Crime Junkie - MISSING: Anthonette Cayedito

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

When a 9-year-old girl vanishes from her home overnight, investigators must try and overcome a lack of evidence and follow a number of shocking, but ultimately dead-end tips that have them convinced she is still out there somewhere more than 3 decades later.If you see Anthonette or have any information about her disappearance or current whereabouts, please contact the Gallup Police via Crime Stoppers at 1-877-722-6161. You can also go online and submit a tip at tips.fbi.gov.And for more information on ending gender-based violence in tribal communities, visit the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center niwrc.org.For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/.Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-anthonette-cayedito/

Hi, crime junkies, I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And today, we're releasing an extra episode about a case that needs all the publicity it can get. This was actually released in the fan club. This was one of their bonus episodes that the fan club members made possible. And we hardly ever release fan club content wide, but I know our members are gonna understand

because this is an open and active case, which needs all the attention it can get. And that is what all of our crime junkies are all about, making a difference. And together, I think we can make a difference with this case. I mean, if you listened to our episode on a Wachigi Asiola, then you know

that our listeners over on the deck made real strides in getting justice for her. And this case needs your support too, because it's about a young girl who vanished from her home in the middle of the night and the trail of shocking tips that have many convinced that she is still out there somewhere, even more than three decades later.

This is the story of Anthony Nett Caedito. This is Anthony Nett Caedito. It's 7 a.m. on Sunday, April 6th, 1986, and a woman named Penny Caedito is just waking up. She sits up already thinking about her plans for the day, which include getting her three young daughters out of bed and ready for Bible study at the church that they attend in Gallup, New Mexico.

It shouldn't be too hard to get them going because all three slept in bed with her the night before. So as she's orienting herself, she looks over to check on them. She sees one, then two girls snuggled up with her, but her oldest, Anthony Nett, isn't there. Now it wouldn't be weird for her nine-year-old to have gotten up at some point and gone to her own bed,

so Penny gets up to go check on her. But when she gets to her room, it's empty. So is the living room and the kitchen and the bathroom. Penny's worry is slowly starting to grow at this point. And when she glances over to the front door of the house, she sees something that makes her heart sink even further. The screen door and the outer front door are both unlocked. Now she swears that she locked both doors

the night before, so she is full on panicking as she comes to the realization that Anthony Nett isn't anywhere in the house. But even through her fear, Penny doesn't waste any time and immediately jumps into action. She grabs her two other daughters, five-year-old Wendy and seven-year-old Sinita,

and they head outside to look for Anthony Nett, all three still in their pajamas. They search the yard, her favorite spots around the neighborhood, and they even go door-to-door asking if anyone knows where she is. But house after house, they get the same answer. No one has seen her. By now, it's around 11 a.m.

And according to an article by Patrice Locke for Albuquerque Journal, Penny calls the Gallup Police Department and tells them what's going on. She explains that she'd gone out Saturday night. She's a 33-year-old mom of three, so she decided to treat herself. She left the girls with a babysitter

and then got home shortly after midnight. And after the babysitter left, she and all three girls crawled into bed and eventually fell asleep. And the last she saw Anthony Nett was at about 3 a.m., sound asleep next to her sisters. Now, just a reminder, Anthony Nett is nine, but Penny is told that she has to wait at least eight hours

before she can file a missing persons report. Feeling completely on her own, Penny decides to call Anthony Nett's father, 35-year-old Larry Estrada. Penny and Larry are divorced, but he seems to still be pretty involved in Anthony Nett's life, even though she lives with her mom full-time.

And just as a quick side note, Wendy and Sonita have a different father than Anthony Nett, who Penny also isn't with. So Penny explains to him what's going on and Larry immediately heads over to the house. Penny, Larry, and the girls spend the rest of the day gathering friends and family who help search the neighborhood and the surrounding area

for any signs of Anthony Nett. And I mean, they're searching everywhere, vacant, lots, abandoned fields, as well as continuing to go door to door. But by the end of the day, they are no closer to finding her. By Monday, the police finally decide to start looking for Anthony Nett too.

