The disappearance and death of Janet Castrejon in the Chiricahua Mountains
Lydia Janet Castrejon, disappeared June 19, 2015, Rustler Park, Chiricahua Mountains, Southern Arizona. Skeletal Remains Found August 5, 2018, confirmed September 2019.
Revised July 2024
On June 19th, 2015, Janet Castrejon, 44, vanished from a camping trip in the Chiricahua Mountains in southern Arizona with her parents, Dr Eduardo and Lydia Castrejon, all of Las Cruces.
Janet, the oldest of four siblings, suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident in 1988 when she was 18 years old, causing memory problems and partial blindness. At the time of the crash, she had just completed her first semester at New Mexico State University, where she studied computer science. She remained in a coma for three months.
During the trip, Janet vanished and was never seen alive again. Three years remains were finally found which were found to be Janet’s What happened? - lost and died from exposure, snatched by an animal or person?
The trip to Ruster Park
Janet was last seen outside a campground bathroom in Rustler Park. It is a wildflower-carpeted meadow high in the Chiricahua Mountains, rimmed with Douglas fir and ponderosa pine. Campsites at Rustler Park are scattered along access roads that have been purposefully kept out of the meadow to avoid damaging fragile plants and soils. Larger animals, including black bears, are frequently spotted there, and trails lead from the campground to Chiricahua Wilderness and other places of interest.
As planned, Janet and her parents left for the park from their Las Cruces home on Thursday, June 18, 2015. By that evening, the three had arrived in Deming, where they stopped at a church and stayed overnight in their motor home. The following day, June 19, they departed for Arizona after eating breakfast at an IHOP.
The family arrived at the Rustler Park campground between 1:30 and 2 p.m. When they finished setting up their camp, Eduardo made lunch for his family of quesadillas, beans, and rice around 4 p.m.
Janet Castrejon’s disappearance
About an hour later, after their meal, Lydia, who speaks mostly Spanish, said she wanted to go for a walk and asked Janet to join her. She initially declined, but Eduardo told her to go to the pay station to take the payment, and Janet agreed.
She and her mother then walked about 1,000 feet from their motor home, down a curved path, to the pay station, where Janet deposited the payment envelope.
About 300 feet from the pay station, Lydia decided to go to the bathroom, and Janet waited outside. When her mother came out of the bathroom, she was nowhere to be seen. She thought that Janet must have decided to head back to Eduardo. Lydia estimated that she was in the bathroom only for a few minutes, and soon became worried when she returned to the motor home and discovered Janet was not there.
Eduardo said, “My wife ran up to our camping spot to see if she had made it back up here, but I was here and never saw her. She never got back. We immediately started searching for her, asking other campers. On her way over there, she just disappeared."
Janet was 5’3” tall and 250 pounds. She was last seen wearing a white T-shirt with black lettering, blue jeans, and white tennis shoes with a red stripe on them.
The search
No footprints were leading off the main path, the family said. There were no signs of a struggle to suggest that Janet had been attacked or had attempted to fight off an attacker, and there were no screams or cries for help.
By 8 pm, Janet's brother Oscar arrived and called 911 to report his missing sister. But help, he said, did not arrive until after midnight Saturday, June 20.
A search-and-rescue team with Cochise County Sheriff’s Office began searching for Janet around 12:30 am, and the team searched until 6 am and resumed around 9 am. A search helicopter was dispatched later that day but was unsuccessful in finding any signs of Janet. The search continued well into Sunday and over the next few days. But there was no sign of Janet or evidence of clothing or blood, which may have indicated a bear attack.
Search and rescue teams on foot and with sniffer dogs thoroughly searched the area around Rustler Park campground, but Janet was never seen again.
What happened to Janet?
The family were convinced Janet was abducted. Fabian Castrejon, Janet’s other brother, said, “There wasn’t enough effort to begin with,” referring to the search efforts by the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office. Soon after Janet disappeared, Fabian said a search team from New Mexico offered to assist the Cochise County authorities but was rejected.
Fabian took on a lead role in the search efforts, often finding tips and leads for the detectives assigned to the case. He spent about three weeks searching for Janet immediately after her disappearance and helped organize extensive search parties. He and his sister, Xochitl Castrejon, regularly searched the area until the park closed for the season in late October.
Oscar, meanwhile, believes the search was hindered mainly because authorities did not take into consideration Janet’s disabilities. “They assumed too quickly that she was competent,” he said. “They told us that she either left with someone or ran away. … We told them specifically she’s disabled, she isn’t capable of many, many things, and I don’t even think they took that into consideration.”. She was “completely dependent” on her parents, her brother said.
Detectives did not have any particular theory for Janet’s disappearance.“There’s no way she could have strayed too far. That campground is landlocked. The only way to get out of that campground is the same way you came in,” Fabian said, adding, “There’s no real cliff you could fall off or river to drown in. We believe that somebody took her out or that she got into a car.”
Another strange disappearance in the Chiricahua Mountains area involved a law enforcement ranger, Paul Fugate, who vanished on Sunday, January 13, 1980. Paul, 41, left the Visitor Centre to "check the nature trail" in the Chiricahua National Monument in Arizona and was never seen again.
Read the Paul Fugate story: The strange disappearance of Ranger Paul Fugate from Arizona’s Chiricahua Monument
Discovery of remains
Bone fragments and a braid of hair were discovered on August 5, 2018, by a hiker called Amanda Moors and identified by the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office as belonging to Janet Castrejon in September 2019. Results from the Tucson Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed a match with Janet’s DNA. No evidence of foul play was found.
The remains were found only about a mile from where Janet was last seen in the campground.
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Sources
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/missing-in-america/janet-castrejon-disappears-during-family-camping-trip-n383896
http://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/2016/06/18/search-missing-las-cruces-woman-marks-one-year/86089606/
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/missing-in-america/bones-found-cochise-county-arizona-identified-janet-castrejon-missing-2015-n1052851
https://charleyproject.org/case/lydia-janet-castrejon
https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-breaking/2019/09/13/bone-fragments-found-chiricahua-mountains-match-new-mexico-woman/2312333001/
