K-9 handler helps families of Indigenous missing persons near Four Corners

BLUFF, San Juan County — Cases involving Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons, or MMIP, rarely attract the spotlight of media attention and some families maintain they don't even get as deep a look from law enforcement as they should.

A K-9 handler from New Mexico is trying to change that, however, by doing what she can to connect families of missing people in the Four Corners area with the resources they need.

Bernadine Beyale, who is the founder of 4Corners K-9 Search and Rescue, has increasingly found herself serving as an advocate and de facto private investigator for family members.

"I never thought I was going to be wearing multiple hats," Beyale said. "I never thought I was going to be a police officer. I never thought I was going to be that person that families call in the middle of the night."

According to Beyale, families often are left to do the majority of searching on their own and she said more needed to be done to help them, especially in cases where there are suspicious circumstances.

Recently, Beyale invited KSL to Navajo Nation land in extreme southeastern Utah to meet two families who still have few answers for what happened to their loved ones.

Ryan Tom

According to family members, Ryan Tom was last seen with a small group on June 11, 2022, near an old windmill on a remote hillside in the area of Red Mesa.

"From what we were told is that he went walking," Tom's aunt, Rosina Brown, said. "They just said that he left on foot and that's all we know."

Brown said simply wandering off and never contacting family again was not like Tom at all.

"He left without his phone in the middle of summer — you know, June, it's hot," Brown said. "He was wearing his flip-flops, and you can't get far wearing flip-flops."

Another aunt, Cora Tom, said the family went out to the area to search for Ryan Tom, but found few clues.

"It was kind of, like, a windy day, too, so (we) couldn't really see any footprints like somebody walked off or anything like that," Cora Tom said.

What family members did observe was a black SUV parked near the old windmill.

"Windows were down," Cora Tom said. "Beer bottles were all around."

Cora Tom said Ryan Tom's cell phone was also in the SUV, and the story from others in the group was that he took another person's cell phone with him.

"He did call someone," Brown said. "And he told that individual he was on top of a hill."

Brown said because of jurisdictional boundaries on the reservation, police were called in from Shiprock, New Mexico, to investigate.

She said the officers flew a drone and did some immediate investigative work.

"They went to go talk to some of the individuals he was with, but I don't think they got anywhere with it," Brown said. "Then they told us they tried knocking on one of the doors and nobody answered and that was it, so we really got nothing."

Brown and Cora Tom expressed fears that Ryan Tom may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, based on warnings family members received from locals when they went out to search the area.

"There's like bootlegging going on, there's people, like, doing drugs," Brown said. "They would just tell us to be careful."

Cora Tom said she noticed something else unsettling not far from where Ryan Tom was last seen.

"When I first drove out here, I noticed that there were a couple of burned vehicles down in this valley right here," Cora Tom said.

She said the vehicles were cleaned up and gone soon afterward.

"After the case about Ryan opened up, all that stuff got cleaned up so quickly," said one of Ryan Tom's uncles, who asked not to be shown or identified. "Was there a reason for why people want to clean up that stuff right away? So quick, so fast. They got rid of everything. Was it part of Ryan's case or what was going on back in that year of '22? That's a mystery to me."

The uncle articulated another possibility that concerned him.

"Could (it) be he knew something, he knew something that he wasn't supposed to know," the uncle said.

The aunts expressed frustration that there have been few updates since the early days of the investigation and now, four years later, their loved one's case feels overlooked or forgotten.

Brown said the last time she heard from police was two years ago.

"Right now, we don't know if Ryan still has a case," Brown said. "And if there is a case, we don't know who is handling his case."

Eugene Begay

Beyale also introduced a KSL crew to family members of Eugene Begay, who would be 75 today and was last seen sometime around March 2018.

Becky Begay said she had an estranged relationship with her father at the time of his disappearance, but said her father was in regular contact with several relatives before he vanished from the Bluff area.

"He has a common law wife, and he has a family and he has three kids over there, he has grandkids," the daughter said.

Becky Begay and other family members said word spread through the community about some type of disagreement.

"He got in a fight with the kids and the lady — the mother," niece Mary Ann Woody said she learned from a mutual connection.

What really happened remains unclear, the family members acknowledged, but their own efforts to locate Eugene Begay turned up nothing, and they said updates from reservation law enforcement have been few and far between.

Eugene's official missing poster lists Begay as missing from Aztec, New Mexico, which his family members said did not reflect he had been living in Bluff, San Juan County.

Eugene Begay's daughter said she had been told previously to simply let police do their job and also that any information would go to the common law family, not her and her mother, Eugene's estranged wife, Shirley Begay, and she expressed frustration that her loved one's case hasn't received more attention.

"Why is it that our native relatives are the last on the totem pole?" the daughter questioned. "Why is it that there's no national newscasts out here?"

She said the pain caused by the ordeal is obvious.

"After eight years, how would you feel about it? It hurts," Becky Begay said. "Just think if it happened to your own family member, what would you do? You would go to the ends of the earth to find that person."

Private help

Beyale, who has been assisting both Ryan Tom and Eugene Begay's family members, said whether the issues boil down to a lack of police resources and manpower or an unwillingness to ask for outside help in helping to solve the cases, the families deserve better.

The searcher said she has checked with outside agencies, and they seem to know very little about the reservation missing person cases.

"I'll reach out to San Juan County here in Utah, 'Hey, I've got Eugene Begay who disappeared in 2018, have you guys heard of his case,' 'Have you even seen his missing person flyer,' and they didn't know," Beyale said. "That tells me no one is telling them. That tells me no one is reaching out to them, and that's very worrisome for me when you sit in rooms and people say, 'we're working together.'"

At deadline, KSL's multiple attempts to reach Navajo Nation Police Department for comment had not yet resulted in a response.

The FBI provides online resources to MMIP families, and a spokesperson directed KSL to a previous statement about the role the FBI plays in relation to these cases.

"The FBI has a specific jurisdiction in much of Indian Country to investigate murders and kidnappings," a section of the statement read.

"The jurisdiction is often concurrent with Tribal law enforcement and Bureau of Indian Affairs. As such, the FBI is only able to provide data for those investigations which the FBI has opened. Additionally, since the FBI investigates violations of law, the FBI does not have jurisdiction to investigate missing persons cases where there is no suspicion that a federal crime occurred. Although the FBI does not take the lead role in missing persons investigations, the FBI is able to provide investigative and technical assistance to the law enforcement agency that has primary jurisdiction in a missing persons case at the request of that agency."

The MMIP cases and Beyale's efforts were expected to be highlighted on Saturday as the Sherry Black Foundation hosts the Utah Missing and Unsolved Conference at the Salt Lake Community College Miller Free Enterprise Center in Sandy, which will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Beyale questioned why state resources also aren't tapped more often in these cases, and she said all agencies can bring resources to the table that are helpful.

"I know how many resources are available because I do it myself," Beyale said. "I think we need to quit ignoring this topic of missing people, because we have too many of them out there and it's as simple as why aren't we doing anything about it? That's why I'm out here today."

Related topics