And they begin by basically doing the same thing that Penny and her family did, going door to door and searching through the neighborhood. They also do decide to call in the state police, search and rescue team for some extra support. Now, while they're out searching, other officers sit down with Penny, Larry, and the girls for an interview.

And that's when Larry tells them that Sonita told him she heard something that may explain what happened to her sister. Sonita says that at some point while they were sleeping, she heard a loud knock on the front door. It was so loud that it woke her and Anthony Nett up. And as they kept listening, they heard a man and a woman saying

that they were their aunt and uncle and that the girls needed to open the door. But they didn't recognize the voices. And so they didn't even respond. Now, for some reason, this didn't really worry them, at least not enough to wake up their mom. So both girls just went back to sleep. But that first knock wasn't the last disturbance.

Sonita doesn't know when, but she says that sometime later, they were woken up again by more knocking at the door. But this time, Anthony Nett actually got out of bed and went to go investigate. But Sonita quickly drifted back to sleep and didn't wake back up until later that morning when Penny realized that Anthony Nett was gone.

Obviously, Sonita didn't hear what happened after her sister got up, which is devastating because police are sure that this has to be when Anthony Nett disappeared. She must have opened the door for whoever was knocking the second time. Penny and Larry insist that she would have only opened the door if she knew the person or persons on the other side.

But, you know, when I think about it, if the people knocking said that they were family, then Anthony Nett would have maybe assumed that she did know them. So after police finished talking to the family, they searched the house themselves. They don't really find much. As far as I can tell, there isn't anything

like fingerprints or other evidence on the door. And the only thing missing is the pink nightgown that Anthony Nett was wearing when she disappeared. So based on Sonita's account, they're pretty sure that Anthony Nett likely opened the front door on her own since there are no signs of forced entry. And then she either left willingly

or was forcibly taken. And as they're talking to other neighbors, this witness comes forward with information that actually helps solidify that theory. According to that same article by Patrice Locke, an elderly neighbor tells officers that at like 6.30 a.m. on the morning Anthony Nett disappeared, that neighbor noticed a brown older model truck

with New Mexico plates pulling up to Penny's house. After it parked, she says that a man got out and went up to the front door. Now unfortunately, she says she didn't really pay attention to what he was doing so she can't describe the man to police. But her description of the car at least gives them something. So investigators ask Larry and Penny if they know anyone with a brown truck.

They say they don't, but that doesn't necessarily rule out their theory that Anthony Nett knew the man who came to the door. I mean, it's totally possible that someone they know got a truck recently or borrowed it from someone else for this exact purpose. Now unfortunately though, after this tip about the truck, a few days go by with no new leads. After not finding any evidence or signs of Anthony Nett,

the state police search and rescue call off their search on Wednesday. And by Thursday, the investigators turn to the public for help. By setting up a tip line with the Gallup McKinley crime stoppers. They offer a reward of up to $500 for information hoping that someone else will come forward. But that doesn't even stir up any tips. So literally by Friday, the Gallup police

feel like they've already hit a dead end. The only thing they can think to do is to go back through what information they have. Maybe something will like stick out to them. So they re-interview friends, they re-interview family asking if there's anything new that they remember. And they keep making pleas to the public for information. But after a few days, they are still stuck,

just running in circles. Since the investigation isn't getting anywhere, Larry and Penny do what they can to try and bring their daughter home. Larry considers hiring a private investigator. But Penny turns to her Navajo heritage and culture for help. That same article I mentioned earlier by Patrice Locke says that Penny invites a Navajo medicine woman to her home

to perform a ceremony that's supposed to give them information about Antoinette's location. Unfortunately though, my source material doesn't say if she got any answers. The only thing I know is that Antoinette remained missing. But even though the search for Antoinette stalls, the investigation does lead to the discovery of a different crime.

