that it was one of our uncles at the door. That turned out not to be true,” she says. “Really, I’m not sure what happened to her.”

Wendy Montoya (Cayedito), 2016

Wendy was fighting drug and alcohol addictions from a young age, hoping substances would ease her pain but growing up, these abuses led her to gangs and crime. She went into rehab and overcame her addictions, which is remarkable considering everything she went through.

She got back her life and her children, but she still feels the gap inside her about what happened to her sister.

Penny was always adamant that her daughter was alive, but she could not forgive herself for not being able to secure the future her children deserved. The sadness over the loss of Anthonette overwhelmed her.

The police and the FBI always suspected Penny Cayedito. Investigators revealed Penny had failed a lie-detector test, and they assumed she was not telling everything.

Penny Cayedito died on April 18th, 1999, 13 years after Anthonette’s disappearance.

Any secrets she kept are now less likely to be discovered.

Apparently, the police also knew more than they were telling, although that’s a common tactic in these cases.

Closing Thoughts: Anthonette Where Are You?

The FBI is still seeking Anthonette, but in reality, investigators since the early 90s believed the odds of survival were slim.

Thousands of people go missing every year, yet it is worse when this is children.

I believe Penny Cayedito did everything imaginable to keep the investigation running and for Anthonette to be in the news for years.

If the phone call was a deceptive maneuver by Penny’s side, then it is justifiable for a parent to devise ways to pressure authorities to act.

It can be the same with Wendy’s testimony five years after the incident, although I believe this one was real.

Regardless, it is all justified for a family hoping to find their missing member.

What is the piece of the puzzle we miss here? It seems the investigation discovered something but never announced it. What was it?

Perhaps there was something the Cayedito family wanted to protect, maybe another threat we were not aware of. I have suspicions too, but without these clues from the official investigation, I can not formulate a solid argument.

Hopefully, we will one day find a hint, directing us to Anthonette. Chances are slim that she is alive, but we can always hope, and miracles still happen.

Cover Picture by Alexas_Fotos on Pixabay

References

• Unsolved.com
• Unsolved Mysteries — Full Episodes
• Disappearance of Anthonette Cayedito, Wikipedia
• The Bizarre Kidnapping of Anthonette Cayedito, by Reignbot
• Albuquerque journal, NewsPapers.com
• List of Native Americans Verified as Missing Throughout New Mexico and the Navajo Nation, FBI

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