BERNALILLO, N.M. (KRQE) – When a missing Pueblo woman was found dead in a ravine, her family wanted answers. But police never launched a criminal investigation to help find those answers. Now, the family aims to hold those officers accountable.
For nearly three years, Lynelle Tafoya’s family sought answers about what happened to her since she disappeared from her home on the Jemez Pueblo. Her body was found half naked in the Ranchitos ditch near I-40 in the Town of Bernalillo.
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Brenda Tafoya, Lynelle’s mom, told KRQE she doesn’t believe her daughter died in an “unattended death.” It’s a case KRQE Investigates exposed earlier this year; a case that should have gotten more attention, the family says.
Today, Tafoya’s mom Brenda is suing the Town of Bernalillo, its police department, and the two officers involved in the case, Jeramie Nevarez and Timothy Tyler. “The focus of this area of the case is really their failure to investigate this case as a homicide from the get-go,” explained David Adams, the family’s attorney.
The lawsuit filed by Adams of Parnall & Adams Law, claims Tafoya’s civil rights were violated when Bernalillo police officers failed to “secure the crime scene, conduct forensic analysis of her cellphone,” and failed to “determine foul play should be suspected given the location of the body… that her fingers were missing…and that Lynelle Tafoya was found ‘mostly naked.'”
Rather than investigate her death as a homicide at all, former BPD officer Nevarez wrote in his report, “No signs of foul play were observed or reported.” The case was filed as an “unattended death.”
“The biggest goal is to, number one, hold them accountable,” Adams told KRQE. “But I think that any time you have any type of civil rights case, we’re looking for systemic changes to take place within our community when it comes to law enforcement responses to violent crime.”
“Regardless of where that violent crime takes place, and regardless of who a victim of a violent crime is, we all deserve the equal protection of the law,” Adams said.
Adams admits this case was a jurisdictional nightmare since it also involved Tafoya’s belongings found on the Santa Ana Pueblo. Even so, he claims officers failed to follow policies and procedures, arguing the Town of Bernalillo is liable too.
Tafoya’s family attorney said this case, along with other missing and murdered Indigenous women’s cases, should get a closer look. And at least in civil court, it will now.
In a KRQE interview earlier this year, Brenda Tafoya said for her, justice would look like change. “So that no family can go through this,” Brenda Tafoya said.
The Tafoya family also asked the feds to open a homicide investigation into Lynelle’s death. Federal agents won’t say who, if anyone they’re investigating in the case, but the family believes someone out there knows something.
