Darlene Gomez has been an attorney for more than two decades. She’s also been a longtime champion for missing and murdered Indigenous people (MMIP).
“I’ve always combined my practice. My first case was in 2000,” she told Dateline. It was the case of an Indigenous woman named Betty Lee, found murdered that year near Farmington, New Mexico. “I was actually interning at the district attorney’s office in Farmington,” Darlene said. It was that case that started Darlene on her advocacy journey.
And, less than a year later, it became personal. “My friend Melissa Montoya went missing,” Darlene said.
“Our families were connected with a -- we shared the same aunt,” she said. They are second cousins. “We’ve always gotten together as families and we’ve been in the area -- her family and my family -- you know, since like the 1800s.” Melissa’s disappearance in 2001 quickly became a driving force for Darlene. She now provides general counsel for Medicine Wheel Ride — a non-profit that creates awareness and fundraises for issues affecting Indigenous people. She has taken on dozens of MMIW cases pro bono. Her work entails organizing rallies, liaising with authorities, fundraising, working with the media, providing emotional support, and creating social media content, among other things.
One of the cases Darlene is helping with is the 2014 disappearance of Melanie James in Farmington. Melanie’s case was recently featured in Season 3 of the Dateline: Missing in America podcast.
No matter how many cases Darlene takes on, she says she will never give up fighting for justice for Melissa.
MELISSA’S STORY
In 2001, 42-year-old Melissa Montoya lived with her boyfriend in Colorado, just across the border from New Mexico. Their home was a half hour’s drive north of Melissa’s hometown of Dulce, New Mexico, on the Jicarilla Apache Nation Reservation.
Darlene says that while Melissa often showed her a softer side, she was a very strong woman, in more ways than one. “She worked on a ranch. She was physically strong,” she said. “Someone who was very strong and independent and fierce.”
But, according to Darlene, that strength was tested by Melissa’s tumultuous relationship with her boyfriend. “Melissa had been in a really violent domestic abuse relationship,” Darlene said. “And the abuse just chronically got worse and worse. And she was definitely afraid to leave him.”
In March of 2001, though, it looked like that was about to change. “She was back in New Mexico,” Darlene said. “She was in the process of ending that relationship with her then-boyfriend.”
Darlene told Dateline Melissa’s family offered to have her stay with them, but Melissa declined. “She just was very proud,” Darlene said. “She came from a family that was impoverished… The family home that she grew up in didn’t have running water and, you know, it’s very, very small.”
At the time, according to Darlene, there wasn’t really anywhere else for Melissa to go. “There was not any domestic violence shelters in our area,” she said. “The reservation did not have housing for single women.” So Melissa continued to live with her boyfriend.
Dateline spoke with two of Melissa’s cousins, Melanie and Melody Gomez, both nearly two decades younger than Melissa. Melody says she was one of the only people to witness Melissa’s relationship up close. “I actually had the opportunity to visit her in her home, which a lot of people didn’t -- weren’t able to do,” she said.
She describes her cousin’s boyfriend as “very, very controlling” saying he didn’t let people have access to Melissa. “Because I was so young, I think he felt that I was not a threat to -- to, you know, his actions and his behaviors.”
Melody says she never saw Melissa’s boyfriend abuse her physically, but she recalls a time he got upset when she and Melissa were just having fun. “Her and I, I guess, maybe were laughing and got too loud,” she recalled. “He was very quick to go intervene -- to overhear the conversation and very quickly stop that level of, I would-- I would call it, like, enjoyment.”
In that moment, Melody saw Melissa shrink back. “She immediately kind of had, like, a reclusive behavior and kind of just stood back,” she said. “I felt the tension. I felt bad. I kind of got a little scared… After that I knew that when her and I interacted in front of him it had to just be in a certain manner.”
Over time, Melody’s interactions with Melissa became less frequent. “He was so controlling that they stayed home out at their ranch the majority of the time,” she said. “You would only see her come into town, like, for supplies.”
But Melody did see Melissa one last time before she disappeared. “I was one of the last people to speak to her the night she went missing.”
THE DAY MELISSA DISAPPEARED
On March 9, 2001, Melissa went out to a St. Patrick’s Day party at a local bar called the Apache House of Liquor. The bar’s nickname was “The Zoo.” “It’s no longer there anymore,” Darlene Gomez said. According to NamUs, Melissa was believed to be wearing blue jeans and brown boots.
Melody Gomez remembers her last conversation with Melissa. “She talked to me for probably over an hour and we had a really good interaction,” she said. Melody got the impression Melissa was getting ready to make the move. “She told me where she was going. She told me she was newly single. She told me all these, you know, really good things. And I was really happy because then I thought, you know, ‘Now we can interact with you more.’”
