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Anthonette Cayedito

In the early hours of April 6, 1986, someone knocked on the door of a home in Gallup, New Mexico. Nine-year-old Anthonette Cayedito answered it. She has never been seen again. A year later, a terrified girl called police and gave her name — before the line went dead.

"Who said you could use the phone?"

Those are the words a police dispatcher in Gallup, New Mexico heard shouted in the background of a 40-second phone call in 1987. Before that, a small girl's voice had given her name — twice — and said she was in Albuquerque.

Then came a scuffle. There was a scream, and then the line went dead.

The name she gave was Anthonette Cayedito. At the time of that 911 call, she had been missing for a year.

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A Knock in the Night

Anthonette was nine years old, a fourth-grader at Lincoln Elementary who lived with her mother Penny and her two younger sisters in Gallup, New Mexico. Her family called her "Squirrel,” and she helped her mom take care of her sisters.

On the night of April 5, 1986, Penny had been out with friends. She came home around midnight and sent the babysitter home. She last saw Anthonette around 3 a.m. When Penny got up at 7 a.m. to wake her daughters for Bible school, Anthonette wasn't in the house.

Penny searched the house, and when she didn’t find her daughter, she went door to door. But no one in the neighborhood had seen her. Neighbors joined the search, and in the days that followed police combed the surrounding foothills and brought in the FBI. Despite three days of searching, no trace of Anthonette was found. There was no physical evidence at the scene, and no sign of a struggle. Anthonette had simply been in her home one moment and gone the next. She ostensibly left only wearing her pink nightgown. Even her shoes had been left behind.

What Her Sister Remembered

Years later, investigators re-interviewed Anthonette's younger sister Wendy, who had been five years old the night Anthonette disappeared. Wendy told them she remembered a knock at the door around 3:30 a.m. She said Anthonette asked who was there, and a voice on the other side answered that it was her Uncle Joe.

Anthonette opened the door.

Wendy told the detectives that two men grabbed Anthonette, and that her sister was kicking and screaming as they carried her out.

The Sightings

In the years that followed, hundreds of tips came in from across the Southwest, but two stuck out.

The first was the 1987 911 call. Penny listened to the 40-second recording over and over and said she was certain the voice was her daughter's. The call was too short to trace.

The second came four years later, when a waitress in Carson City, Nevada reported serving a girl in her early teens seated with an unkempt-looking couple. The girl kept dropping her fork. Each time the waitress bent to retrieve it, the girl squeezed her hand. After they left, the waitress found a note hidden under the girl's plate.

It read: Help me! Call police.

Nothing ever came of it.

Forty Years Later

The Gallup Police Department, the Navajo Nation Division of Public Safety, and the FBI have all continued to appeal for information. The FBI has released age-progressed images and issued outreach materials in both Navajo and English. Anthonette's sisters have spoken publicly about the decades of grief that followed, and about their refusal to give up.

In our full episode, we walk through the night she vanished, the phone call, the sightings, and the questions that have surrounded this case for four decades. This case is solvable, and key players involved are still alive.

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Missing Person: Anthonette Christine Cayedito

Anthonette Cayedito has been missing from Gallup, New Mexico since April 6, 1986. She is a biracial (Native American and White) female of Navajo and Italian descent with brown hair and brown eyes. At the time of her disappearance, she was 9 years old, 4'7" and 55 pounds. She was last seen wearing a pink nightgown. She wore glasses and was known to wear a silver chain with a small turquoise cross pendant. She has freckles, pierced ears, a scar on her knee and lip, and moles on her back, right cheek, nose, hands, and right ankle.

If you have information, contact the FBI Albuquerque Field Office at (505) 889-1300, submit a tip at tips.fbi.gov, or contact the Gallup Police Department.