Christine Lester

Christine Lester was a vibrant and adventurous young woman with a kind heart, remembered by her family as the center of life for her siblings and cousins. A member of the Navajo Nation, Christine, 24, was a graduate of Tuba City High School and had attended Toyei Junior High Boarding School. She was pursuing a career in healthcare and was studying to become a nurse at Haskell University in Kansas. In the spring of 1987, the Native American woman was home in Indian Wells, Arizona, for a visit with her family.

On the morning of May 5, 1987, Christine told her family she planned to travel to the Flagstaff Mall to buy Mother's Day gifts. To make the journey, she intended to hitchhike, a common practice on the vast expanse of the Navajo Nation. It is unknown if she ever reached the mall. Her family never saw her again, beginning a painful, decades-long search for answers. For years, her mother and grandmother never stopped looking for her. Her brother, Herbert Rockwell, later recalled how the family held onto a sliver of hope through the years. "We've always had that hope that she'll come through that door and introduce her family," he said.

Sixteen days after Christine vanished, on May 21, 1987, the remains of an unidentified woman were discovered on the side of a rural road in Madera County, California, hundreds of miles from her home. Unable to identify the victim, authorities logged her into official records as "Jane Doe" and she was eventually buried in a California gravesite. For thirty-six years, her identity remained a mystery. The case grew colder, but investigators did not give up. In 2020, the body was exhumed so that a DNA profile could be created in the hopes that modern technology could finally give her a name.

That breakthrough came in May 2023. Using the new DNA profile, investigators were able to find a match with one of Christine's siblings. The Jane Doe found by a rural road in 1987 was definitively identified as Christine Lester. The news brought a bittersweet conclusion to her family's long and agonizing wait, confirming their worst fears but also bringing Christine home. The Madera County Sheriff's Office is investigating her death as a homicide but has not publicly disclosed the cause of death, stating that releasing such details could jeopardize the ongoing investigation.

A strange and perplexing clue in the case is an explicit letter that was sent to Christine's family years after she disappeared. The anonymous letter was written in 1992 or 1993, more than five years after she went missing. "To this day we don't know who wrote it," her brother Herbert Rockwell stated. "It was kind of explicit. I don't think Christine would ever do some of the things this guy mentioned. To me it was…he knew something about Christine." The family did not know of her having a boyfriend at the time. The letter was turned over to authorities and remains a focus for investigators.

On May 5, 2023, exactly 36 years to the day she went missing, Christine Lester's remains were returned to her family. The date poignantly coincided with the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People. Her loved ones, along with the Medicine Wheel Ride group, escorted her in a solemn procession from Flagstaff back to her home in Tó Hadadleeh on the Navajo Nation. She was finally laid to rest on her family's land, buried alongside the mother and grandmother who had searched for her for so long. Her aunt, Judith Yellowhair, wept as she shared stories of her niece at the burial.

As of May 2023, the homicide investigation into Christine Lester's death is active and ongoing. No arrests have been made, and no suspects have been publicly identified. The Madera County Sheriff's Office continues to seek answers and asks anyone with information about the case to come forward. Anyone with information is urged to call the Madera County Sheriff's Office at 559-675-7770.