Taos County woman, LANL employee missing for two months

TALPA — Melissa Casias, 53, was last seen in Taos County on June 26 walking eastbound on N.M. 518 toward Carson National Forest near Talpa, a historic settlement at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Then, as far as anyone knows or has so far said publicly, Casias vanished.

Two months after she was last seen, the question of where the Ranchos de Taos resident and Los Alamos National Laboratory employee went next continues to confound Casias’ family and New Mexico State Police investigators, who’ve reported no breakthroughs in the case.

“I’m worried that this case is going to go cold,” Jazmin McMillen, Casias’ niece, told the Journal on Monday. “I’m worried that people are going to stop coming forward sharing what they know.”

Casias remains listed as “missing, endangered” in missing persons databases. McMillen said tips have continued to come in, but so far none have led to answers.

McMillen referenced a recent report of a blue Dodge truck seen at an Albuquerque cemetery. The vehicle, McMillen said, was similar to one a close family friend reported seeing near Casias the day she was last seen walking down the Taos County highway.

“A LANL badge fell out of the truck,” McMillen said, but she noted that the badge didn’t belong to her aunt. “State police contacted the driver and cleared the vehicle.”

New Mexico State Police confirmed that a local business surveillance camera caught Casias’ last known movements on N.M. 518, depicting the 5-foot-4-inch, brown-haired, brown-eyed Hispanic woman on foot shouldering a backpack and wearing a light-colored shirt, jeans and tennis shoes.

The morning she went missing, Casias’ family told the Journal she returned home after driving to LANL with her husband, Mark Casias, who also works at the national research center. Casias told him she forgot her work badge shortly after they pulled into the lab around 6 a.m.

After returning to Taos, where she planned to work from home, Casias visited her daughter, Sierra Casias, at a cafe in John Dunn Shops near Taos Plaza and gave her a Subway sandwich. A surveillance camera in the popular tourist area captured the 53-year-old leaving close to 1 p.m., carrying a check her daughter had given her to cash.

But Casias never completed the errand — her daughter returned home to Ranchos de Taos around 3:30 p.m. that day to find the door to the family’s house locked and her mother’s car in the driveway. Once inside, she found her mother’s purse, wallet, cellphones, cash and the check, but the 53-year-old was nowhere to be found.

“Her work and personal phone were both at home, and both phones had been factory reset,” McMillen said. “They had been completely wiped. So that was an immediate red flag.”

Not long after, Mark Casias was dropped off at the house by a LANL co-worker. Around 5 p.m. he reported his wife missing. Later that evening, a family acquaintance said he’d spotted Casias walking down N.M. 518.

Several members of Melissa Casias’ extended family, some of whom live in Albuquerque, immediately came to Taos to help search for her, including McMillen.

“We had over a hundred people come look for Melissa and take photos for police,” McMillen said.

A few days following Casias’ disappearance, Taos Search and Rescue also organized a search along N.M. 518 using canine units in the hopes of sniffing out evidence that might point to where the Taos County woman went.

Casias was an avid hunter and archer and would often recreate in the forests with her family near the highway. Her social media is filled with images of her, her daughter and her husband posing with big game they’d hunted in the wilds of northern New Mexico. Some members of the local bowhunting community also came out to help search.

McMillen described her aunt lovingly as a “badass.”

“She loves her family, she loves nature, she loves her daughter. She’s funny,” McMillen said. “She made me laugh so hard the last time I saw her, which was like, literally days before all of this happened.”

The last time McMillen saw Casias was at Sierra Casias’ graduation party on June 21.

“We don’t make it up to Taos as much as we should, but we were there for Sierra’s graduation,” she said. “It was just nice, you know, nice to visit with her. She was in a really good mood, and we were all really happy and proud of Sierra. Her mom is really quick-witted, and she made this very perfectly placed Seinfeld reference that made me laugh.”

McMillen said her aunt didn’t have any known mental health issues, but she mentioned that Casias is a thyroid cancer survivor who has taken medication following her illness.

Mark Casias did not respond to requests for comment for this story, but on Aug. 9 he posted a plea on Facebook for his wife to come home.

“It’s been the hardest six weeks of our life (without you),” he wrote, ending with the simple request: “Please call us … we are waiting.”

Crime Stoppers is offering a $2,500 reward for information regarding Casias’ whereabouts, and her family is offering $5,000.

Tips can be made by calling New Mexico State Police Dispatch at 505-425-6771.