MISSING: Melissa Casias

In June 2025, Melissa Casias dropped her husband off at work in Los Alamos, New Mexico… then did something nobody expected. She turned around and drove home. By that afternoon, she had vanished, leaving behind her wallet, her keys, both of her personal phones wiped to factory settings, and a family already splitting in two over what to believe. Her husband, Mark, insists she walked away on her own. Her parents and siblings are certain something far worse happened to her. Surveillance video proves she was alive walking along Highway 518 that day. But where she went next - and why - is a question that only deepens the further you pull at it.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ashley Flowers?

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• 2:17Ashley Flowers?

  Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  And I'm Brett.

• 2:21Ashley Flowers?

  Listen, last year, I received an email from a crime junkie. A woman named Jasmine wanted help because her aunt had recently vanished from Taos County, New Mexico, and no one could agree on what happened to her. But everyone did agree to speak with us because at the heart of it, they all say they want to know what happened to her. Her husband and her daughter think she left on her own. Her other family believes that she was a victim of foul play. And I'll be honest with you, I don't know what to believe. Each side believes their theory so fervently that I'm afraid my recounting of the facts as I know them are gonna upset everyone. Because even the facts don't make sense.

• 3:05Ashley Flowers?

  But that usually means that we're missing something, a piece of the puzzle that maybe one of you out there hearing this right now might have. And there is a small chance that missing piece has bigger implications than I could have ever imagined when I first read Jasmine's email last year. This is the story of Melissa Casillas.

• 4:00Ashley Flowers?

  On the afternoon of Thursday, June 26, 2025, 18-year-old Sierra Casillas is working at a coffee shop in Taos, New Mexico, when she steps away to check a voicemail from her dad, Mark. Now, his tone is tight, like something is off. He wanted her to know that he had just gotten a call from her mom's supervisor, who told him that Melissa hadn't shown up for work that day. Now, to Mark, that seems impossible because he and Melissa both work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is a superintendent, she's an administrative assistant. They share a car and commute together every single day, including that day. So how could she not be there? But Sierra already knows something he doesn't,

• 4:42Ashley Flowers?

  which is that Melissa drove the hour and 15 minutes back from the lab after dropping Mark off. So she was there at the house at like 7:30, 7:45 ish when Sierra woke up that morning, which was way out of the norm, by the way. But she told Sierra that she had forgotten her security badge. And since she was back home anyway, she would probably just work remotely or maybe even take the day off. Now Sierra kind of assumes that she had done the latter because she saw her mom for a second time later in the day, just before 1 o'clock, when she'd stopped by the coffee shop Sierra works at to bring her lunch. Plus, she'd texted her about a half an hour after that. So all to say, like, even though her dad seems worried, Sierra wasn't. Now, since she's at least had some kind of communication with Melissa in the last hour,

• 5:26Ashley Flowers?

  Mark asks her to text her mom. And she's surprised when that little message bubble turns green. iPhone users know what that means. That message didn't deliver like normal. Phones like off or there is no like regular service, something. So she opens up the location app where she can normally see her mom's face pop up. But this time, nothing loads. Melissa's location has just stopped transmitting. That's when the worry starts to creep in for her. Because her mom never lets her phone die. This is all concerning enough that Sierra decides to leave work early to make sure that her mom's okay. And their house is just a few miles away. She's there by like 3:30. The family's white Jetta is there in the driveway.

• 6:10Ashley Flowers?

  Their dogs are outside alone. And that is a little bit odd since they're really protective and usually stick to Melissa like glue. But inside, things are even stranger. Melissa's not there, but lots of her stuff is. On the kitchen table, Sierra finds her mom's work phone and badge, her keys, and this small gold chain that her mother-in-law gave her that she normally wears like every single day. Then, in the loft area of their house, what connects to her bedroom, Sierra sees a paycheck that she had given her mom that afternoon to deposit for her. And finally, she goes to her mom's office where she- She finds Melissa's purse, her wallet, both of her personal cell phones, her old phone,

• 6:54Ashley Flowers?

  and then the new one that she had just replaced it with. When Sierra picks them up, like, this is when panic sets in because both phones show a welcome screen, that backdrop that you see when a device is brand new, except we know these aren't new. And Sierra realizes that they have been factory reset, like wiped clean. And when she tries to log into Melissa's iCloud, it seems like the password has been changed. So from the house, Sierra frantically calls her dad. He's not far behind. He'd caught a ride with a coworker, so whatever's going on, they can figure it out together when he gets home. And when he gets there, he walks through the property with a different lens.

• 7:38Ashley Flowers?

  Mark told us that he is a hunter and a professional outfitter, someone who takes paying clients through backcountry terrain, so he like knows how to read the land. And right away, he began looking for signs of a struggle. I mean, Melissa's tough, and she is not someone who would have gone down without a fight. If someone forced her out of the house, there would be evidence of it. But there isn't. Nothing is missing, and the only thing that catches his eye is an unfamiliar set of tire tracks in the driveway, but they share that driveway with a neighbor. Now, from what he can tell, he says they're still unknown, maybe not the neighbor's car, but they look like they might have come from a Jeep. Not knowing what else to do, Mark picks up the phone and calls New Mexico State Police Dispatch right around 5:00 PM.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  New Mexico State Police, it's Thomas.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is, uh, Mark Casillas. You know what, we're, um, we cannot locate my wife. Uh, we haven't heard from her all day, uh, from work. It was this morning was the last time I saw her work. My daughter saw her around 1:00. All her stuff is here in the house, but she's not here, and it's just not like her to not call, walk, and check in and, and take her purse and her phone. And it looks like her phone has been, uh, my daughter says it looks like it's been reset, but they're, you know, so, uh, we looked. All around the house, everywhere on our property, we cannot find her or nothing and uh, I don't know what to do. The car that she was in was parked here at the house. The keys are here, the house was locked.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  Uh, e- everything, everything was, was uh, is here. You know what I mean? So she, she went from the plaza, she came home, the car was here, parked in the yard, the keys are on the kitchen table.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  What's her name?

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Uh, Melissa Casillas. And we called the hospital to see because I mean, you know, if they don't, uh, there's no one in there, uh, you know, at all like that because we thought, well, maybe if something happened to her, she, her person, everything's here, so no one would be able to identify her.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  And all you said what she took was her phone?

• 9:43Speaker 03

  She didn't take nothing. That's the thing is her phone and everything's here and she always takes her stuff with her. My daughter was trying to track her location and they always track each other.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Uh-uh.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  But her, but her phone's wiped. The thing is what we can't get and she would never have wiped all the pictures off and all the information off of her phone.

• 10:02Ashley Flowers?

  Officers are dispatched to the Casillas home and after getting a quick walkthrough of the house, they ask Mark and Sierra to lay out their day in detail. Now Mark says that he and Melissa left for work early that morning, as usual. And we're talking like, early, early. His shift starts at six thirty in the morning.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  And they live like, over an hour away.

• 10:23Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, and Melissa was behind the wheel. And like she always did, she dropped him off at his building at around six fifteen and then she would drive to her building on campus and park her car there. But today, Mark reminded Melissa that he needed to run to the bank at eleven, so she agreed to bring the car back to him then. Now what he didn't know is that she turned around and went home. We know Sierra woke up at seven forty-five to find her mom there, which surprised her. But when Sierra mentions that Melissa's excuse about like, being home was like her forgotten badge, Mark says, wait, that can't be right. He had watched Melissa hand her badge to security at the guard shack himself when they got to the lab that morning.

• 11:04Ashley Flowers?

  Mark says that he started calling and texting Melissa at around ten forty-five. He wasn't getting anything back, which he says concerned him because A, they normally talk throughout the day. B, more than needing to go to the bank at 11, like she was his ride home, but she seemed to be MIA. So he eventually asked Sierra to pass along a question to her mom. Should he just find another ride home?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  And did they often communicate through Sierra like that?

• 11:29Ashley Flowers?

  No, never. So that stood out, even if she didn't think too much of it at the time, but like now it does. And so Sierra reaches out and she gets a response from her mom. Yes, tell him to find a ride home. That was at 1:33 PM, not too long after she'd stopped by to bring Sierra lunch.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  And why isn't she just answering Mark?

• 11:50Ashley Flowers?

  This is the thing, I couldn't tell you.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  I mean, I'd be pissed.

• 11:54Ashley Flowers?

  Well, Mark says that it wasn't unheard of for him to get rides home with a colleague. So he says that like, I mean, he doesn't say he was pissed or whatever. He just says he makes this plan, didn't think much more of it. Until Melissa's supervisor called him at around two, saying that she'd been a no call, no show, which he says that is what totally threw him for a loop. Now, on the phone with dispatch, Mark had said that Melissa didn't take anything with her. But when he and Sierra actually looked more carefully, a few small things are missing. Melissa's toothbrush, her reading glasses and sunglasses. And most significantly, what they calculate to be a 90 day supply of her thyroid medication.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  That doesn't exactly scream foul play.

• 12:38Ashley Flowers?

  No, but Melissa just leaving without a word to her family does not make sense either. Mark tells police that they were supposed to leave the next morning for a camping trip. And beyond that, Melissa is a devoted mother. Mark has three daughters from a previous marriage, but Sierra is Melissa's only child and the two of them are close in a way that is hard to overstate. Especially after Sierra survived a car accident in 2022 that killed her best friend. A girl who had been like a sister to her. And from that, Sierra suffered serious injuries and the emotional damage lingered for longer than the physical ones. Like it had been a rough few years, but things were finally looking up.

• 13:24Ashley Flowers?

  Sierra had just graduated high school. She was set to move to Albuquerque in the fall for beauty school so she could become an esthetician. And Melissa had planned to rent a two-bedroom apartment there to like stay with her for the first couple of months, just to like get her settled. And Mark told us that he planned to kind of go back and forth. Plus, he tells police that they have a strong marriage. Melissa has never mentioned wanting to leave him, like never mentioned wanting to leave the girls, none of it. Like, this just doesn't make sense.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Right, so why would she walk away from all of that?