As the investigators have been going back through their information and re-interviewing literally anyone they can, they start talking to other kids in the neighborhood who knew Antoinette and her sisters. Basically they're trying to figure out if anyone had seen anything weird or if the kids noticed any kind of stranger

like lurking around, hanging around them. And wouldn't you know it, one man comes up over and over again. This 62 year old guy named Wesley Daniels. But the thing is his name doesn't actually come up in relation to Antoinette. Over the next few days, four boys between the ages of nine and 11 tell police that this guy

would often take them on picnics where he sexually assaulted them. The boys are able to give police enough information about the assaults for them to arrest Wesley. And he is charged with 12 felony sex crimes. Now, when it comes to Antoinette, investigators discover that he was in the neighborhood this Sunday that she went missing.

But Penny says that she doesn't think her daughter knew that guy. She even talked to one of the boys who returned from a picnic with Wesley the very day that Antoinette went missing. And he told her that she wasn't with them and had never come with them before. Now, granted it could have been possible for Wesley

to have taken Antoinette in the middle of the night and then see this boy later in the day. But the investigators don't really believe that he was involved in her disappearance because she doesn't fall into Wesley's typical victim profile. Like she is within the age range that he normally targeted, but she is a girl.

And all the reports they had were of Wesley targeting boys. According to the 2003 study, sexual abuse, a journal of research and treatment by Peggy Heil, Sean Allmire and Dominique Simons, only 36% of reported sex offenders target males and females. So while it's good that police got this guy off the streets,

this just means that they are back to square one again. Over the following weeks, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reaches out and they put Antoinette into their system. Police also re-interview her family members again, including some extended family, and they even give them polygraphs, which everyone seems to pass with flying colors.

I mean, they're so desperate, they even try hypnosis on Penny, but it doesn't turn up anything new. But here's the thing, even though the investigation isn't turning up anything formal that they can use, the rumor mill in Gallup is running wild. I mean, this is a small town and in typical small town fashion, it seems like everyone has an opinion on what happened.

And for some reason, most people place all of the blame on Penny. I mean, some even go so far as to say that she killed Antoinette and staged the disappearance. Now, of course, the police cleared Penny almost immediately, but rumors about what people think happened make it difficult to keep accurate information in the public eye.

And again, this is the big problem with rumors and speculation and people talking about things as though it's fact without actually knowing the fact. This isn't just a game, it actually hinders investigations. In this case, and in cases that we talk about that are happening today, eventually a full year goes by, and the case is cold by all definitions of the term.

The investigators and Antoinette's family are desperate for a breakthrough. And on Sunday, April 12th of 1987, they actually get one. From the last person that they were expecting to hear it from. Officers get a call at the Gallup Police Department, and when they pick it up, what they hear on the other end sends chills down their spines. We're gonna play that call for you now,

but just be warned, there are sounds of a child in distress, so it can be hard to take in. Hello. I'm Antoinette, I'm Antoinette, I'm Antoinette, I'm Antoinette, I'm Antoinette, I'm Antoinette, okay, whereabouts in Albuquerque? Can you say you can use the phone? Hello?

No! No, no, no! Antoinette, where are you? Okay, so I know that was difficult to understand, but it starts out with a little girl saying, hello, I'm Antoinette Caedito, I'm Antoinette Caedito, I'm in Albuquerque, to which dispatchers ask, where in Albuquerque?

