A mother from Indianapolis has been discovered dead in Mexico over three months after she disappeared with her seven children.
Makala Pendley, 30, was found murdered in a ditch in a village in Chiapas, southern Mexico, on Monday, according to Fox59. Local authorities informed her family that she had been raped and beaten to death.
Six months pregnant at the time, Pendley had been in the ditch for 8 to 12 hours, and her death resulted from “traumatic brain injury secondary to blunt force trauma,” according to local prosecutor Jorge Luis Llaven Abarca.
Jennifer Lambert, Pendley’s sister, stated that her sibling was found “stabbed, raped, sodomized, naked, with her head bashed in,” as mentioned in a GoFundMe she created.
Pendley’s children were discovered safe and in “good health” in the San CristĂłbal de las Casas neighborhood of the Mexican state, as reported by Abarca.
Their father, Joseph Jude Butler Jr., was arrested, and authorities are pursuing “the maximum sentence of 100 years for this perpetrator of femicide.”
Butler had previously been detained for various crimes, including robbery, fraud, assault, and rape, and had an outstanding arrest warrant in Alaska, as per Abarca.
Pendley and her childrenâNikola, 12, Joseph, 10, Aubrielle, 8, Orion, 7, Earthum, 5, Polaris, 3, and 1-year-old Azraelâwere reported missing by a Department of Child Services case manager on February 25.
The Indianapolis police stated that she and the children had been located last month.
“The children were taken into custody by Mexican authorities who later released them back to Makala,” authorities added.
Her sister, Maurica Lambert, told Fox59 that Pendley fled to Mexico with her children and Butler Jr. earlier this year, fearing that her children would be taken from her.
Pendley had been in an “on-off, toxic relationship” with Butler since she was 16, the Indianapolis Star reported. She had also reported cases of vandalism to Indianapolis police.
Court documents, obtained by Noticieros Televisa, indicated that Pendley was assaulted by Butler at a home in MĂ©rida, Yucatan, in August 2025. Two days later, Mexican authorities took the children into custody.
Lambert described her sister’s death as “the worst day in her life” and expressed surprise that Butler was named as the suspect.
“It just never would have crossed my mind that it would have been him,” she said.
“I’ve never gotten like that type of like feeling from him or anything.”
“The sadness I feel is a sadness that will stay forever and leave a hole that will never be filled again,” she wrote online. “My sister, my beautiful sister, RIP Makala, you didn’t deserve this.
“I can’t believe I’m never gonna see her again.”