• 13:53Ashley Flowers?

  That's the question that hangs in the air as family members who had gotten word about her being missing start arriving. Like Melissa's parents and her brother, her sister Trudy, and Trudy's daughter Jasmine. Melissa's parents, Jose and Joanne Mondragon, live nearby, although they had been in Albuquerque visiting Trudy that day. But once they heard what was going on from Sierra, they were in the car. And these are longtime Crime Junkie listeners, so even in shock, they said that they felt like they were prepared and knew what to do. They worked the phones during the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Tows, calling relatives and hospitals, hoping that Melissa would be home safe by the time that they got there.

• 14:36Ashley Flowers?

  Instead, they pulled up to a property bathed in police lights, and they were told to wait outside, away from Mark and Sierra. Now, they don't believe for a second that Melissa left on her own. Something bad must have happened. And they already have someone in mind: Diego Martinez, who is Sierra's ex-boyfriend. Now, Diego had been behind the wheel in the crash that killed Sierra's best friend. He suffered a traumatic brain injury in the crash, and according to the family, his behavior became frightening. In 2024, Sierra took out a restraining order against him, citing physical abuse, break-ins,

• 15:16Ashley Flowers?

  stolen keys, and threats against her and loved ones, including specific threats against Melissa. Diego had also sent Melissa sexually explicit text messages.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  And did Mark and Sierra bring him up at any point, too?

• 15:30Ashley Flowers?

  Not that I know of. Still, though, from the very first night, Diego's name is already on the table. But before that thread can even go anywhere, something else comes up. Jasmine has been blasting missing person posts on social media since the moment she understood what was happening. And almost immediately, someone had reached out.

• 15:51Ashley Flowers?

  And this isn't just anybody. This is a guy named Lloyd, who has known both Melissa and Mark since they were children. And he tells Melissa's brother that he saw Melissa earlier that afternoon, walking along a highway close to her house, Highway 518, in a spot that is just a couple of miles away. He says that she was wearing a white sweater, and she was kind of like stumbling or staggering. And there was this old, blue Dodge truck nearby, sort of lurking. Now, this is where the cohesive story I wish I could tell you fractures right down the middle. Because from this point on, almost every significant moment in this case is going to come in at least two versions,

• 16:34Ashley Flowers?

  with plenty of contradictions along the way. So let me just lay out the sides for you right now. In one corner, you have Mark and all four of his daughters, including Sierra. I'm gonna call them the Casillas household, even though they don't all live there. In the other corner, you have Melissa's parents, some siblings, her niece Jasmine, some friends. And I'm gonna call them the Mondragons, even though not everyone on that side carries that name. And as far as the Mondragons are concerned, this moment, when this tip from Lloyd comes in, is the exact moment that they begin to become suspicious. Not of Diego, who they'd first told police about, but of Mark.

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• 19:30Ashley Flowers?

  When that tip from Lloyd comes in, Jasmine rushes to tell police what he saw. They have to check this out. Go to where he saw her. She could be hurt. She could be... Jasmine doesn't know, but this at least is a trail that they can follow, right? But instead of being excited about the lead, Mark immediately shuts it down. He tells officers there's no way that this was Melissa because she wasn't wearing a white sweater that day. Sierra remembers that she had on a light turquoise top when she saw her like around lunchtime.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Okay, she could have changed.

• 20:02Ashley Flowers?

  And also, he says, Melissa doesn't have a limp. So in his mind, the top's neither here nor there because he's like, whoever this woman is that's like stumbling or staggering, this is definitely not my wife.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Unless it is and she got hurt, which is like all the more reason to go check it out and make sure it's not her.

• 20:22Ashley Flowers?

  Listen, I know, but like, here's the thing, the biggest WTF moment for me is that police just go along with it. No need to check that out. Mark says it's not her. Moving on.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  You're kidding.

• 20:35Ashley Flowers?

  I wish I was exaggerating.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  I mean, what if she got the limp because she jumped out of a car? I mean, she could have been drugged.

• 20:42Ashley Flowers?

  The girl could have tripped over a pebble while just like out on a walk.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:45Ashley Flowers?

  Like, I could talk about this for hours and we're gonna get into it more later, I promise. But they decide not to look and in the meantime, that night, when the Mondragon's get to talk to Mark, they're expecting a husband out of his mind with worry.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:01Ashley Flowers?

  Instead, what they get is anger. Mark tells them that he and Melissa had gotten into an argument that morning before they left for work. He had caught her vaping. They bickered throughout the entire drive to the lab. And when she dropped him off, she told him to find his own effing ride home.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Wait, Mark didn't mention any of that to police?

• 21:25Ashley Flowers?

  Oh, no. And he doesn't for a while. But if the Mondragon's account is accurate, it means that Mark knew from the jump that Melissa wasn't planning to drive him home, not because of anything that Sierra later relayed in the day. And on top of that, they say that Mark starts badmouthing Melissa almost immediately, telling them that Melissa had been on a roll with F-ups lately, that she had destroyed their finances, accumulating debt, getting backed up on tax payments.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  And are police searching the place at all? Or are they just taking all these statements that first night?

• 22:02Ashley Flowers?

  No, they actually searched. Mark lets police, including lead investigator, Agent Ezekiel Escavell Mata. He goes through the house and like they take photographs. And while there was nothing that stood out to the first responding officer who did that like once over of the place, you know, when you come at it with an investigator's eye and you like zoom in, there is more that you pick up on. Like they hone in on a pair of Mark's hunting boots, sitting on his and Melissa's bedroom floor next to a fish tank. Some of the mud on them looks fresh. But Mark insists that he hadn't worn those boots in ages. And he points to what he says is proof, a spider web inside. Nobody put their foot in there recently.

• 22:44Ashley Flowers?

  Except when agents look, they don't see any spider webs. For a man who says that he's been at work and inside all day, fresh mud on hunting boots is a hard thing to explain away. Then, when agents review the scene photos the next morning, this is now Friday, June 27, they get more suspicious. Right next to one of those boots is a dried drop of something. Something that looks an awful lot like it could be blood. So when the Mondragons and Melissa's friends are out canvassing neighborhoods and hanging out missing person flyers, Mark goes in to talk to police. Agents put the photos in front of him.

• 23:29Ashley Flowers?

  They ask him about the stain. But Mark says he's sure that's not blood. But he's getting like more and more agitated as the questioning continues, until finally he asks if he should get a lawyer. And he just ends it right there. But they detain him and seize his phone, which is worth noting because despite what he apparently later tells his daughters, he did not hand it over voluntarily, according to what police told us. They have to apply for a search warrant to get its contents by doing a forensic download, which that's going to take some time. But one thing they're able to do really quickly while he's at the station that day is verify his alibi. The lab confirms that he was at work that day

• 24:14Ashley Flowers?

  and even his drive home is accounted for because of that coworker who gave him a ride. He confirms that trip. However, that doesn't close anything out. No, it doesn't seem like he could have physically done anything to Melissa. But that doesn't prove that he wasn't involved or that he doesn't know more than he's letting on. So police get a search warrant for the Casias home. They take Melissa's phones, they take Mark's boots, and they run a presumptive test on that stain by the fish tank, which comes back positive for blood. So they send out swabs of that for further testing. Meanwhile, the Mondragons decide to organize a search party, which kicks off at Melissa's parents' house on Saturday, June 28.

• 24:59Ashley Flowers?

  Now, Mark says he didn't even know that that was happening. I guess he stumbled across news of it on Facebook. But once he does, he shows up, not to help them look for his missing wife, though. According to the Mondragons, he comes to tell them that he's figured it all out, and he is sure that Melissa left on her own. He says he'd spent some time going through her paperwork and discovered that their finances were in far worse shape than he had actually realized.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  But is he basically showing up and saying, "Don't look for her again"?

• 25:31Ashley Flowers?

  I don't think those words, "Don't look for her," came out of his mouth, but he is there to tell them why he thinks she left on her own.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  He already told them about the finances, though. Like, he mentioned it that very first night.

• 25:44Ashley Flowers?

  Right, but now he wants them to understand, like, the severity of it, which he says he is just now finally, like, getting a good grasp of. Though, like, the signs seem to have been there. So, starting a couple of years back, that's when Mark says he got this humiliating wake-up call. He had taken some coworkers out to lunch, tried to pay, and his cards were declined. He looked into it and learned that his checking and credit accounts were overdrawn, and that his savings account had been drained. When he confronted Melissa about it, she told him that she'd use the savings to pay their taxes, an explanation that he accepted. But it rattled him enough that he decided to separate their finances. He told us that he took over the major bills,

• 26:29Ashley Flowers?

  like vehicle payments, health insurance, and he left Melissa to handle the smaller monthly expenses. But by June of 2025, there were at least two huge signs that things had only gotten worse.

• 26:44Ashley Flowers?

  One, their wages were being garnished. And two, their security clearances at the lab had been suspended because of their deteriorating financial situation. Melissa even had to move workspaces because she no longer had the clearance required for the office where she'd been working.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Then how can he claim that he didn't know how bad things were?

• 27:08Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, he's more saying that he didn't realize how catastrophic it had gotten, which is kind of hard for the Mondragon's to believe, because the couple had been hit with more than a dozen lawsuits or claims over the years, mostly tied to unpaid debts, business disputes, and like family matters. But he maintains that he was in the dark on a lot of this stuff, that Melissa was like intercepting legal paperwork and hiding letters from attorneys or whatever.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  But that doesn't make any sense. Like, why would she want to do that?

• 27:37Ashley Flowers?

  I have no idea. But either way, like, it seems like all of this financial stuff was coming to a head, because he says that when he confronted her about the wage garnishment and asked how they were going to afford Sierra's beauty school, Melissa told him that she had gotten a lawyer and that they had an upcoming court date to appeal a lawsuit judgment. But now, he just found out, apparently, that wasn't true. There was no ongoing appeal. And in all her paperwork, he'd also discovered that she had applied for a personal loan to cover Sierra's tuition and been rejected. And based on the dates of things, it looks like she had just gotten that rejection days before she disappeared.

