The attorney general’s office created two specialist positions to look into cold cases involving Missing and Murdered Indigenous People but needs more funding if it’s going to achieve a high rate of success.
“We ended up self-funding everything for this to happen,” Mark Probasco, an attorney from the attorney general’s office told KOB. “We ended up diverting resources from other work our agency does just to prioritize this issue and put it at the forefront. I’d be very interested to hear what the answer is up in Santa Fe for how many positions we can fund because there are, I think, over 600 cases over the past seven years or so here in Albuquerque, that involve Indigenous survivors or victims of things like homicide.”
A bipartisan bill, Senate bill 12, signed into law by the governor this year created the specialist positions to look into cold cases across the state. The specialists are charged with re-examining leads, and testimony, and working with state, federal, and tribal law enforcement jurisdictions. The specialists remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of their work but have made progress, according to the attorneys.
“They actually can take these investigations and get them across the finish line," Probasco told KOB, "and we’re going to have our first few prosecutions as a result of this initiative in the next few months,”
Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, especially women is a crisis of unknown proportions. While many cases go unreported, there are parents like Lela Mailman, who continues to make it known her daughter Melanie James has been missing since being last seen in Farmington on April 22, 2014.
“It’s a living nightmare to go through, what I’m going through right now, it’s very hard,” Lela Mailman told KOB. “We had pulled up to my work and I told her to be back by 5 because I’m getting off. She said she will. She said she was going to go to the college to enroll and then she’s going to look for a job and be back at five. The last thing I said to her was, I gave her a hug, and told her I loved her.”
Melanie James was 22 at the time of her disappearance, and there are virtually no clues on who might have abducted her or whether she is still alive. Mailman told KOB she hasn’t been contacted by the specialists yet, but might attempt to reach out to them. She said she has been part of the MMIW program for eight years.
“I’ve seen it grow from a small table to two tables, people are starting to come out and talk about their missing and murdered loved ones,” she said. “I’m not going to give up, I’m not going to give up, I’m going to keep looking.”
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