An Indianapolis mother was found dead in Mexico more than three months after she and her seven children disappeared.
Makala Pendley, 30, was found dead inside a trench in the village of Chiapas in southern Mexico on Monday. According to Fox 59. Local officials told her family that she had been raped and beaten to death.
District Attorney Jorge Luis Lavin Abarca said Pendley, who was six months pregnant, had been in the trench for between eight and 12 hours, and her death was “due to a traumatic brain injury resulting from blunt force trauma.”
Pendley’s sister, Jennifer Lambert, said her brother was found “stabbed, raped, naked, with her head smashed in,” according to a GoFundMe she has since set up.
The Pendley children were found safe and well within the San Cristóbal de las Casas neighborhood of the Mexican state, according to Abarca.
Meanwhile, their father, Joseph Judd Butler Jr., has been arrested, and authorities are seeking a “maximum sentence of 100 years for the perpetrator of the femicide.”
Butler had previously been arrested for a slew of crimes, including robbery, fraud, assault and rape, and had an active arrest warrant in Alaska, according to Abarca.
Pendley and her children — Nicola, 12, Joseph, 10, Aubriel, 8, Orion, 7, Earthom, 5, Polaris, 3, and 1-year-old Azrael — were reported missing by a Department of Children’s Services case manager on February 25.
Indianapolis police said she and the children were located last month.
“Mexican authorities detained the children and later released them to Macala,” the authorities added.
Her sister, Maurica Lambert, told Fox59 she fled to Mexico with her children and Butler Jr. earlier this year amid fears she thought her children would be taken from her.
Pendley had been in an “on-off and toxic” relationship with Butler since she was 16 years old The Indianapolis Star reported. The mother also reported instances of vandalism to Indianapolis cops.
But the court papers Obtained by Noticieros Televisathey alleged that Butler assaulted Pendley at their Mérida, Yucatan, home in August 2025. Two days later, Mexican authorities detained the children.
Lambert called her brother’s death “the worst day of her life” and was stunned when Butler was named as a suspect.
“It never occurred to me that it was him,” she said.
“I’ve never gotten that kind of feeling from him or anything.”
“The sadness I feel is a sadness that will last forever and leave a hole that will never be filled again,” she wrote online. “Sister, my beautiful sister, in peace Makala, you don’t deserve this.
“I can’t believe I’ll never see her again.”