• 28:20Ashley Flowers?

  Now, on top of that, Mark tells everyone that things weren't going well for Melissa professionally. Besides the clearance issue, she had also been flagged for performance problems at work. So, Mark's theory that he is telling everyone about is that the pressure must have finally just reached a boiling point and Melissa bolted before it all came crashing down. But, but, he also predicts that she's gonna be home before the weekend is over, because she has an important work meeting on Monday. Or, you know what, he floats another idea, maybe Melissa loved Sierra so much that she left on purpose so that Mark could declare her dead in a few months and then collect her life insurance and like, set Sierra up financially.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  What?

• 29:06Ashley Flowers?

  Or, maybe she's just hiding out at her best friend's house. Someone should probably check there.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  So his theory is everything?

• 29:15Ashley Flowers?

  Everything but foul play, it seems.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Where is he saying that she actually is, though? Like, where does he think she is? Like, the most likely place?

• 29:25Ashley Flowers?

  I don't think anyone gets, like, a clear answer about that. That's the thing. To the Mondragons, the whole thing sounds less like a husband trying to find his wife and more like somebody trying to rapidly workshop explanations. On top of that, while he's coming up with all of the ways that she could have just walked off on her own, he finds time to criticize their search efforts, saying that they're looking in the wrong places, places Melissa wouldn't go because she didn't know them well. And he keeps bringing up his confirmed alibi, even though nobody is asking him about it. So, being the crime junkies that the Mondragons are, they start recording their interactions

• 30:07Ashley Flowers?

  with Mark in the one-party consent state of New Mexico. Starting with a call that Trudy made to check on Sierra the next day, Sunday. And she shared that recording with us.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  We know exactly what's going on, but I'm not telling no one shit.

• 30:23Speaker 04

  Okay, well, as long as you're sharing that with the police, that's amazing.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Well, you know what? I told the cops today that we have information. They're not even calling me. I sat there and knocked on their door yesterday, would not answer the thing, and I cried. I told the detective, "If you're gonna go over there," I said, "I have a lot of information, but if I'm gonna go there and you're gonna start interrogating me again, I'm not going."

• 30:43Speaker 04

  Well, we need to be concentrating on, we need to be concentrating on finding her.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 30:50Speaker 04

  We need to find her.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  She's not there, Trudy, you understand?

• 30:52Speaker 04

  No, no, no, I'm saying, no, what I'm saying is, it doesn't help if you're locked up at the police station. You need, you need to be out there. Well, you need to be out there doing-

• 31:04Speaker 03

  You know, when I went over there, I didn't know, you guys never told me that this was going on, that this big ol' search was going on yesterday. I'm like, "What?" What the fuck is going on over here? I never knew about that. You know, I never knew about any of that. No one's telling me what you guys are doing. I could be directing and saying, no, focus on this area. Focus like I did the other day.

• 31:21Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  You're sending people all over that don't make no sense.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Well, we're

• 31:24Speaker 03

  But anyway.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  We are very open for you to share with us what you, what you want, what you're willing to, because you know what?

• 31:32Speaker 03

  Oh, shit, everything. I have to

• 31:33Speaker 04

  Awesome.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  I had the cops cook. And then I, I, I understand that, that, that they, that they said there was some sort of a drop of blood in here. Bullshit, there's no blood in here. And besides

• 31:44Speaker 04

  Okay, okay, good.

• 31:45Speaker 03

  The timeframe does not match. The only time she could have been hurt by me because I was identified in Los Alamos.

• 31:52Speaker 04

  You know, you were at work. Mark.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  Watch, Trudy, let me say something, so maybe you'll understand this.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  It's so simple. If there was a drop of blood, if there was blood in this house, that means I would have had to have hurt Melissa before we left to work, right? Correct?

• 32:08Speaker 04

  No.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  Because they determined, that's why they let me out over there when they had me over there. Up, I was up in Los Alamos. Obviously, they determined everything was

• 32:16Speaker 04

  Yes. No, I know you were at work.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  Exactly. Melissa was fine at one o'clock in the afternoon.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  Yes, I know that. You were at work. No, no, I know that.

• 32:27Speaker 03

  They could have had a gallon of blood on the floor and it's

• 32:29Speaker 04

  No.

• 32:30Speaker 03

  still relevant to Melissa.

• 32:31Speaker 04

  Right, no, and it makes sense.

• 32:33Ashley Flowers?

  This call goes on for a little while longer. No matter how upset Mark gets, Trudy tries to keep calm. And, you know, she's not being confrontational at all. She is in information gathering mode. She wants to keep him talking. And that's when he says something that catches her really off guard. Honestly, one of her biggest takeaways is this.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  And then, so I changed the locks to all the doors so she would have to, she cannot come in with the key and grab her stuff and bail. She would have to contact Sierra to open up the thing. We put cameras up and everything to

• 33:07Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  to see if she was coming in.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  Okay, and you know what? That's a good idea. The cameras? Because

• 33:13Ashley Flowers?

  He changed the locks three days after she vanished.

• 33:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Why would he even need to do that if she left her keys behind?

• 33:21Ashley Flowers?

  Dude, that's the thing. Like, I don't think he ever explains that. I'm like, she left her keys.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  She couldn't get in anyway.

• 33:26Ashley Flowers?

  I know.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Also, I still don't get where she would go. Like, she didn't take her phone. It sounds like she couldn't have taken any money. She's got nothing with her.

• 33:35Ashley Flowers?

  Well, I mean, not nothing. Remember, she, well, according to Mark and Sierra, she's missing from the house is, what, her toothbrush, her reading glasses, her sunglasses, and then that 90-day supply of her thyroid medication.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Even that is like a little weird, though, right? Like, that's not exactly like a disappearing packing list.

• 33:51Ashley Flowers?

  Well, the Mondragon say that from the start, they think that Mark was trying to plant the idea that someone came to get Melissa, pointing to those unfamiliar tire tracks in the driveway. Remember, as evidence that another man had picked her up. But the thing is, like, he doesn't say who that would be, though.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  I mean, is he implying that she, like, left him for another man?

• 34:14Ashley Flowers?

  It's hard to tell what he's saying, because Mark has offered a lot of theories over the months about where she might have gone. Florida, Arizona, Washington. Maybe she left with the help from a contractor that she was having an affair with.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Wait, she was having an affair?

• 34:28Ashley Flowers?

  No, that's the thing. Not that anyone knows of. I think he's just guessing. Says, you know, it could have been a contractor, or maybe a hunter she knew, or a photographer from Colorado. Sometimes he insinuates to the family that he knows exactly where she is or who she's with, but he won't give names, which feels so weird to them, and weird to me, even. Even the theory that she would leave him for another man in general, though, I can't really get my head around from his telling. Because in his first interview, he told detectives that their marriage was great. There was nothing wrong there. But that's not what police heard from other people, some of whom described Mark as egotistical and controlling,

• 35:09Ashley Flowers?

  a man who allegedly emotionally and financially abused Melissa. And people have different understandings of Mark and Melissa's finances. Some say that she was burdened with paying for everything, even though Mark made more money. So sure, she might have been in debt, but like in their eyes, that's really Mark's fault. And yeah, there were lawsuits and stuff, but records show that the majority of those were against Mark alone. Some people even say that the couple had talked about splitting up after Sierra graduated. And Mark had basically said that everything was his, so Melissa should be ready to just move out. So when Melissa was talking about her plans to stay in Albuquerque with Sierra,

• 35:52Ashley Flowers?

  it sounded to them more like a marital separation than just like this mom helping her daughter get settled, which is what Mark was saying.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  And Sierra had just graduated, right?

• 36:02Ashley Flowers?

  Like nearly a month before this. So the timing is interesting, which police obviously confront him with. Now initially, he tells them none of this is true. And he told us the same thing, though he acknowledges that Melissa had told people that stuff. But according to Agent Mata, Mark ultimately confirmed it to police, admitted that he had encouraged Melissa to leave if she wasn't happy.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  I mean, so maybe this is why he seems so confident in this walking away theory? Like he told her to go?

• 36:38Ashley Flowers?

  Maybe, but then why won't he tell people who he thinks she's with? If he thinks that he even has like a sliver of an idea? I mean, here's one of like the stranger parts of this story. Mark starts putting up these mysterious posts, like coded language, that he says only Melissa could understand. A way to let her know that he's tracking her.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Tracking her how?

• 37:02Ashley Flowers?

  Or to where? I don't know. He is not an easy guy to get a straight answer from.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Well, and like thinking back, is he talking about like a hunting tracking? Like he's like on to her trail somehow?

• 37:16Ashley Flowers?

  That, yes. And listen, some of her trail that day has already been confirmed by police. Because his home didn't have surveillance cameras or anything like that. But there were some outside the shopping plaza where Sierra worked. And there is footage of Melissa, alone, seemingly fine, going to drop off lunch for her daughter.

• 37:37Ashley Flowers?

  At 12:56 PM, Melissa's white sedan comes in hot to a handicap parking spot. Like she bumps into that, I don't know, I want to call it a guard rail, but you know.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Like a parking stop.

• 37:47Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, like, and it's so hard that the whole car kind of shakes, so she like backs up a little bit. And then like 10 seconds later, she gets out of the car and calmly starts walking down the sidewalk with a sandwich for Sierra in one hand. Then another camera picks her up in the plaza. We get a better look at her. She's in that turquoise t-shirt with a sweatshirt or something like that tied around her waist in jeans. And then a minute later, she is back on that same camera, walking back to her car. No sandwich anymore, but she's holding a piece of paper in her hand, that check that Sierra asked her to cash for her. Now, the parking lot camera picks her back up, getting into her car. But the video cuts off before we actually see her pulling away.

• 38:27Ashley Flowers?

  So, I don't know what direction she went in, but she had to have made it home after this, since her car, her keys, her wallet, everything was.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  That paycheck.

• 38:36Ashley Flowers?

