A Missing Family’s Nightmare Ends With A Grim Discovery

A 30-year-old pregnant mother from Indiana was found dead in Mexico more than three months after she and her children were reported missing.

Makala Pendley was found dead earlier this week in a village in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, according to local officials. Pendley was six months pregnant when she disappeared with her seven children in February.

Her sister, Mauricia Lambert, said in a GoFundMe that Pendley was found “stabbed, raped, sodomized, naked, with her head bashed in.” Mexican authorities said Pendley died from traumatic brain injury caused by blunt-force trauma, according to local reports.

After identifying Pendley’s body, authorities began searching for her children, who were believed to have been with her, and for her partner, Joseph Jude Butler Jr., whom Mexican officials identified as a suspect in the case.

The children were later found in “good health” in the San Cristóbal de las Casas neighborhood, where they were immediately placed under government protection. Butler was arrested shortly after, as announced by Chiapas State Prosecutor Jorge Luis Llaven Abarca during a Facebook Live broadcast on Monday.

“In the coming hours, his criminal responsibility will be determined, and he may be brought before justice,” Llaven Abarca stated. “We will seek the maximum sentence of 100 years for this perpetrator of femicide.”

Just a few days prior, Llaven Abarca said authorities had found the body of a deceased woman in the Elambó Bajo area of Zinacantán.

“Based on the time of death, she had been at the location where she was found for between 8 and 12 hours,” he said on the broadcast just days before the identification of the body.

Pendley and her children were reported missing on February 25 after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children issued an alert. They were believed to have left Indianapolis and traveled to Mexico.

Pendley was found alive in Mexico last month after her sister told FOX59 that she had fled there because she feared “her children would be taken away from her.” Authorities took custody of her children at the time before later releasing them back to Pendley.

During Monday’s broadcast, Mexican authorities said American officials informed them that Butler has a history of criminal activity. Llaven Abarca said Butler had an active warrant in Alaska and had previously been detained in the United States in connection with allegations including assault, robbery, fraud, illegal weapons possession, intimidation, and rape.

Butler and Pendley had been in an on-and-off “toxic relationship” since Pendley was 16, according to the Indianapolis Star. This includes a legal incident in August 2025 where Pendley claimed she was assaulted by Butler in Yucatan, Mexico.

Pendley’s body and her seven children are expected to be returned to Indianapolis.