Navajo Woman Missing 35 Years, Recently Identified, Was Taken To Her Final Resting Place On The Navajo Nation Friday

The remains of a Navajo woman, who had been missing for 35 years after she told family she was headed to Flagstaff, have been found and identified and will be buried Friday. In 2020, a deputy from the Madera County Sheriff’s Office outside Fresno, had her remains exhumed from a gravesite labeled “Jane Doe.” In March of this year, a DNA match to one of Christine Lester’s brothers was made. The sheriff’s office said they found a woman dead on the side of a rural country road in 1987 about two weeks after she went missing, but she had no identification on her. She told family she was heading from her home in Indian Wells to Flagstaff to go to the mall. She never returned. Her family is held a procession for Christine Friday and escorted her remains from Flagstaff to their family plot at a gravesite on the Navajo Nation. The Madera County Sheriff’s Office has now opened a homicide investigation into her death.