  Back there at the house, right? But I don't think Mark believes anything happened to Melissa there at the house. His searches seem to be more focused in the spot along Highway 518 where Lloyd spotted Melissa.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Wait, I thought he was adamant that could not have been Melissa.

• 38:57Ashley Flowers?

  Okay, so Mark told us that when that lead came in that first night when police were there, he was totally unaware that the tipster was someone who actually knew Melissa. He dismissed it because he didn't want investigators going on this like wild goose chase. Again, I still think the reason he dismissed it doesn't make sense, whatever, but then he says at some point over the first couple of days, he learned that Lloyd was the caller. And so I guess by Tuesday, July 1st, enough time had passed that he's at least willing to entertain the idea that maybe it could have been. So he drives out to that stretch of highway looking for circling birds, which is like a potential sign of human remains.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Right, but that means he's now on board with a foul play theory.

• 39:44Ashley Flowers?

  No, I know. Mark told our reporter Nina that he never thought Melissa met with foul play. But if Lloyd's tip is true, and if Melissa had been injured or abducted, she wouldn't have made it far from that spot. Like, it's summer, it's hot, remains attract scavenging birds. That's why he looked there on that Tuesday morning. Like, you know, in an absence of knowing what happened, maybe everything's possible, even if it's not what he believed. Now, he told us that when he went out that way, he happened to see Lloyd outside in his yard. And so he decided to stop by and speak with him. Police still haven't reached out to Lloyd, by the way. This is five days after Melissa was last seen.

• 40:28Ashley Flowers?

  And when Lloyd lays out what he actually saw, this is when something shifts for Mark. Because Lloyd says that he never described Melissa as stumbling or staggering when he spoke to her brother. He tells Mark that Melissa was just there one minute, gone the next. And Lloyd didn't actually see her get into that blue truck that he saw or anything like that. But that is kind of the implication that he's making.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Wait, so does Mark think this was Melissa or not?

• 40:56Ashley Flowers?

  Well, now he seems more convinced that that was her. And if she wasn't injured or acting odd, it actually plays into his theory that she wasn't in distress. She just, like, left.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  And what do the Mondragon think?

• 41:10Ashley Flowers?

  They've always felt like this could have been her stumbling or not. But even if she wasn't stumbling, the Mondragon still believe that she could have been in danger when she was out there. They think everything about this is screaming foul play. They don't believe for a second that she left willingly. Every theory that Mark has about her walking away is just that, a theory, and a constantly changing one at that, with no proof. So after this search, when Mark comes to them again, and he's like, "I've found something that makes me even more positive that she left on her own," I imagine that they're pretty skeptical. But this time, it's not just stories or his word.

• 41:53Ashley Flowers?

  This time, Mark has proof. Armed with information from Lloyd about exactly where he last saw Melissa and the blue truck, Mark had taken Sierra out to retrace Lloyd's steps. And in essence, he's trying to retrace Melissa's. Not with old-school hunting tactics. He was looking for any house with a surveillance camera pointed at the road. And dude hit paydirt. He finds a video from a house off of Highway 518 that you have to see to believe. The timestamp is 2:18 PM on June 26th, when Melissa, alive and well, not stumbling, comes into camera frame.

• 42:36Ashley Flowers?

  She's alone and walking at a brisk pace, not as if she's scared or anything, just purposefully. She's wearing what looks to me like the same outfit we saw her in when she dropped lunch off to Sierra. But now her hair is pulled back and she's carrying a small backpack on her shoulders. For the Casilla side, this video is proof that Melissa walked away on her own two feet by choice. And Mark told us he wasn't thinking about vindication or exonerating himself at that moment. But it's hard to ignore what this video means, that there might be a whole nother side to this story. A completely different narrative about how and why Melissa went missing

• 43:20Ashley Flowers?

  that will have you questioning everything.

• 43:25Speaker 01

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• 44:30Ashley Flowers?

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• 45:13Ashley Flowers?

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• 45:34Ashley Flowers?

  Just when everyone was beginning to believe that maybe something happened to Melissa in her home, video footage emerged that proved Melissa was out of her house and walking down Highway 518 alive and well, something her husband Mark Casillas has been saying since early on. And his version of events reads like a completely different book. Not a shady, callous husband who had his wife killed, but a frustrated one who says that his wife abandoned him and their daughter, leaving behind not so much as a note or explanation. Even then, though, Mark says that some of the allegations against him aren't just misinterpreted, they're downright wrong.

• 46:18Ashley Flowers?

  So let's go back to that first night when police were there and the Mondragon showed up and told us that Mark was hostile and bad mouthing Melissa. Mark told us that never happened. He says that he didn't speak with them at all that night. He was completely focused on dealing with police. Then there's that argument that we're told he and Melissa had that morning about the e-cigarette, right? He like caught her vaping. It takes him a few interviews to come clean about any relationship issues to police, but he says that he only withheld that information because he wanted them focused on finding Melissa, not eyeballing him. He also says that this like fight or argument wasn't some big blow up, just this like minor marital spat.

• 47:00Ashley Flowers?

  And he denies that Melissa ever cursed at him or told him to find his own ride home.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  But didn't that come from him in the first place?

• 47:07Ashley Flowers?

  Well, that's what the Mondragon say, that he told them that. But when we talked to him, he said, no, that's not true. He never said anything like that. We also asked him about an early theory he apparently mentioned, the one that really rubbed some people the wrong way, right? About Melissa making herself disappear so that he could declare her dead and then get the life insurance money for Sierra. Now, Mark, to us, never really confirmed or denied whether or not he said that, but what he did tell us is that he knows a person has to be missing for years before any of that becomes legally relevant anyway. And actually, police come to learn that Melissa didn't even have a life insurance policy anymore. I mean, she used to, but that policy expired years ago, though I'm not really sure if

• 47:52Ashley Flowers?

  Mark knew that. And Melissa's financial records show just how bad things had gotten. Investigators find out that she had negative account balances that swallowed up half her paycheck the second they hit and maxed out credit cards that she hadn't made payments on in months. And let's talk about the physical evidence, like the muddy boots, right? Mark says that he had recently asked Melissa to refill the fish tank, which was right above where the boots were sitting. And so he thinks that maybe she might have spilled water and re-wetted like old dried mud that was already on them from like a previous hunt. Which investigators think is plausible.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  And the boots mattered like a lot less once his alibi was confirmed though, right?

• 48:35Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, and like the same logic I think then extends to the blood. If it's even human blood.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:42Ashley Flowers?

  We actually still don't know that for sure because what we know is they did that presumptive test. It is blood. Police still didn't have the lab results back when we last spoke to them. But Mark is saying, listen, that could have come from processing game or even from their dog. But either way, it's hard to make it mean much when we now know, to your point, Melissa was clearly alive and walking on her own after she left the house.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Well, and even if it does come back as her blood, like she lived there.

• 49:13Ashley Flowers?

  And there's that, right? It's not like it's like this pool or anything.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:17Ashley Flowers?

  So, blood and boots, put those aside. There's also the tech of it all. Investigators find out that Melissa emailed a coworker the morning of June 26 saying that she'd be late because something had come up with her daughter Sierra. That wasn't true. So it seems like Melissa was telling everyone a different story so that she could make herself free that day. Mark TBD exactly what she said to him in the car on the drive there, but like he seemed to think that she was gonna be at work. She told Sierra that she'd come home because she forgot her badge, which she had with her, we know. But she told her job something was up with her daughter. And then what they pull from her phones,

• 50:01Ashley Flowers?

  this is the detail more than anything else that makes me think Melissa had some kind of plan. Cause forensic downloads show that both of her phones, they weren't wiped clean at the same time. The older phone that she had, the one that she'd already replaced, that was factory reset at 8:02 a.m. And then her newer phone was wiped at 1:38 p.m.

• 50:29Ashley Flowers?

  I obsessed over this because my gut tells me that if someone else wiped the phones, I would think that they would have wiped them both at the same time, right?

• 50:39Speaker 01

  I mean, unless they didn't know that she had two phones, like wiped one thinking it was the phone, realized their mistake and had to come back and wipe the second one.

• 50:48Ashley Flowers?

  But like, we know that Melissa must have reset the first phone at home, right? Because remember, she's there when Sierra woke up at around 7:45, right? So the one that she doesn't use, like in my mind, the one she doesn't use or she's not gonna need that day gets reset in the morning.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Just to get it over with.

• 51:02Ashley Flowers?

  Then she has her phone through the day as she's like bringing Sierra lunch, right? You can't even say someone else has her phone and is like sending these messages. We have her on video bringing Sierra lunch at 1 o'clock. Then Melissa sent her daughter that last text message at 1:33. And I mapped everything, like all of that lines up to where if Melissa is at home when that reset happens at 1:38, then she could have very realistically left then and then been at the spot she is seen at on Highway 518 on camera at 2:18. That's all the things that make me believe like it had to be her who reset them.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  But why did she reset them?

• 51:43Ashley Flowers?

  This is the thing, I don't know. I mean, there, I feel like there's two scenarios, right? Like if she reset them, two scenarios. And like in those scenarios, it's her walking away, right? Like so, one, she took her own life, in which case I don't know why you would have to wipe all of your devices.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  I mean, unless you were hiding stuff you didn't want anyone to ever find out about.

• 52:05Ashley Flowers?

  But like, wouldn't you leave a note for that? Like, to me, this is like if you're, if you're so overwhelmed by like your marriage or your financial situation or whatever, like, why would you leave this mystery behind? Like, so to me, this doesn't make a ton of sense. So the second option is she walked away to start over, to live somewhere else, be with someone else, whatever that looks like. And in that scenario, maybe something on those phones would have told people exactly where she was going or like given away a plan that she didn't want found out.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  And have police pulled her iCloud data?

• 52:38Ashley Flowers?

  Now, this is where it goes like a layer deeper. They tried.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 52:43Ashley Flowers?

