The subsequent attempt by two of Talia's cousins
The later discovery in Death Valley of skeletal remains belonging to one of the missing women (Nury Alexander, Castaneda's adopted daughter) prompted Talia's family to conduct a search in the region to try to find Talia's remains as well, but the police and park rangers prevented them from doing so.
Journalist Matt Ward wrote an article about this event, which was published on April 11, 2014, in the 'Pahrump Valley Times', and I have translated a portion of this article below:
« Family members are pressing for the reopening of the search for a member of a Californian sect who disappeared in 1998.
Her mother named her Amalia. New age guru Carlos Castaneda named her Talia Bey.
Her mother gave her life. The literary hoaxer turned cult leader’s final gift was most likely death.
At least this is the conclusion some of Amalia Marquez’s family members are just now reaching, 16 years after she disappeared from Southern California along with three other still-missing women, Castaneda’s “witches.”
A fifth woman’s remains were discovered in Death Valley in 2003. She, too, was intimately connected to Castaneda, who christened her his “Blue Scout.”
Amalia would have turned 59 last Friday. An eerie coincidence to be sure. Because on her birthday two of her cousins, David Marin and Sarah Gutierrez, checked into a room at the Panamint Springs Resort, which sits along California’s State Route 190 on the southern edge of Death Valley National Park.
They hoped to spend the following day searching for their cousin’s remains in the expanse of desert nearby, joined by a New York writer named Robert Marshall and Jennifer Stalvey, a private investigator who specializes in infiltrating cults.
The search never happened. Miscommunications with park service honchos and the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office turned what seemed to be a well-planned, months-long effort into an exercise in bureaucratic frustration on one level, sweet catharsis on another.
She disappeared days after Castaneda died of complications of liver cancer on April 27, 1998. She took his ashes with her.
“He was supposed to turn into a ball of light, burn from within and go up to heaven. He got liver cancer and instead of burning from within he died and was burned from without at the Culver City (California) mortuary,” says Marshall, who wrote a 2007 story about Castaneda’s dark legacy for Salon.com.
Marshall is working on a biography of the man, loved by millions in the 1970s for a series of books about the teachings of a Yaqui Indian sorcerer, Don Juan Matus.
Castaneda forced his closest followers to go by aliases and distance themselves from their families; the tactic has served to complicate efforts to find the missing women.
Amalia’s cousins reached out to Marshall last fall when Marin found his story in a Google search.
“I sent an email to Robert saying I’m a cousin, is there any news and he said no, but I really wish they would have searched that mine. I sent an email and said what mine and he said this mine. Within 72 hours I contacted the park service, the sheriff’s office, the search dogs people and started looking for miners, because search and rescue in Inyo County blew me off when I contacted them,” Marin says.
The group was especially looking to search the Big Four mine, an abandoned enterprise that sits at the base of Panamint Butte. A dirt road off State Route 190 runs through a sandy-colored dry lakebed for several miles, past the blackness of Lake Rock, dead-ending at the lower portion of the mine.
The Panamint Dunes rise above the valley floor a few more miles away. It was on the edge of these dunes that hikers discovered skeletal remains in 2003, five years after a red Ford Escort was found abandoned at the end of that lonesome dirt road leading to the Big Four.
It wasn’t until 2006 that DNA testing confirmed that it was Partin’s bones that were found. It was her car, too. Even though authorities learned after Partin was positively identified that she’d disappeared with four other women, no official search for the remains of the others was ever done. Even getting Amalia listed as a missing person was a battle from the start.
Amalia’s family’s focus on the Big Four stems from a photo a hiker posted online. It appears to be a makeshift shrine — a circle of rocks that resembles a campfire ring with multicolored glass shards laid out in equal colored parts; five colors for five women — at the entrance to the mine. Could it be where Amalia and the other women consummated a suicide pact?
One experienced park ranger, David Brenner, who happened to have found Partin’s car in 1998, doesn’t believe it. He sat down with Marin and his sister and explained how the mines in the area are abandoned, but almost continuously explored by spelunkers, government mine mappers and trespassers. He says the mines in that area have been searched hundreds of times.
“To be honest, the Big Four Mine isn’t even that big,” he told the group.
Marin says while he appreciates Brenner’s assistance, he’s discouraged by what he calls contradictory information from park service employees.
“Here’s the challenge that we have. We have two members of the park service who say two completely opposite things. The one who helped me initially says, yeah, explore the mines, and shafts are a great place to disappear. David Brenner says the mines have already been explored hundreds of times and the shafts aren’t even vertical. We seek out the opinions of experts and they tell us two opposite things,” he said.
Marston Motweiller, a retired Inyo County Sheriff’s investigator who worked Partin’s case, told Marin that the mines should be searched. When Marin initially reached out to Inyo County authorities a few months ago, they seemed to agree, assigning a detective named Dan Williams to the case. Williams was gung-ho about solving the mystery.
By the time Marin and Gutierrez were prepared to travel to Death Valley, that enthusiasm had dissipated. Inyo County Sheriff Bill Lutze appears to have pulled the plug on any effort.
In an email sent to members of their party shortly before they arrived, he disputed Marin’s version of events.
“All contacts made included inquiries only — no definitive requests for assistance were made prior to March 28th. Mr. Marin was contacted by Undersheriff Keith Hardcastle on March 31st, 2014, and Marin explained his request. Mr. Marin was advised that the Sheriff’s Office did not have an open case or any missing person’s cases fitting the description he provided,” the sheriff wrote.
Providing a brief glimmer of hope, the sheriff confirmed he would share information with the park service after a review of the pertinent case files.
Asked via email why the sheriff’s office never searched the area for the other missing women after Partin’s remains were finally identified, Lutze didn’t respond. No one from Inyo County showed up last week to explain their position in person. A request for comment was left with Williams for this story but was also ignored.
A spokesperson for Death Valley’s Chief Park Ranger Karen McKinley Jones confirmed that Marin had spoken to a park service employee about searching the mines but that the employee’s version of the conversation did not match Marin’s. The spokesperson said no one in the park service would ever advise anyone to go into an abandoned mine for safety reasons.
Jones and other park rangers met with Marin and his sister for several hours, explaining that without the proper permits they could not conduct any type of search. But the rangers did provide the group a roadmap for acquiring permits, a seemingly daunting task once laid out.
Brenner suggested the group get a permit to use a drone to search the area for more of Partin’s remains — not all of her was found — though clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration would likely be required.
Marin and Gutierrez were grateful for the advice, but a sense of hopelessness quickly set in.
“The whole experience was emotionally blanching,” Marin said.
Now the group is weighing its options, which include filing for the required permits, or taking a different tack altogether, including tracking down former and current Castaneda and Cleargreen members who may know what happened.
“Robert (Marshall) thinks there are probably at least five people who know what happened. But getting them to tell you the truth is the problem,” Marin said. »
