Family pushes N.M. on missing persons
State now submits info to database that’s accessible to public as well as officials
A surveillance camera in downtown Santa Fe captured the last sighting of Mark Daniel Aguilar in 2016. Aguilar, who was 51 and homeless, had stopped checking in with his mother, as he had been doing regularly, to let her know he was OK and looking for work.
“My brother would not have gone voluntarily missing,” said Aguilar’s younger brother, 46-year-old James Aguilar of Ohkay Owingeh.
Santa Fe police say the case is still active. But after more than two years of wondering what might have happened to his brother and waiting for answers, James Aguilar said, he turned to a federal missing persons database that is accessible to both law enforcement and the public.
His brother still has not been found, he said, but the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, better known as NamUs, launched in 2007 by the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice, has given his family hope.
“We had a couple of individuals that resembled my brother, from tips that were called in, and NamUs took a very proactive stance in gathering information from the various investigative agencies,” James Aguilar said.
Late last year, he began approaching state lawmakers with a request for legislation requiring New Mexico to participate in the database project, as a half-dozen other states do. He later helped draft House Bill 16, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Joseph Sanchez of Alcalde.
The Mark Daniel Aguilar Information Sharing Requirement Act, one of the first bills to pass the House in this year’s legislative session, received unanimous approval in both chambers of the Legislature and was signed into law April 2 by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. It went into effect earlier this month, requiring the New Mexico Department of Public Safety, which has a statewide clearinghouse for missing persons data, to send information to NamUs within 30 days of receiving a missing person report.
“That was actually my priority bill,” Sanchez said.
New York, Tennessee, Illinois, Michigan, Oklahoma, Arkansas and West Virginia have passed similar legislation, according to officials with the Department of Public Safety.
While law enforcement agencies in the state already submit information on people who go missing to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, NamUs allows members of the public to to view profiles in the database and submit information about their missing loved ones along with photos.
The public also can communicate directly with NamUs staff to add medical information and notes about tattoos or birthmarks, and to discuss tips, such as possible sightings of a loved one.
Law enforcement agencies can use the database to access DNA profiles, dental records and fingerprints.
“Public accessibility, that’s the major difference,” said NamUs spokesman Todd Matthews.
An estimated 600,000 people are reported missing throughout the U.S. each year, according to the National Institute of Justice. Many are located quickly, and some reports are found to be based on a misunderstanding, which was the reason for the 30-day rule, Matthews said.
NamUs also logs data about unidentified human remains.
In 2017, the database was able to help identify the remains of an Albuquerque man whose body was found at the bottom of a waterfall in Kauai, Hawaii, in June 1987, NamUs said in a statement emailed by Matthews.
Through a collaboration with the FBI, NamUs staff were able to match the fingerprints of the body with the Albuquerque man’s fingerprints, taken in 1986 in Arizona. Then they found the man’s last known address in Albuquerque and contacted the Albuquerque Police Department, which provided contact information for the man’s daughter in Colorado.
“Once notified, the family stated that they had been looking for him for thirty years and were thankful to finally know what became of him,” NamUs said in the statement.
In a news release issued earlier this month about New Mexico’s participation in NamUs, state Indian Affairs Secretary Lynn Trujillo thanked the family of Mark Daniel Aguilar, who is from both Ohkay Owingeh and San Felipe Pueblo, for pushing for passage of HB 16.
The Native American community, in particular, has been affected by a high rate of missing persons cases.
The most recent New Mexico case listed on NamUs is Army veteran Cecelia Finona, 59, a Navajo woman who went missing May 30 in Farmington.
“I am dedicated to helping shine a light on the national missing and unidentified persons crisis,” Trujillo said in the news release. “For too long our communities have had limited access to information regarding missing person cases.”
The Department of Public Safety has added 155 missing New Mexicans to NamUs, including Aguilar and six other people from Santa Fe County. The youngest is Skyla Marburger, who was last seen in Santa Fe on Sept. 1, 1995, when she was less than a year old. Skyla, who is 24 if she is still alive today, had blue eyes and strawberry blond hair.
James Aguilar said he believes missing persons cases, particularly those involving adults, are often treated as lower priority cases by law enforcement agencies, and that information can languish in the FBI’s NCIC database.
“I do believe that this is an epidemic, and it does need to be recognized,” he said.
His family, meanwhile, is looking into a new tip that his brother might have been seen two months ago in Taos. He remains in regular contact with a NamUs regional program specialist, Aguilar said.
In March, he added, NamUs staff were able to confirm a purported sighting in March in Las Vegas, Nev., was not his brother.
Mark Daniel Aguilar was last seen by his family in Santa Fe on Sept. 4, 2016. Surveillance video showed him visiting the New Mexico Workforce Connection office on West De Vargas Street on Oct. 18, 2016. In December of that year, his family reported him missing.
They are offering a reward for information on his whereabouts or information that leads to the arrest and conviction of anyone who might be responsible for his disappearance.
Mark Daniel Aguilar, who is 54 if he is still alive, is described as a 5-foot-6 man with gray hair and brown eyes, and weighing between 150 and 180 pounds.
James Aguilar said his brother, who spent time at the Interfaith Community Shelter at Pete’s Place, struggled with alcoholism but was “a gentle soul … looking for his place in this chaotic world.”
He loved to read, had worked in electrical engineering, was extremely generous and had a great sense of humor, James Aguilar added.
“He was always in contact with our mother and would periodically go see her,” Aguilar said, describing weekly or biweekly check-ins.
Their mother, Maria Mariano, has been active in the search for Mark, Aguilar said, and testified in a legislative committee hearing on HB 16. She was overcome with emotion at times, he said, but “she did it with an iron fist.”
“I am hopeful that he is still alive,” Aguilar said of his brother. “I can say for myself that without NamUs, I don’t think that we would have gotten as far as we have.”
The Aguilar family met Wednesday with Santa Fe police Detective Jacob Parrish, who recently took over the case. James Aguilar said he felt optimistic about the meeting.
“We are still considering this particular case to be open and active,” Santa Fe police Capt. Paul Joye said in an email.
Referring to NamUs, he added: “We welcome any new technology or concepts that may help or assist in the positive resolution to any of our cases, and most certainly cases involving missing or endangered people.”