  She didn't just wipe her phones. Apple told them that her backup had been completely scrubbed too. Like her iCloud with nothing left to recover.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  I, I didn't even realize that was possible. Is that actually possible?

• 52:58Ashley Flowers?

  It is, but it's not as simple, right? Agent Ezekiel Escavamata says that that level of digital erasure takes intention. Like it's more than just hitting a few buttons on an iPhone. So he does think though, that like Melissa would know how to do it. Or I assume at a minimum could Google it. This is not like an impossible thing to do. It's like supposed to be your data. You should be able to erase it.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Right. So is everyone pretty much in agreement that Melissa is the one that wiped everything?

• 53:28Ashley Flowers?

  Not necessarily. No, like the Mondragon's really wanted investigators to geofence the Casillas home to see if maybe other devices connected, like either to her device or the internet or whatever, Google around that time. But Google actually stopped providing that data to law enforcement in 2024. But they're really adamant. They don't think that Melissa would have done this. They say that she was very sentimental, like the kind of person who held on to every photo and every memory. And so they can't imagine a world where she would decide to erase all of that. And really that disagreement over what Melissa would or wouldn't do, over who she really was, I think that's really at the heart of everything.

• 54:13Ashley Flowers?

  Because the tension between the two sides in this case goes way beyond the investigation. Mark and his daughters say that the Mondragon's spent years shunning Melissa over her separation from the Jehovah's Witness faith, that they barely knew Sierra, didn't even meet her until she was a few years old. And they claim that they are only now presenting themselves as people who were like central to her life. But we asked the Mondragon's about this and they totally deny that. They say that Melissa was very present in their lives. There's regular calls, overnight visits, helping with medical appointments. Like Melissa had taken time off work to take her mom to the hospital for a knee replacement and then she was going to take care of her after that. That appointment was scheduled for June 30th, four days after she vanished.

• 54:59Ashley Flowers?

  But whatever the truth is about those relationships before June 26, the aftermath made everything worse. Mark and his daughters say that the extended family cut them out of the search entirely, withholding incoming tips, blocking them from the Find Melissa Facebook page, and launching a GoFundMe without ever consulting them. Now, the Mondragon say that donations will fund a reward for information leading to Melissa's safe return, but Sierra feels like they exploited the tragedy, basically. The Casillas side also says that the Mondrogans fueled rumors that Mark was abusive and directly involved in Melissa's disappearance, both things that he and his daughters vehemently deny. Then there are the search efforts themselves, which the Casillas side thinks

• 55:44Ashley Flowers?

  the Mondrogans wasted critical resources on, directing people to places Melissa would never go, they say. And they blame her brother for bungling that whole Lloyd tip early on. I mean, the whole stumbling staggering description, Agent Mata says that was the reason investigators didn't follow up, not a contributing factor, the deciding factor. And more than that, according to Mark, Lloyd told him that the blue truck that he saw was a newer model, not an older one like the family had originally relayed. So like Mark, Agent Mata blames a chain of bad details that cost them days.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  But let's be real here, it was still Mark who told police not to check it out in the first place. And like, since when does the missing person's spouse call the shots during investigation? Like, the responsibility is on the police here.

• 56:34Ashley Flowers?

  And I completely agree with that. And remember, they didn't interview Lloyd until after Mark talked to him. And I also have to say, like, a huge part of why I think there is such a great divide between families is that the investigation has not felt robust. Like, it leaves each family feeling like enough isn't being done, which leaves so much room for suspicion and speculation. Like, forget the Lloyd of it all. You took Mark's word and didn't talk to Lloyd until after Mark did, days later? Fine. There was this other tip that came in, and I was shocked at how it was handled.

• 57:14Ashley Flowers?

  So a couple of days after Melissa disappeared, this tourist was near a church in Taos, New Mexico, when she noticed a man on horseback who appeared to be praying. It was an interesting sight, so she decided to take a photo of him. But then she noticed that he seemed to be crying and apparently was intoxicated. So she approached him and asked if he was okay. And he told her that they had been searching for his missing cousin up in the mountains and that he'd found her body decapitated. Now, I don't know if he gave a name for this so-called cousin before he rode off. And that tourist didn't know what to make of that interaction. She like didn't have any context.

• 57:57Ashley Flowers?

  But later that night, she saw a missing person poster for Melissa. And I guess she put two and two together. So she reported the encounter to police and gave them a copy of the photo that she had taken. Investigators showed them to Melissa's family and they weren't related to the man. But they did know him. Her brother recognized the guy as 64-year-old Rick Valerio, known as Wild. He works with horses near a local golf course. And guess what he drives? A blue Dodge truck. Agent Mata went to speak with Rick on Monday, July 21st.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  When did they know about this tip?

• 58:39Ashley Flowers?

  So that part's unclear. The family seems to think that it was right away. But Mata insinuates that it was later, which is why they're not talking to him for like a month. But I don't want to get hung up on the police response time because I think the proper thing to get hung up on is the interview itself. Because according to police, once they talked to Rick, he admitted that he helped with search efforts, but he denied everything else. So they just dismissed the lead. They think Rick concocted the story for attention. So the Mondragons actually got the body cam footage of this interview. This, this thing that makes them like rule him out. And be prepared to scream.

• 59:21Ashley Flowers?

  I'm going to play you the entire interaction between Agent Mata and Rick Valerio. So you can make your own determinations about the questions asked and the answers Rick gave and the conclusion that those led police to.

• 59:39Ashley Flowers?

  It's still daylight when Agent Mata pulls up to Rick's home and calls out to him.

• 59:44Speaker 05

  Hello, State Police.

• 59:46Ashley Flowers?

  Mata won't ever enter Rick's home and Rick never fully comes outside. As far as we know, the whole interaction takes place with Rick fully or partially behind his metal gate door.

• 59:57Speaker 05

  Richard, home.

• 59:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm Richard.

• 59:59Speaker 05

  Hey, Richard, how you doing, bro? I'm Agent Mata with State Police, bro. You're not in any trouble, bro. I'm here just doing some follow up with you. Yeah, we, we heard, bro, that you were talking about finding a decapitated body out in the Monte, bro.

• 1:00:13Speaker 05

  That you found a, a decapitated body without its head there in the Monte.

• 1:00:17Speaker 06

  No, no.

• 1:00:19Speaker 05

  Are you sure?

• 1:00:20Speaker 06

  I'm sure.

• 1:00:21Speaker 05

  Cause I tracked it down to you, bro. The people that heard it took a picture of you on a horse there in the plaza. You're cruising around on your, on your caballo en rojo.

• 1:00:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, but I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, bro.

• 1:00:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, here, right here in the church, bro. Yeah.

• 1:00:35Speaker 06

  No, I don't know. I was, I was helping with the search, yeah, over here.

• 1:00:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:41Speaker 06

  When I, you were there, I guess, you know?

• 1:00:43Speaker 05

  Uh, one, one of the days.

• 1:00:45Speaker 06

  Over here in the search and rescue.

• 1:00:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:47Speaker 06

  Couple of weeks ago.

• 1:00:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:49Speaker 06

  I was helping with them there.

• 1:00:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, but you didn't find anybody without their head, bro? Cause that's what I'm hea- hearing and that's why I'm here.

• 1:00:55Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:00:56Speaker 05

  To see what's going on with that, bro.

• 1:00:58Speaker 06

  No, no.

• 1:00:59Speaker 05

  Are you sure?

• 1:00:59Speaker 06

  I'm sure, bro.

• 1:01:00Speaker 05

  Cause I wouldn't be bugging, bro, if the information didn't sound pretty serious. That's why I'm here, wanting to hear it from you.

• 1:01:06Speaker 06

  No, no.

• 1:01:07Speaker 05

  But another, Mr. Richard.

• 1:01:09Speaker 06

  Nothing.

• 1:01:10Speaker 05

  Oh, why, why would I hear that then?

• 1:01:12Speaker 06

  I don't know, why?

• 1:01:15Speaker 05

  And, and, and this is what I heard, bro, that you're, you're cousin to Melissa and that she's been missing for a few days. And, and that you were up in the Monte and that you were all sad because you, you found her, you found a, a dead body without its head? And that the head was just tossed there to the side, bro.

• 1:01:29Speaker 06

  I don't even know her.

• 1:01:30Speaker 05

  You don't know her? You were just helping with the search?

• 1:01:33Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, I worked, I worked for the search, yeah, over here.

• 1:01:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Speaker 06

  No, I don't even know her.

• 1:01:39Speaker 06

  I'm already dead, you're not.

• 1:01:40Speaker 05

  Okay. Uh, do you remember what you were doing on the 26th of last month, bro? That's a Thursday.

• 1:01:47Speaker 05

  You're in Albuquerque and that blue Dodge is yours?

• 1:01:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Speaker 05

  Okay, so you didn't go picking up no girls or anything down there on 518, bro? Para nada?

• 1:01:57Speaker 06

  Nada.

• 1:01:58Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:01:58Speaker 06

  No, I'm sure.

• 1:02:00Speaker 05

  No, no, you're good. I'm just trying to sort it out, bro, porque ya sabes, man, people freaking talk. And your name came up, bro. Your name came up that you had information about a dead body and stuff, so I'm like, okay, well, let's talk, man. Let's see, a ver que? Because at the end of the day, I got a job to do, you know, and I just try to follow up with everything that I get.

• 1:02:17Speaker 06

  No, I didn't even know nothing about that.

• 1:02:18Speaker 05

  No?

• 1:02:19Speaker 06

  No, I don't know.

• 1:02:20Speaker 05

  Okay. Richard, what's a good phone number for you, bro, in case I have questions?

• 1:02:28Speaker 05

  What have you heard, bro?

• 1:02:30Speaker 06

  Nothing. I don't even know her, actually. Or he, or the husband.

• 1:02:34Speaker 05

  Oh, you said you were helping out, bro. I'm sure you heard something.

• 1:02:36Speaker 06

  I heard about it.

• 1:02:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Speaker 06

  I work for that rescue, I don't know.

• 1:02:40Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:40Speaker 06

  And we had some problems with the Bieber Padró there.