But before the little girl can respond, a male voice can be heard saying, who said you could use the phone? Then as the dispatcher is trying to figure out what's going on, the little girl starts screaming. Now, what we played isn't the entire call, the full recording has actually never been made public. And according to reporting by the Associated Press

for the Santa Fe, New Mexican, later in the call, there is another voice that can be heard in the background before the first man curses into the receiver and then the call ends abruptly. So this whole thing is a shock, but if it really is Antoinette, then it gives both officers and her family a lot of hope. I mean, if the caller is telling the truth,

she is alive and she is only two hours away. Police actually play the call for Penny just to make sure that it's really Antoinette. And when she hears it, she says she is 100% certain that that is her daughter. She says she knows for sure, by the way the girl pronounces her last name. And even though it's been a year,

she says a mother knows her child's voice. And the investigators agree with her too, not just because of her voice, but because the call didn't come through 911. You see, 911 wasn't established as the nationwide emergency number until 1999 when President Bill Clinton signed it into law. So before that time,

you had to have your local police station's number memorized if you had an emergency in many parts of the US. So because I don't think 911 was established, now it might have been established locally or not, but I think the theory is that the call came directly to the Gallup City Police Department. So they're thinking that a child from Albuquerque or somewhere else probably wouldn't have been taught

to memorize a number for a different town's police department. So in their minds, the child must be from Gallup. Though the one caveat I'll put just as I was kind of like going back and forth in my mind and really like mulling this over is if for some reason this were a hoax, and that's not unheard of in the Isabel Celis case

in Tucson, Arizona, there was actually a hoax where multiple young girls called into 911 pretending to be Issa when she was missing. So it does happen if that were the case, you could look the number up, but police think it's her, her parents think it's her, and even though it could be a hoax, I too think it was really her.

And this is the best lead that officers have had this whole time. So they put all of their resources into pursuing it, but the question is, what do you pursue? The city of Albuquerque? I mean, the call was too short to be traced, and despite trying to track the number, they got nothing except for a new fire

that this call sparked in the investigators because they are sure that Anthony is still out there, she is alive, and what they know is they need to find her. Now, ever since Nick Mac put Anthony in their system, they get the occasional tip and citing, they pass that off to investigators. And there is one tip that really piques their interest after this call.

You see, Nick Mac gets a tip from a teacher about a new student in her class. The girl matches the age and description of Anthony, and the teacher couldn't locate any of her previous school records. She says that she often saw the girl picked up in a car with Arizona license plates. So local police start to poke around

and see if the girl might be Anthony, but when they do start poking around, the girl is pulled from school, which obviously that is a huge red flag, so the police work to try and track her down. Now, this tip didn't come from Albuquerque, though. In fact, it doesn't even come from the Southwest. The teacher that reported this is in Seattle, Washington,

which results in the FBI getting involved since it's across state lines. Eventually, FBI officials track the girl down, but it's not Anthonyette. According to more reporting by Patrice Locke for Albuquerque Journal, the girl isn't Navajo. She's actually from Saudi Arabia, and the suspicious behavior was because she was, quote,

being hidden from a family member. So after this lead falls flat, another year goes by, and then another, and the case goes cold once again. In January of 1989, police attempt to bring it back into the public eye by releasing a clip of Anthonyette's call over a radio broadcast. Now, up until this point, they had kept it to themselves for so long for a lot of reasons,

but mostly for the child's safety. I mean, whether it was Anthonyette or not, finding out that she had called the police could have set the unknown offender or whoever had her off and resulted in harm to her. But with so much time having passed and having no new leads, the phone call is, honestly, it's all they've got.

It is their best bet. And sure enough, after releasing it, several calls come in. Unfortunately, though, police never released the nature of those tips. And I don't know if it matters if they do or not because it doesn't seem like they help the case go anywhere. Throughout the 1990s, investigators try and keep up their efforts as best as they can with new cases coming in.

I mean, the FBI is still helping out and they release an age-progressed photo of Anthonyette, like what she might look like in 1991 because she would be 14 at the time. And even that is kind of a shot in the dark, just something basically to keep her fresh in people's minds. But even though it was a shot in the dark, it actually kind of pays off.

About four months after the poster's release, police get a call from someone who sees the photo and they think that they've seen Anthonyette. The call is from a woman who works as a waitress in Carson City, Nevada, which is about a 14-hour drive from Gallup. She tells police that she recently waited on some diners and there was something about them that just seemed off.

