‘Voices Not Forgotten’: FBI Sets $25,000 Minimum Reward for Unsolved Indian Country Cases
Eight-year-old Maleeka “Mollie” Boone never made it home. Somebody hit her on the Navajo Nation, and whoever did it kept driving.
That case is now part of “Voices Not Forgotten,” a new FBI initiative setting a $25,000 minimum reward for information on more than 50 unsolved homicides and missing persons cases in Indian Country. It’s the most aggressive reward structure the bureau has ever applied to these cases.
What Changed — and Why It Matters
Previous rewards for American Indian cold cases started as low as $5,000. The new floor is five times that, and FBI officials say the jump signals that these cases deserve the same sustained public attention as the bureau’s other major awareness campaigns.
FBI Director Kash Patel unveiled “Voices Not Forgotten” at the National Law Enforcement Partner Conference, where more than 200 tribal law enforcement members had gathered. He called it “a brand-new initiative that is part of this FBI’s record dedication of resources to Tribal partners who have been left behind far too long.”
The initiative includes a searchable, interactive map on fbi.gov linking posters about violent crimes affecting tribal communities nationwide. Anyone with information can submit tips at tips.fbi.gov, call 1-800-CALL-FBI, or contact a local FBI field office, with anonymous submission available for all of those options.
The Six Cases the FBI Is Spotlighting Now
More than 50 cases fall under the program. Most are less than ten years old, though roughly a dozen have gone unsolved for more than two decades.
Six are being featured at launch: Angel Beach, Sa’wade Birdinground, Maleeka “Mollie” Boone, Logan Warrior Goings, Mary Johnson (Davis), and Emily Pike.
Emily Pike was a San Carlos Apache teenager whose body was found after she disappeared from an Arizona group home. Mona Renee Vallo was found dead in 2022 near Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico, on Route 66, the apparent victim of a hit-and-run that left no suspect in custody.
Matthew and Philip Reagan, brothers from Ohio visiting the Navajo Nation, were shot multiple times and left to die. Their case reward just climbed to $25,000.
Then there’s Patrick Carlow Sr., found dead inside his Pine Ridge home in 2023. His daughter Lisa Carlow is direct about what that community is living with: “Everybody’s scared in Oglala. So to me it’s like, OK, what do you guys know that you’re not saying?”
The Scale of What’s Missing
The FBI investigates federal crimes on nearly 200 Native American reservations. That’s a vast jurisdictional landscape, and it still doesn’t capture the full scope of what’s been lost.
As of late 2025, the FBI’s National Crime Information Center logged just under 1,500 active cases involving missing Native people. Not all of those become federal investigations, and some fall through the jurisdictional gaps between tribal, state, and federal authority.
The Not Invisible Act Commission spent years pushing for better interagency coordination on Indigenous missing and murdered cases. The FBI says “Voices Not Forgotten” directly responds to what tribal communities asked for in those ongoing conversations.
The Part the Money Can’t Fix
Higher rewards help. They might not be enough.
Mary Kathryn Nagle is a Cherokee Nation citizen and an attorney who advocates for families of missing Native Americans. She’s watched federal investigators “parachute in” to communities where people know things but won’t talk to outsiders. She believes bigger payouts could make a difference, both as an incentive and as a signal that the bureau is finally treating these deaths with real urgency. “We have people in Indian Country who know what happened to our relatives,” she said.
Signaling and results, though, are different things.
Luana Ross, a Bitterroot Salish scholar and advocate, puts the challenge plainly. “People would be extremely reluctant to turn a friend or relative into a criminal justice system.” That isn’t indifference. It’s a rational calculation shaped by a long history of what tends to happen when Native communities place their trust in the federal government.
Faye Wurstner-Reagan lost her husband Matthew to gun violence on the Navajo Nation. She’s thought hard about what would actually move people to come forward. “You would have to promise someone, like, actual protection,” she said. That’s the thing $25,000 doesn’t guarantee: that talking won’t make you a target.
This is the real tension the program still hasn’t resolved. Money speaks, but it doesn’t shield.
Why This Moment Feels Different
The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples crisis has fought for sustained federal attention for years. Legislation passed. Task forces formed. Databases went online. The follow-through has been uneven.
What’s different this time is the combination of scale and public commitment. Fifty-plus cases, a searchable national map, and a reward floor five times what these cases used to carry.
The geography tells its own story. Navajo Nation, Pine Ridge, San Carlos Apache, Laguna Pueblo, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation: when you see those names lined up together, you understand how geographically massive this crisis actually is. These aren’t outliers concentrated in one place. They’re spread across the American West and beyond, in communities that often lack the local law enforcement resources to work cold cases on their own.
None of this brings back Mollie Boone. None of it tells Lisa Carlow who killed her father.
But the people who know something now have a concrete reason to make a call. Whether they do is the next chapter for every one of these cases.
What to Watch
The FBI’s “Voices Not Forgotten” page at fbi.gov is live, and the interactive map will be updated as new cases are added to the program. Tips go to tips.fbi.gov or 1-800-CALL-FBI, and all submissions can be made anonymously.
These cases aren’t closed. The bureau is betting that somebody out there knows why.
Reporting based on Colorado Politics, ABC News, Dakota News Now, KAXE, FBI Press Release.