• 1:02:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Speaker 06

  And there was an officer over there in the search and rescue.

• 1:02:47Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:48Speaker 06

  His name on it. I forgot his name, but...

• 1:02:53Speaker 05

  No, you guys had just shown up there. I remember talking to you.

• 1:02:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:02:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, but you don't know anything about no dead body ni nada, bro? Are you sure?

• 1:03:00Speaker 06

  I'm sure.

• 1:03:00Speaker 05

  Okay. I'm just here to check in, bro. Like I said, this information was passed on to me today and I was like, well, let's go, let's go knock on some doors and see what's up.

• 1:03:08Speaker 06

  You don't give me a call, no problem, man.

• 1:03:10Speaker 05

  Okay. Bueno, Mr. Richard, I'll let you get back to it, man. Gracias.

• 1:03:18Ashley Flowers?

  That's it. It's tell me there was a follow-up. Agent Mata says that he did speak with Rick again at some point, but I don't know what came of it. And we don't really know much about Rick even. Old court records from the 90s mentioned multiple DWI charges. I don't see anything violent on his record. But there is some weirdness here, right? That like, I don't know how you can ignore. And pieces that deserve, I believe, more investigating. I mean, this bizarre statement allegedly about a decapitated body, the odd behavior, the blue truck. I mean, did they look at the truck? Like, what if he?

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  Hit Melissa.

• 1:03:57Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, there's no looking into the truck as far as I know. But I mean, like, the idea of like him knowing he has like DWI is hitting, I think it's an interesting theory, like Rick related or not. People said that Melissa used to walk on Highway 518 before, like, is it possible that she was just out there for a walk and then some kind of accident happened? Yes, maybe that's possible, but then even in that theory, I come back to the phones. You don't wipe your phone and your iCloud if you're just gonna go on a walk. So I don't know, this Rick thing, it might be nothing. But this whole interaction that Mata had with Rick, I think this is what casts a shadow over everything now to me because when they say that a lead went nowhere or that they cleared someone, I question what that means.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:42Ashley Flowers?

  How deep did they really go? Like another example, remember Diego? The very first person that Melissa's family was suspicious of before they ever were questioning Mark. This is Sierra's ex-boyfriend, who after the car accident had like some brain damage and apparently had been making threats, sending Melissa like sexually explicit text messages. Well, another agent who worked the case said that Diego wouldn't speak to them at all. But then Agent Mata says that Diego did give an initial statement by phone. And I guess he explained away the explicit text that he sent Melissa. He told police that he meant to send it to someone else. But then when investigators tried to get him to give a formal statement, Diego said that he couldn't make it. Then he told them that he wanted his attorney to be with him.

• 1:05:27Ashley Flowers?

  But he never said who his attorney even was, and it doesn't seem like police are pushing. Now, we couldn't get in touch with Diego, and I'm not saying that he's involved. I just want to be able to close the loop on some of these things. But I keep finding that really hard to do. Though, for what it's worth, Sierra doesn't think that Diego had anything to do with her mom going missing. She doesn't see how he could pull something like that off. Now for all the things that I think may not have been done, I do want to highlight the things that were. Police poured a lot of resources into the physical search for Melissa. They used helicopters, drones, tracking, and sent canines

• 1:06:11Ashley Flowers?

  all through the dense mountainous terrain around Highway 518. Although, official searches didn't start until days after she disappeared. But they ran facial recognition alerts across the nation. But to date, nothing has ever come of that. And there's been no bank activity, no passport applications in Melissa's name, no driver's license changes, no prescription refills for her thyroid medication, which she needs as a thyroid cancer survivor. So there is just no trace of her anywhere. But the Casillas side, they do still think that she's out there living a new life. Mark's most developed theory to date is that Melissa

• 1:06:55Ashley Flowers?

  connected with someone through a job that she had applied for shortly before she disappeared, a position with a Los Alamos subcontractor. He thinks that whoever she met through that process offered to help her escape her financial situation, like gave her a job, helped her disappear. And to Mark, that idea gets some fuel from someone commenting on social media claiming that Melissa is safe in Seattle where that company has ties. Now, investigators confirm that she did apply for this job. She was even selected for the position. But the company told police that they never managed to reach Melissa to even extend the offer. She had already vanished by then.

• 1:07:37Ashley Flowers?

  And according to Melissa's sister Trudy and Trudy's daughter Jasmine, they say the position was actually based at the same Los Alamos site that she had already worked at, so she wouldn't have needed to go anywhere for it. Now, there's one more thing that makes Mark certain that Melissa is fine. It's this weird interaction that Sierra had with a woman not too long after her mom vanished.

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• 1:09:10Ashley Flowers?

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• 1:09:53Ashley Flowers?

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• 1:10:14Ashley Flowers?

  According to Mark and Sierra, not long after Melissa went missing, this woman and her fiance, or maybe her husband, show up at Sierra's work out of nowhere. Now, apparently, this woman was a longtime friend of Melissa's. And she and this guy had driven all the way from Colorado to see Sierra, who didn't even recognize the woman, by the way, because if the two of them had ever met at all, it was when Sierra was really little. And that's the part of why this whole encounter is so bizarre. So supposedly, the woman made this 300 or so mile trip to Taos, New Mexico, to give Sierra a $50 high school graduation gift, which I feel like you could have mailed.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:58Ashley Flowers?

  But while she's there, she makes sure to get a photo of her and Sierra together. And she makes these cryptic comments, like, "I have psychic abilities, and I feel like Melissa is fine. And if your mom really left on her own, she always knows where to find me." She also told Sierra to keep her visit a secret from Mark, which obviously, she did not. So Mark starts thinking, maybe Melissa sent this woman as a proxy of sorts to check on Sierra. They were super close. She really loved Sierra. So like, hence the photo. Maybe Melissa wanted to know that Sierra was okay after her mom vanished into thin air.

• 1:11:43Ashley Flowers?

  Now, the kind of strange part to me is that Mark didn't bring this to police right away. He said that he wanted to wait and see if Melissa would contact them. But after like, a week goes by, and there is no contact, he finally lets them know.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  I mean, was she in contact with that friend before she went missing?

• 1:12:02Ashley Flowers?

  Well, Sierra says that Melissa had reached out to this woman with an invite to Sierra's graduation party. But I don't know if that's something that the woman told her, or if Melissa had relayed that to Sierra at some point.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  Okay, and like I know Melissa's phone, both of them, were wiped, but they can still get like call and text records from like the cell service provider. So we should be able to see like who she was in contact with before she was vanished, regardless if the phones were factory reset or not, right?

• 1:12:31Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, theoretically, yes, but last I heard, her records, and mind you, she went missing June 2025, those records are still under review. So I don't know.

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  Okay, and did they get anything from Mark's phone?

• 1:12:45Ashley Flowers?

  Agent Mata told us that there is nothing on Mark's phone that suggests he was plotting against Melissa. I don't know.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  That's like not an answer.

• 1:12:53Ashley Flowers?

  Well, and I also don't know, like, wait, so you know, you've been through Mark's phone completely, but not the person who actually went missing? And I know like, right, Mark had his physical phone that...

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  He has his phone there, and also like, I don't know, priorities?

• 1:13:06Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. Obviously, they would have to get a warrant from the cell provider, but like, all this time later, I feel like we should be able to like have some answers about what was on her phone. Now, all in all, Agent Mata's interpretation of all that he has so far, TBD what's still under review, is that Melissa probably left on her own. Police have not officially ruled out foul play, but Mata's gut says that she's alive. Legally, she's classified as missing and endangered because of the risk of her being without her thyroid medication. But as far as law enforcement is concerned, there's no suspect, there's no crime scene, and no evidence that anything happened to her

• 1:13:51Ashley Flowers?

  after that camera caught her on Highway 518. But the Mondragon's think that is dead wrong. And the dominant theory among them still is that Mark is somehow connected to whatever happened to Melissa in some way. Though they haven't ruled out other possibilities, including a random abduction while Melissa was out walking. The only thing that they feel certain of is that Melissa would not willingly abandon the daughter that she loved so much without a word. Now Mark denies any involvement and he got pissed when our reporter Nina asked him point blank if he killed Melissa. He said that no one has ever asked him that before.

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  No one, not even the police?

• 1:14:36Ashley Flowers?

  I guess not. But considering the interview that we saw and heard with Rick, like honestly, that wouldn't surprise me.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:46Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know.

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  I don't usually ask this because normally I can tell, but I'm kind of dying to know, like, what, what do you think?

• 1:14:54Ashley Flowers?

  This one genuinely has me in knots. Like, there are very few cases that have me flip flopping back and forth by the day, the way that this one does. You cannot argue with that video. Like, she left her house on her own. She had a backpack. She lied to everyone about what she was doing that day. I do believe that she wiped her phones. It is so easy to look at this and say that she left, especially the more stories we hear about other women who have done the same. I feel like mothers have this different societal expectation than father or like men do. And it's hard for us to wrap our minds around a mom leaving,

• 1:15:38Ashley Flowers?

  but it does happen. Then I don't know if you saw the story that like everyone was recently passing around about that woman in North Carolina, that mom who went missing in like 2001.

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, Michelle, Michelle Hundley Smith.

• 1:15:49Ashley Flowers?

  Mm hmm. So like her husband reported her missing, suspicion fell on him. Everyone assumed the worst. And then Michelle turned up alive in February of 2026, having quietly built a whole new life somewhere else for more than two decades. So it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  So, I mean, my head's like spinning around all of this too, but I'm wondering about something that you mentioned earlier. Like, if everything was closing in on her the way people are describing, is it possible she took her own life?

• 1:16:21Ashley Flowers?

  That's like the one theory that no one seems to really buy into. Like, Sierra is willing to believe that her mom left, but she doesn't think that she would ever do that to her. She thinks that like, kind of what I said earlier, like at least she would have left a note. She's not gonna leave them wondering. I mean, if you're still like asking what I think, I, I agree with that, right? Like, I keep going back to the phones. Like, I don't think you need to wipe your phone and your iCloud if your plan is just to take your own life.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you also don't really need to do that if you're just walking away, like, just leave them behind.