It was a man and a woman who she described as quote-unquote unkempt and they were with a girl who looked to be about like 14 or 15 years old and this girl had a lot of physical similarities to Anthonyette. But what really stood out to her about this, I don't even wanna call it a family,

but about these people together was the girl's behavior. She says that the girl kept dropping her utensils on the ground and each time the waitress bent down to pick them up and then she would place them back on the table, the girl would squeeze her hand super hard. Now, I know all of you crime junkies are probably screaming right now because this is a huge red flag

and you've heard me say it a thousand times before but I'm gonna keep saying it. If you experience something like this or someone's behavior feels odd, don't please for the love of God, don't ignore it. It is better to be safe than sorry. And if you call the police and nothing turns out to be wrong,

it is better than waiting and wondering what if? What if what you just saw were the warning signs of something truly sinister? But for some reason, this girl's behavior in the moment wasn't worrisome enough that it made the waitress think that something was wrong. And she told police she just didn't think much of it at the time and she just went about her shift.

That is until the family left. That's when, according to an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, she went over and started clearing off the table. And when she lifted the girl's plate, she found a napkin underneath and written on the napkin were the words, quote, please help me call the police. But by then it was too late.

All three were long gone. And this whole situation is just heartbreaking because even if that wasn't Anthony, there was still a girl there who clearly needed help and didn't get any. And I'm sure the waitress felt the same way but my source material doesn't say whether she called the Carson City police that day or not.

All I know is that she ultimately made this call to investigators because when she saw Anthony's age progress photos, she thought that it was the girl who left the note. So I know police had to have made note of this tip, but I have no idea how or when they explore it. I mean, there isn't even a description of the couple that she was seen with except for that word unkempt.

All I do know is that eventually police just kind of add it to the growing pile of promising leads that just never pan out. And that puts them right back at the beginning. And when they go back to the beginning, that's the family. They decide to re-interview them again, which I know seems super repetitive, but in the end it is the right decision

because this time they actually learned something new. You see, police sit down with Wendy, who was the youngest of the sisters. She's now 10 years old. And in a twist that shocks everyone, including the rest of her family, she says that she remembers something new. Wendy tells police that when that second knock

at the door came, Sunita and Anthony weren't the only ones who woke up. She did too. And while Sunita fell right back to sleep, Wendy actually followed Anthony and stood back while she went to the door. She says that her sister called out and asked who was there through the closed door.

And a man's voice responded, Uncle Joe. Now the girls did have an Uncle Joe, but source material differs on exactly who he was. Like some articles say that he was Penny's brother-in-law, like married to her sister. Others say that Uncle Joe refers to Joe Estrada, who's Larry's brother.

But either way, Anthony must have believed that she knew the man outside. So Wendy says that she opened the door. But when she opened it, it wasn't a friendly family reunion on the other side. Wendy says that it was two men who immediately grabbed Anthony. Wendy watched as her sister kicked and said,

let me go. But the men moved too fast. And in an instant, she tells them they took Anthony to a brown van waiting outside and she was gone. Now Wendy's account of this second knock is a little bit different from Senita's account of what she heard the first time they had that knock.

Cause if you remember the first time she heard the knock, she said she heard a man and a woman. So I don't know if there is a woman involved at some point and she was there the first time or if it never was a woman, it was both men. I mean, all we know is that Senita never left the bed, whereas Wendy says she actually saw the crime take place. And police aren't hung up on the details of again,

man, woman, man, man. I mean, they're just wondering why Wendy stayed silent for so long, but she tells them that she never said anything because she thought that she would be in trouble for her actions. And I know this might not make sense in our adult minds, but Wendy was only five at the time. So I can't imagine how scary that was to witness

and then to think that you did something wrong. I mean, that type of guilt is hard for an adult to deal with, much less a five year old. So police ask Wendy if, you know, after all these years, can she describe the men? But she says she doesn't remember their faces. The best police can do is to try and track down that Uncle Joe, even though they're pretty sure

that was all like some kind of ruse. And they're even more sure because remember, Wendy said she didn't recognize the man either, but they still have to check. According to that episode of Unsolved Mysteries, they do find and interview him, and he provides them with an alibi and even has witnesses to back it up.