Dateline spoke with Ree Vicenti, a friend of Melissa’s, who says she was also at “The Zoo” the night of March 9, 2001. “Every now and then I would bump into her,” she said. March 9 was one of those nights. “I was asking her how she was doing and we just started catching up,” Ree said. “She wasn’t acting like herself. She was kind of acting a little bit like -- like something was bothering her.” Ree says she ordered them a couple of drinks. “She had this look on her face like she was, like, worried,” she remembered.
According to Ree, a man she believed to be Melissa’s boyfriend approached Melissa and the two started talking. “I had no idea what they were saying,” Ree said. “They kind of got in a little argument right there.” Ree says Melissa then asked the man to give her some space. “She kind of told him, ‘OK, all right. Leave me alone. I’m sitting over here talking to my friend,’” she said. The women caught up for about an hour after that, Ree says, then the man told Melissa it was time to go. “She walked out. She walked out first and then he walked like behind her, and they left,” Ree said.
“She walked out the door that night and has never been seen since,” Darlene Gomez said.
Jicarilla Apache Nation Police Department Criminal Investigator Chris Rafferty told Dateline that their agency began investigating Melissa’s case “within a month after she went missing.”
According to Rafferty, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was also involved in the investigation. “They went out and did this interview to talk with the people on the property, did a couple of surveys of the individual that we believe was involved with her disappearance,” Rafferty said. “And then they kind of just fizzled out from there.”
Rafferty confirmed that their department was aware of issues between Melissa and her boyfriend. “They’d had fights before, cops had spoken to her before,” he said.
Rafferty says that authorities did talk to the boyfriend after Melissa vanished, and he told them he didn’t know anything about her disappearance. “He says they weren’t together at the bar, but we had a lot of witnesses that said they were,” he said.
“They never found a body and then the suspect actually died shortly afterwards,” Rafferty said. He confirmed the suspect was Melissa’s boyfriend. According to Rafferty, “he was the one that she left with the night that she went missing.”
The investigation into the boyfriend’s death was handled by the Archuleta County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado. Dateline requested the files from the department and a records technician replied that “there are no corresponding records found per the retention schedule,” which states that “all non-criminal death cases are held for 10 years.” Jicarilla Apache Nation PD Criminal Investigator Chris Rafferty told Dateline that shortly after the boyfriend’s death, his home in Colorado burned down.
Melody Gomez happened to see that fire. “I was coming home late that one evening and I could see the flames from the highway, which is several miles from the-- where the property is located,” she said. “The heat was so extreme that just barely trying to roll down your window, you could feel it just kind of emanating through, you know, through your vehicle.”
Chris Rafferty told Dateline that while there were no ground searches conducted for Melissa, authorities did look at that Colorado property. “They did go out to the residence of the suspect and did a preliminary search there,” Rafferty said. “They ended up not being able to find anything.”
“No remains, no clothes, no personal belongings were found,” Rafferty said. “She left a bar after a St. Patrick’s Day dance, that was pretty much it.”
NO MOVEMENT
Melissa Montoya’s case has seen little movement over the years. “It was like she just fell off the face of the earth, basically,” Melanie Gomez told Dateline. Melanie and her sister Melody say no one in the family knew what to do after their cousin vanished. “In those rural areas, there’s no resources,” Melanie said.
“Very, very, very little media attention has been brought to this,” Melody said. “At home we’re raised by our families to be loved and valued and important -- feel important -- and then it’s sad when we leave our homes that same importance is not placed on us.” She says the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) is one that transcends her cousin’s case. “I personally know three or four people that are missing,” she noted. “And for the -- the population of the towns that we live in, that is a high, high number.”
“It’s like so many people from that area, the reservation, are coming up missing or have been missing for years and it’s like nobody even cares,” Melanie said.
The Jicarilla Apache Nation Culture Committee shared a statement with Dateline about Melissa’s disappearance. “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples is an increasing issue facing our Native American communities, and if it happens to one, it could happen to us all,” the statement read. “Melissa Montoya is a beloved member of our Jicarilla Apache Nation community, and let us join together in bringing her home and closure to her missing case.”
After all this time, Melanie Gomez thinks there must be something that can be done to close her cousin’s case. “There’s gotta be something. There’s gotta be a clue,” she said.
RAISED HOPES
In May 2024, Darlene Gomez received an email she hoped would finally lead to answers.
“I received an email from a woman who was looking for her missing loved one from California and came across the NamUs record showing that human remains belonging to a Native American female between the ages of 30 years old and 60 years old were found in Dulce, New Mexico,” she said. “She went back and cross-referenced it to women who are missing from the area and found out the only woman that matched that description was Melissa Montoya.”
After she received that email, Darlene called the Jicarilla Apache Nation Police Department, the governor, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She had one goal in mind: “To try to start getting information as to what the process was to get her DNA tested against the bones that were found,” Darlene said.