• 1:16:55Ashley Flowers?

  Well, unless, like I said, like, there's something on the phones. There's like communications with someone or something that has to do with a plan. Now, I'm about to go way out there for a second, so stay with me. Have you seen the connections that people are making recently around the missing scientists, researchers, military officials?

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:18Ashley Flowers?

  For those who are not in the know, this is something to pay attention to. The short version of this is that a handful of US people connected to places like Los Alamos and NASA have either died or disappeared over the last few years. At the time that we're recording this, the running list is at 11. And there's this theory that these are somehow connected to maybe foreign espionage, that like countries like China or Russia are targeting people with access to sensitive US technology. To me, that's the least scary scenario. The scarier one is that the call is coming from inside the house,

• 1:17:59Ashley Flowers?

  or even that private corporations who make a lot of money and energy don't want us figuring out and unlock for free energy. And I'm not just pulling this out of a hat on my own. So, a former FBI Assistant Director named Chris Swecker has been vocal about the links that these people have, all mostly connected, not directly, but like in the type of work that they do. Now, he's not claiming specific knowledge of any of these individual cases, but he believes that the patterns are suspicious enough that the FBI needs to stop treating them as isolated incidents and start pulling resources to look for links. And the feds are apparently involved now.

• 1:18:41Ashley Flowers?

  Newsweek reported that the FBI is investigating the series of cases as of late April. And I bring this all back because Melissa's name has appeared on this list circulating in news coverage of this pattern. So we reached out to Swecker directly to see if he knew anything beyond what was making kind of like the rounds and the tabloids and stuff. He didn't, but he did clarify that he's not suggesting that all of the cases are connected, which I feel like is like what they were saying.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Which is, yeah, feels confusing.

• 1:19:15Ashley Flowers?

  According to various news coverage, on paper, a few of these cases have already been explained away. A drowning, a murder by a former classmate, cardiovascular disease, a suicide. But Swecker's bigger point was more like, they might not all be connected, but like everyone counted in this potential group worked near or with sensitive stuff. And he says that foreign intelligence services will go after people in those positions, even admins, because they like know who's in what meetings. They know who works where. They know what schedules look like. Melissa Casillas, that was her role. She was an assistant admin. So what information would she have had access to?

• 1:19:57Ashley Flowers?

  As you can imagine, I don't have the clearance to know that. I don't even know, truthfully, if police could get clearance to know that.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:20:06Ashley Flowers?

  And listen, the timing is weird around when she goes missing. Like, we don't have time to go down the whole list, but I'll give you like a few examples so you kind of get a sense of what people are talking about online. So on May 4th, 2025, this is a month and a half before Melissa goes missing, a retired Los Alamos employee named Anthony Chavez walks out of his home, leaving behind his wallet, his keys, his cigarettes, car in the driveway, no cellphone, disappears. Then, on June 22nd, 2025, this is just a few days before Melissa goes missing, 60-year-old Monica Raza went hiking with two companions. At some point, one of her companions is like 30 feet ahead of her. He turns around, gestures to show her like which direction to go in.

• 1:20:50Ashley Flowers?

  She acknowledges him. Moments later, when he looked back again, she's gone. Has not been seen since.

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:20:57Ashley Flowers?

  Now, that was in California, not New Mexico. And Monica worked for NASA, not Los Alamos. But then you have Melissa going missing, June 26. And then closer to Melissa's home, William Neil McCasland, a retired Air Force Major General who once oversaw the lab that funds work in the same aerospace field that Monica worked in. He goes missing, February 27, 2026. Walks out of his Albuquerque, New Mexico home with a gun and his wallet while leaving behind his phone and other belongings. And then, poof, gone. Now, I mean, you can see, this is very tenuous.

• 1:21:39Ashley Flowers?

  But the coincidences have people asking questions. Melissa especially could have been an easy target if she had the right information or connections, right? Like, she was in a bad financial spot. Someone promises her a new life or a new start.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  Okay, but she's identified as a good target by someone. They see all the trouble she's in, they offer her a way out. She takes it, leaving her family behind to clean up the mess?

• 1:22:09Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, but like, I mean, her family's gonna have to clean up the mess if she just walked away on her own. Like, so I mean, to me, that's not like any less of a reason why she wouldn't have done it. And remember, her and her husband, they just got their clearance taken away. I'm telling you, like, I don't know.

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  And this could, like, begin to explain how she could start over without her ID ever popping up, like, how she'd get more meds. Like, she had to have this whole new identity.

• 1:22:30Ashley Flowers?

  Like, in a way easier way if someone's helping you, right? Like, I, no matter what, if she walked away, I think she needed someone's help to do that. But then, come back to the phones. It's always like the phones for me. If she walked away, connected to this thing or not, why wouldn't she just take her phones and get rid of them? Like, I know, I know you don't want to keep them.

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  But like, right, like, keeping them, keeping them active, tracking. Right, so like, factory reset them, but toss them in your bag and get rid of them somewhere else.

• 1:22:59Ashley Flowers?

  Dump them in, in some water, like, put them in, like, in the mountains, like, put them in a dumpster. Like, there's something about that part that like, or even like, leaving her phones is like, is that like a plant? Is this like a weird red hair? Why do you leave them? I mean, I guess unless you want your, like, them to have, like, phones are expensive, you leave them behind because they're free phones. So you can get like conspiratorial, but then, you know, you remember that we see her on camera, walking alone after the phones are wiped. And then, I don't know, you just keep going around and like, where was she going? Like, I just, I don't know.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  I mean, maybe whatever instructions she got for wiping the phone, like from, we were saying Googling it, but maybe from someone, whatever. Maybe they said it was better if she left them behind. So there was like no way to track the actual like hardware device itself.

• 1:23:48Ashley Flowers?

  Maybe. Listen, it doesn't have to be connected to all these other cases. In fact, one thing that everyone we spoke to seems to actually agree on, and there are like few of those things. They do not believe that Melissa is connected to these other scientists or whatever else is going on. Mark told us that he thought the theory was BS. Jasmine does not think it holds up either. And Mata specifically didn't even know anything about Anthony Chavez, who was like the one person I mentioned who was connected to Los Alamos directly. Right? But it would be a completely different jurisdiction because he lives in Los Alamos. And when Mata talked about it, he said, you know, I'll look into it.

• 1:24:31Ashley Flowers?

  But he's like, you know, those places are compartmentalized by design. They're set up so people only know what they need to know for their jobs. So I think he was saying that implying that it's like unlikely that Anthony and Melissa were on the same thing.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  Ever crossed paths, yeah.

• 1:24:46Ashley Flowers?

  But I don't, again, I don't know anything about the work that she did. And I highly doubt I will ever know about the work that she did because until her clearance just recently got revoked, like she, I think was working on like high clearance stuff. So I don't know, like this missing or deceased scientist thing, it has me down like a genuine rabbit hole. Like, I mean, I hope to come back out of it someday with like a more complete episode on it. But like, one, it's a hard nut to crack when practically everyone was working on top secret shit. And two, I actually think I've already like tripped some wires. And you laugh, but like genuinely have people monitoring what I'm like getting my nose in. So this is always my reminder to you to.

• 1:25:28Ashley Flowers?

  Everyone that like, I know how to swim. I love my life. I'm as safe as safe can be. So like, if I so much as get in a fender bender right now, it should be considered suspicious. Like, there was this one scientist who's on this list, Amy Eckridge. And her case is wild. People should go look it up. But she was on a Zoom call with somebody that got recorded. And she's like, the reason I stick my neck out is because at least if my head gets chopped off, people will take notice. If you don't do that, they bury you and nobody talks about it. So, in the spirit of sticking my neck out, any crime junkies out there who want to point me in the right direction, [email protected]. And listen, while I absolutely believe that something scary is happening to people who work in aerospace sciences,

• 1:26:13Ashley Flowers?

  it's probably not the solution that we're looking for in Melissa's case, right? Like, if we go Occam's razor, that would suggest that the simplest answer is likely the right one. Melissa was in a bad financial spot. She was planning to move away when her daughter went off to beauty school, but the loan application for that had just gotten rejected. What was she gonna do now? She very clearly told everyone different stories about the day that she went missing. Her phones were wiped, her iCloud was wiped. And after that, she is seen walking alone down Highway 518. The simplest explanation is that she chose to walk away and did it on her own. And some days, I really believe that.

• 1:26:58Ashley Flowers?

  But then other days, I'll get a new tidbit of info that makes no freaking sense. Like, we've been talking to family and reporting on this for months and months and months. But right as I was finalizing this episode, Nina peened me with another curveball. You know that friend from Colorado that checked in on Sierra?

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  Super randomly with like $50 for high school graduation gift.

• 1:27:23Ashley Flowers?

  We just found out that police did find and talk to that woman. She denied the entire thing.

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:27:30Ashley Flowers?

  She says she hasn't been to Taos since 2014. She didn't visit Sierra, denied even knowing Melissa or Sierra, and said that she was confused as to how or why her name was even being brought up in the investigation.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  Wait.

• 1:27:46Ashley Flowers?

  Dude, this is-

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  But there's like, but what?

• 1:27:49Ashley Flowers?

  This is the weirdest thing to me. Now, we tried reaching out to this woman, but as of this recording, we've been unsuccessful. If she hears this, I would love to talk to you. Again, my email, [email protected].

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  Wait, so, so this visit didn't happen?

• 1:28:07Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know. This is like, Mark and Ciara both still say that this thing happened. I just can't get to the bottom of who this woman is. Like, did she have ties to Melissa? And now she's distancing herself? Did she like make up ties to Melissa? And she's connected to something or someone? If you don't believe that this woman, whoever she is, if you don't believe she's lying, and you want to say that like Mark made this story up, you have to remember-

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  Ciara's in on it.

• 1:28:37Ashley Flowers?