So he is cleared almost immediately. Now, what's interesting though is because of this, they don't think that this man or men or whoever took her were total strangers because they had to have known the family well enough to know about an Uncle Joe and to know that Anthony or the girls or someone would open the door for them, right? Or was this just the luckiest guess in the world?

The one thing I can't get over is also the idea that they weren't afraid of waking up penny. Like to me, there's something familiar about that as well. Like, did they know she had gone out? Did they know she was a heavy sleeper? Like, what about you knocking on the door and shouting makes you think that only the kids are gonna wake up? What was the plan?

Now, even with this new information from Wendy, police get no closer to narrowing down a suspect or Anthony's location. Even after all these years, Penny again turns to her Navajo heritage and has another medicine woman perform a traditional crystal ritual to try and locate her daughter

who would be 16 years old at this point. Now, what comes of this is that the medicine woman says Anthony is alive and may even have a child. She also tells Penny that Anthony is being held far from the city, but where exactly is still a mystery? Unfortunately, even after all of this time, rumors are still swirling around town that focus on Penny.

Some news articles even infer that investigators are suspicious of her when she takes a lie detector test that has inconclusive results. But my source materials don't clarify when this test was or what the nature of the questions were. And again, you all know my opinion on polygraph, so I personally don't put much weight into this account.

In June, 2005, the case gets revived when the Gallup Police Department brings it back up for reinvestigation as part of their efforts to solve the city's cold cases. Anthony's family still hasn't lost their hope either, even including Wendy. And while she doesn't have any new information, she says that the case affected

every member of their family. Most of all, Penny and Larry, who have both passed away by 2005. For Wendy, the guilt of not being able to help her sister like ate away at her over the years. Her and Sinita became estranged and she struggled with substance abuse and fell into some legal trouble

before she was able to get on her feet again. Anthony's case wouldn't get another push until April of 2022, when the FBI started up efforts to solve several cases, including Anthony's, by reaching out to the victim's indigenous communities for the very first time, if you can believe it. They released more than a dozen posters

with her picture and information in Navajo throughout the area. They also made audio clips of everything that was on the posters for those who can speak or understand the language, but maybe not read it. And even though this seems like it should have probably been done before,

especially since Gallup is super close to Navajo Nation, it's unfortunately not surprising that these efforts weren't made earlier. Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, or MMIWG, is an epidemic under-reported by the U.S. Department of Justice. And I and many other people can't help but wonder what might have happened if efforts to reach out

to the nearby indigenous communities had happened sooner? Would someone in those communities have come forward with information? And there are so many questions like this in the case. I mean, had police taken the missing persons report seriously as soon as Penny called, would they have been able to find her? Had that waitress at the restaurant

recognize the girl's behavior as warning signs, would Anthony or whoever that girl was be home with her family right now or be safe? Wendy is still out there and still believes that her sister is alive. And she will believe that until she gets finite proof otherwise. So she continues to communicate with the police

and work to bring her sister back. Anthony would be 45 years old today. She had freckles, moles on her right cheek, nose, both hands and her right ankle. She had a birthmark on her right cheek near the bridge of her nose, scars on her knee and lip and pierced ears. If you see Anthony or if you have any information

about her disappearance or current whereabouts, please contact the Gallup police via Crime Stoppers at 1-877-722-6161. You can also go online and submit a tip at tips.fbi.gov. And for more information on ending gender-based violence in tribal communities, visit the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center, n-i-w-r-c dot org.

To see all of our source material, you can find that on our blog post for this episode, crimejunkiepodcast.com. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram at primejunkiepodcast and I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?