The bones were actually discovered in 2020. “They were tested. Initially, they came back as a — as a female,” Chris Rafferty said. The investigator told Dateline the email to Darlene from the woman in California reinvigorated the investigation. They tested the bones again. “The technology we have now is slightly better than it was back then. They were able to confirm the bones were actually male,” he said. “So she was excluded,” Darlene said. It was not the outcome she’d been hoping for.
The past couple of months have been an emotional rollercoaster for Darlene. “I felt really horrible because, all along, the family felt like there was some hope to possibly bring Melissa home and bury her near her parents on this beautiful river on the Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation,” she said.
And at the end of the day, that’s all Melissa’s family wants, as well. “I don’t think anybody in the family realistically thinks that we will bring her home alive,” Melody said. “We would like to know what happened to her,” Melanie said. “My heart wants her to be found and buried and us not wondering what happened to her.”
At the time of her disappearance, Melissa was about 5’7” / 5’8” and weighed 155–165 lbs. “Ever since I was little, I always used to think she was, like, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen,” Darlene said. “I would say, ‘Oh,’ you know, ‘You’re just like the Brown Barbie.’” Melissa had brown eyes and dark hair. She would be 65 years old today.
Criminal Investigator Chris Rafferty told Dateline that his department has Melissa’s information on file. “Her dental records are on file, her DNA records to the family still is on file, fingerprints are on file,” Rafferty said. “So if any of those kind of come up, they should be able to link back to her.”
And he said, they’re still hoping to solve Melissa’s case, too. “We’re waiting for either bones to pop up [or] somebody to come forward with more information,” Rafferty said, adding that they’ve put out requests that anyone with information on missing persons come forward. “We have hunters and stuff out in the wood, they’ve been notified to, you know -- you see bones, say something.”
If anyone has any information about Melissa’s disappearance, they are asked to call the Jicarilla Apache Nation Police Department at 575-759-3222 or reach out to them via their Facebook page. In May 2024, attorney Darlene Gomez received an email she hoped would finally lead to answers.
“I received an email from a woman who was looking for her missing loved one from California and came across the NamUs record showing that human remains belonging to a Native American female between the ages of 30 years old and 60 years old were found in Dulce, New Mexico,” she said. “She went back and cross-referenced it to women who are missing from the area and found out the only woman that matched that description was Melissa Montoya.”
After she received that email, Darlene called the Jicarilla Apache Nation Police Department, the governor, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She had one goal in mind: “To try to start getting information as to what the process was to get her DNA tested against the bones that were found,” Darlene said.
The bones were actually discovered in 2020. “They were tested. Initially, they came back as a — as a female,” Chris Rafferty said. The investigator told Dateline the email to Darlene from the woman in California reinvigorated the investigation. They tested the bones again. “The technology we have now is slightly better than it was back then. They were able to confirm the bones were actually male,” he said. “So [Melissa] was excluded,” Darlene said. It was not the outcome she’d been hoping for.
The past couple of months have been an emotional rollercoaster for Darlene. “I felt really horrible because, all along, the family felt like there was some hope to possibly bring Melissa home and bury her near her parents on this beautiful river on the Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation,” she said.
Thinking back on the night of March 9, 2001, friend Ree Vicenti wishes she could have done something to help Melissa. “I wish I would have helped her more. I wish I would have knew what was going on,” she said. Ree hopes someone will come forward with information about Melissa’s whereabouts after she left the bar. “If we can find her, you know, everybody can bring her home,” she said.
And at the end of the day, that’s all Melissa’s family wants, as her cousins told Dateline. “I don’t think anybody in the family realistically thinks that we will bring her home alive,” Melody said. “We would like to know what happened to her,” Melanie said. “My heart wants her to be found and buried and us not wondering what happened to her.”
Melissa is about 5’7”-5’8” with brown eyes. At the time of her disappearance, she had dark hair and weighed 155–165 lbs. She would be 65 years old today.
“Our prayers continue for her return, and with her family, friends and relations,” The Jicarilla Apache Nation Culture Committee said in their statement to Dateline. They urge that anyone with information contact the Jicarilla Apache Nation Police Department.
Criminal Investigator Chris Rafferty told Dateline his department has Melissa’s information on file. “Her dental records are on file, her DNA records to the family still is on file, fingerprints are on file,” Rafferty said. “We’re waiting for either bones to pop up [or] somebody to come forward with more information,” Rafferty said, adding that they’ve put out requests that anyone with information on missing persons come forward. “We have hunters and stuff out in the wood, they’ve been notified to, you know, ‘You see bones, say something.’”
If anyone has any information about Melissa’s disappearance, they are asked to call the Jicarilla Apache Nation Police Department at 575-759-3222 or reach out to them via their Facebook page.
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