  Ciara's the one who saw her. Like, say whatever you will about Mark and Melissa's relationship. Ciara and her mom were so close. I cannot imagine why on earth she would ever make anything like that up. I don't think that that happened.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  So are we like circling back to the conspiracy theory then?

• 1:28:55Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, like-

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  Like-

• 1:28:56Ashley Flowers?

  It crossed my mind. I don't know what to believe about this woman. I am just hoping she reaches out so we can sort all this out. Again, I mean, we know that like interviews are quick, maybe they're not thorough. Maybe something's lost in translation or missing like a very simple explanation. I don't know.

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  Do you think that there's any world where Ciara would protect her dad if he asked her to go along with something? Like, she's already lost one parent. And if everyone is trying to come down on your dad, and you believe in your heart of hearts that he's innocent, like-

• 1:29:28Ashley Flowers?

  No, I mean-

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  If he asks you to do something-

• 1:29:30Ashley Flowers?

  I see where you're going, but like, no. It doesn't seem like she would do something like that from talking to her. But I will say like, there is something about Mark that I still just can't quite figure out. Like, I've tried to tell this story in as streamlined a way as possible, but there were all these rabbit holes along the way that often came from stuff that he said or did that was odd, but then ultimately led nowhere. Because that kind of unresolved weirdness is all over this case casting a shadow. Like, for instance, and like, I didn't even get into this earlier. Mark had originally told a story about the morning of the 26th when he and Melissa drove to work

• 1:30:11Ashley Flowers?

  that involved them stopping at this particular gas station on their way. And so, in part of like looking for Melissa and looking into this, police pulled footage. They were never there, which seems fishy as hell, except security footage put them both like going through the gate at Los Alamos after this. Like when she's dropping Mark off at work.

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and like, we also see her like the rest of the day until 2.

• 1:30:35Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, she brings her daughter lunch. She's on camera. She's by herself. She seems fine. So, it's why I didn't bring it up early. Like, it means nothing? But then you're like, well, then where did this even come from? Because you're not talking to Mark like a year later. Like, it's right when it happened. And I'm also like, what's with him being so defensive and aggressive? Like, I honestly get him acting like that towards us. Like, we flat out asked the guy if he killed his wife, like who he believes walked out on him. But he was like this with her family long before we came along.

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  I mean, do you think her bringing Ciara lunch was like a little way of saying goodbye? Like, we haven't really talked about like if that was something normal for her to do? Like, if she brought Ciara lunch often, if it was something that they did together?

• 1:31:17Ashley Flowers?

  I assume no, because like she would normally be at work, right? Like, she just doesn't go to work today and that's why she's doing this? And so I think it's easy to be like, oh yeah, she wanted to see her one more time. But like, if this was a goodbye, it was the shortest goodbye ever. Like, she is literally in and out giving her this sandwich in like a minute. So, maybe, maybe she wanted to see her one more time, maybe not. Like, I feel like this is one of those things you could read either way. Was this just like a mom doing something nice for her daughter real quick? Because that's just the kind of mom she was? And it wasn't a long interaction because she planned on seeing her later at home? Or was this a goodbye? One more look at her baby girl who she knew she might never see again? One quick glance hurried because she had to get moving before her family started coming home?

• 1:32:01Ashley Flowers?

  Then even that doesn't make sense because why would she wait so long to leave? Like, we haven't talked about that. Like, she could have gotten a way better head start if she had left in the morning.

• 1:32:11Speaker 01

  Right, because no one, like, was ex- she had told so many stories to kind of free up the day, explain where she was.

• 1:32:19Ashley Flowers?

  After Sierra goes to work, she doesn't have to be, as far as I know, seen by anyone. Right? I am really obsessed with trying to figure out where Melissa was for the rest of the day. I'm convinced that that has to hold some kind of clue. And interestingly, while we know geofencing is no longer an option for police, like, about phone data and who was maybe like around her house, I don't think phone data is totally off the table. Agent Mata says that there was another company who offered to do something similar to geofencing for a fee of about five grand. But the agency actually decided against it for now. They said it was partly over the cost, partly because they don't know how it would hold up in court if this case ever becomes criminal.

• 1:33:05Ashley Flowers?

  And I know our listeners are like, "Show up." I even talked to the family. I'm like, "Listen, do we need to like, fundraise? Do you guys need the funds?" Like, in my mind, even if you can't hold it up in court, like, does it give you something when you have nothing?

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  Either an answer or like a non-answer, like,

• 1:33:18Ashley Flowers?

  Right.

• 1:33:18Speaker 01

  to rule something out, right?

• 1:33:19Ashley Flowers?

  But I actually think there's like a better option. So, it sounds like what they were looking at, if it's close to geofencing, is about putting other phones in proximity to hers, or like an area. I am more interested in where her phone was before it was wiped. And I know that that data is still available. You see, I got schooled recently. I was out in the desert, hanging out with some cadaver dogs and their amazing handlers, as one does. And the woman who was organizing this search, her name is Candace Cooley. She is a badass. She was always a canine handler, but after her son Dylan was murdered in 2022,

• 1:34:00Ashley Flowers?

  she took her work to the next level, and she created a nonprofit called Dylan's Legacy after that. And while her work is mostly around dog searches, when you're doing a dog search, you have to figure out where to start your search, your cadaver search, right? And she learned something that she is now on a mission to share with every law enforcement officer who will listen because it has the potential to be a huge unlock for investigating cases in the digital age.

• 1:34:29Ashley Flowers?

  When it comes to phones, everyone's always thinking about cellphone providers, towers, pings. And yeah, that usually requires a warrant. But by the way, all of those apps on your phone, Facebook, Instagram, AccuWeather, you've been giving all of them permission to follow every step you take. If like cookies are accepted, honestly, sometimes they're doing it anyways. And that data doesn't just live in your phone. The companies collect it, the companies store it, and in some cases, they're sharing it or selling portions of it, which means that it's not private data, right? That means that investigators don't have to rely on cell towers only.

• 1:35:13Ashley Flowers?

  They can go to these companies and even though like there's this common belief that you have to have a warrant to get that data from those companies, that is not true. So there are other ways to figure out where a phone has been. Now, all law enforcement knows about like getting a warrant. But Candace said that she was surprised at how many agencies she goes into who are unaware about using exigent circumstances, which means you contact these companies, claim exigent circumstances, and still get the data without a warrant because, remember, the data we're saying is not private. And so this, you can get all of the data points for someone's location. Where were they moving? And that's what Candace is trying to get across. Like, so take Melissa's case, right? We know she had Facebook.

• 1:35:58Ashley Flowers?

  Mata could request data from Meta, which depending on her settings, might include location-related information from that day, which might clear up a lot.

• 1:36:10Speaker 01

  But knowing this case, it also might throw a massive curveball into it.

• 1:36:16Ashley Flowers?

  Honestly, it probably would throw a massive curveball. But like, at least we would be one step closer to the truth. Now, the thing is, another thing I need to make sure people are hearing this mentioning, if this is a new concept to anyone, especially if you're in law enforcement or have a family who's missing, even if you get there, right? Like, even if you do the exit circumstances, they give you the data, what you'll end up with is this massive pile of data points, likely in some kind of spreadsheet. Now, traditionally, that means that someone has to, like, sit down, analyze it, which can take time. I mean, we're still waiting on test results a year later to know what blood was in Melissa's house. I don't have high hopes that police just have, like, someone on deck to go through data. But good news, it is easier now than it's ever been.

• 1:36:57Ashley Flowers?

  There is a platform called Badge Apps that lets investigators map phone data from carriers, from Google, Snapchat, and more, track phones in real time, and manage the whole legal process in one place. So I would encourage anyone whose loved one vanished with their phone in the social media age to press their detective to look into this. Maybe it will lead to answers, maybe it will just lead to more questions. And that's kind of where I am with this whole case. Every time I think I have a handle on it, something shifts. A new detail that doesn't quite fit, or a conspiracy theory sweeping the internet that, of course, has some kind of maybe tie or cast a shadow over this case, because why wouldn't it?

• 1:37:39Ashley Flowers?

  It feels like the farther we get out from June 26, 2025, the further we are from any real answers. But I think real answers are there if we can get more real facts. We don't know if Melissa walked away from a life that had become unbearable. We don't know if someone made sure she couldn't come back. We don't even know why she was on Highway 518 on the afternoon of June 26, 2025. We just know that she was there, and then she vanished. We spoke to a lot of people for this episode. Mark, Ciara, Melissa's parents and siblings, her stepdaughters, her niece Jasmine, some friends,

• 1:38:22Ashley Flowers?

  and the two sides disagree on almost everything. But strip it all away, and everyone says some version of the same thing. They just want to find Melissa. And if she is out there, all they're asking is that she lets them know that she's okay. Because no matter which side they're on, that is the part that's eating them alive, the not knowing. So if anyone out there has information about what happened to Melissa Casillas, New Mexico State Police want to hear from you. There is a reward available for information, and you can reach them at 505-425-6771. And that goes for Melissa, too, if she's out there.

• 1:39:17Speaker 06

  Actually, check your texts. Marilyn just sent me more shit.

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  Get the fuck out of here.

• 1:39:22Speaker 06

  No, I swear to God. A lot more shit. I'm gonna touch base with our after the report.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  You what?

• 1:39:30Speaker 06

  It's a jumble. I'm confused, which has been like basically me and Paul's case.

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  I don't really understand all this.

• 1:39:39Speaker 06

  I don't even sort of understand it. I'm like, oh my God.

• 1:39:44Ashley Flowers?

  Is this related to Melissa Casillas?

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  Yes, of course it is.

• 1:39:47Ashley Flowers?

  Oh, no. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkie.com.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  And you can follow us on Instagram at @crimejunkiepodcast.

• 1:39:56Ashley Flowers?

  We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

• 1:40:14Ashley Flowers?

  Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. I think Chuck would approve.

• 1:40:23Speaker 06

  When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir, and that can only mean one thing. Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful. You never know what might follow you home. So gather round, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.