By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2026-06-10 10:26:26 | Updated at 2026-06-10 22:43:53
12 hours ago
An Indianapolis mom has been found dead in Mexico more than three months after she vanished with her seven children.
Makala Pendley, 30, was found murdered inside a ditch in a village of Chiapas in southern Mexico on Monday, according to Fox59. Local officials told her family she had been raped and beaten to death.
Pendley, who was six months pregnant, had been in the ditch for eight to 12 hours and her death was “caused by traumatic brain injury secondary to blunt force trauma,” local prosecutor Jorge Luis Llaven Abarca said.
Jennifer Lambert, Pendley’s sister, said her sibling was found “stabbed, raped, sodomized, naked, with her head bashed in,” according to a GoFundMe she has since created.
Pendley’s children were found safe and in “good health” inside the Mexican state’s San Cristóbal de las Casas neighborhood, according to Abarca.
Meanwhile, their dad Joseph Jude Butler Jr. was arrested and authorities are seeking “the maximum sentence of 100 years for this perpetrator of femicide.”
Butler was previously detained 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 – Nikola, 12, Joseph, 10, Aubrielle, 8, Orion, 7, Earthum, 5, Polaris, 3, and 1-year-old Azrael – were reported missing by a Department of Child Services case manager on Feb. 25.
She and the children had been located last month, Indianapolis cops said.
“The children were taken into custody by Mexican authorities who later released them back to Makala,” authorities added.
She fled to Mexico with her children and Butler Jr. earlier this year amid fears she thought her kids would be taken from her, her sister Maurica Lambert told Fox59.
Pendley had been in an “on-off, toxic relationship” with Butler since she was 16, the Indianapolis Star reported. The mom has also reported vandalism cases to Indianapolis cops.
But court papers, obtained by Noticieros Televisa, have claimed Pendley was assaulted by Butler at a Mérida, Yucatan, home in August 2025. Two days later, the children were taken into custody by Mexican authorities.
Lambert described her sibling’s death as “the worst day in her life” and was stunned 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.”
