A Hopi family’s search for Keisha Kootswatewa — missing since 2022 — has been unwavering.
Leading the charge was her cousin, Yolanda Bydonie. She created missing person flyers. Organized ground searches. Traveled hundreds of miles along tribal lands, chasing potential leads. Every road still left to scour, every unanswered question weighed on her.
Now their search may be coming to a close after the remains of three people were found on the Navajo Nation — one of which Yolanda believes could be Keisha. Yet, despite recent charges filed in connection with the discovery, federal court records don’t mention Keisha, once again marking the 32-year-old mother’s case with unanswered questions.
Holding her breath for a moment to steel herself, Yolanda spoke on social media to friends and strangers who have supported Keisha and her family.
“I’ve been strong in all this — advocacy, trying to find her,” she says in an early April TikTok video. “We’re still waiting on DNA for confirmation, but we’re told that it’s 99% (certain).”
Yolanda says her family was contacted by authorities late last year about skeletal remains found by people gathering wood in the Na Ah Tee Canyon area near Dilkon on the Navajo Nation.
FBI officials took the family to the location, she says. It was a spot the family hadn’t yet searched.
“We passed right by,” Yolanda says as tears welled in her eyes. “You know the feeling of guilt? The what ifs. What if we just took that road, why didn’t we take that road?”
She says they saw something that day that also brought some comfort.
“As the families walked up this road, there were three hawks flying above us, circling us, and they did this four times,” she adds, in recognition of her Indigenous family’s belief that hawks are spiritual symbols. “They let us know that they were OK.”
The family fought from the beginning for information about Keisha from Hopi and Navajo law enforcement officials, as well as from the FBI. Yolanda went door-to-door asking questions and quickly learned from community members there’d been a house party in Teesto that ended with two men shot and killed. Yolanda told Arizona Luminaria last October that Keisha was taken alive at gunpoint.
Yolanda is now trying to accept that Keisha is gone.
“It’s hard. The hope was maybe they have her, maybe they’re holding her because she saw a lot,” she says in the video.
Yolanda says her family kept quiet about the discovery, but now wanted to share a recent update that she was told is “public information.” Listing them one by one, she names several people charged in connection with the remains found.
Federal court records confirm Yolanda’s statement: Charles Truax, Ryan Johnson and Alexandra Johnson were indicted on suspicion of several criminal counts, including felony murders of two people identified by the initials D.L.M. and M.D.B., according to documents filed March 4 in the U.S. District Court of Arizona. The indictment says the victims were killed “by shooting, in the perpetration of, and attempt to perpetrate, a robbery.”
Similar to what Yolanda previously said about what she learned the night Keisha disappeared, the court documents allege that in the early morning hours of March 26, 2022, Alexandra Johnson, Ryan Johnson and Truax followed through on a plan to retrieve a stolen gun from someone at a home in Teesto. The documents indicate that other people were also at the home when a shooting ultimately occurred inside.
Mike Duffy, who is also listed in the court documents, was not charged with felony murder, but was indicted in connection with the other charges, including assault with a dangerous weapon, stemming from the March shooting incident. All four of the defendants also were indicted on charges in connection with an assault that morning against another victim, identified in court documents by the initials R.L.
The initials of the victims shot and killed match the names of Damien Loren Niedo and Micheaux-Michael Deron Begaii, who Yolanda previously said disappeared at the same time as Keisha. There were no mentions of Keisha or her initials in the federal indictment.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Keisha, Damien and Micheaux-Michael were still listed as missing on the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. NamUs officials previously told Arizona Luminaria they typically remove names from the database when a law enforcement agency or investigator updates them on the status of the case.
A spokesperson for the FBI deferred Luminaria’s questions related to the discovery of Damien and Micheaux-Michael’s remains to the indictment.
“There is more investigatory activity to be undertaken relative to Keisha and because of that, I can’t offer any updates at this time,” FBI spokesperson Kevin Smith emailed in response to questions about Keisha. Smith previously told Luminaria that federal laws and policy prevented the agency from confirming or denying the existence of investigations.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona did not immediately respond to Arizona Luminaria’s questions about Keisha’s case. Yolanda also was not immediately available to speak with a reporter.
Last year, Yolanda shared Keisha and her family’s story with Luminaria, describing her as a dedicated mother who would often spend weeks hand-sewing the regalia her three girls would wear during their powwow dances. Keisha’s disappearance propelled Yolanda into advocacy for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People.
“Now our family is ready to fight, find justice for Keisha,” she says in her social media video. “Our family is, I think, now realizing that we found her. We’re going to bring her home. We don’t know when, but we’re going to bring her home.”
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