When Loni Long thinks of her cousin Benita Long, she's taken back to when she was 14 years old.
That was when she first met Benita, a confident girl who was a year her junior but who seemed decades more mature.
For Loni, a shy teen scarred by years of abuse and foster care, Benita was a revelation. "I was so blown away by how outgoing she was," she recalled.
Eventually, Loni moved in with Benita's family on the reservation of the Yakama Nation in Washington, where Benita became more than just a cousin. She became a protector and sister.
"She showed me how to stick up for myself, kind of be strong," Loni said.
Loni never imagined there would come a time when Benita would not be in her life. But it has been almost three years since she last saw Benita.
In the early spring of 2022, members of her family realized that no one had heard from Benita in weeks and that the monthly payments she received as a member of Yakama Nation had sat in her account, untouched, for two months. As an adult who struggled with addiction and occasional homelessness, she relied on those monthly payments to keep her afloat, according to Loni.
Benita, then age 40, was reported missing to the Yakama Nation police, but the investigation has gone cold. As far as anyone knows, she was last seen on March 26, 2022, outside a motel in Toppenish, Wash., not far from the Yakama Nation reservation. It's an area beset by the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women where dozens of have disappeared, local activists and community members said.
Benita is one of the tens of thousands of people in the United States who remain missing for more than one year, leaving families like hers desperate for answers. A federally funded database called the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) was created to help track these long-term, missing-person cases and to pool information from law enforcement, families and medical examiners. It has been lauded by the government as a tool to solve these cold cases.
Yet an NPR investigation found that even in Washington and New Mexico — two states legally required to submit missing-person cases to NamUs — nearly 2,400 of them are not listed. NPR focused on Washington and New Mexico in our analysis because we were able to obtain a state list of missing people and compare it against the NamUs database.
"These are not numbers. These are people. These are our sons and daughters. These are our brothers and sisters," said Steven Strachan, executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.
The agencies responsible for inputting data into NamUs, mainly law enforcement, say it is cumbersome and time-consuming.
As well, the National Institute of Justice, which runs NamUs, acknowledged there were some technical issues but said it's working toward solutions and offers guidance to law enforcement.
Benita is among the thousands of people whose cases never made it into the system. And her family learned this only because of NPR's reporting. Loni called the revelation frustrating.
"We need the help. She needs the help," she told NPR.
Using NamUs is free for anyone, including the public. NamUs "greatly increases" the chances of identifying some unidentified remains, said Tina Drain, a former missing-persons detective with the Seattle Police Department. "But it's only as effective as [the] number of agencies and medical examiners and coroners who actively participate," she said.
About half of all law enforcement agencies in the United States are not listed in the NamUs system, an NPR investigation found. Some agencies rely on partner departments to access the system; others told NPR they simply don't use it — or had even heard of it.
A decentralized mess
The U.S. system for tracking missing people and unidentified bodies is split between federal agencies and state-run databases. Federal government systems include NamUs, which keeps records of missing, unidentified and unclaimed people.
There is also the National Crime Information Center, which contains records of wanted and missing people, criminal histories and other related information, although access to it is restricted to law enforcement.
These two valuable tools do not communicate with each other. Some states maintain their own missing-persons databases, making tracking a single case even messier.
Abigail Echo-Hawk, of the Urban Indian Health Institute and a leading voice in the missing and murdered Indigenous people movement, said this data fails to show the full picture — and fails missing Indigenous women like Benita Long most of all.
She said the missing-persons list maintained by the Washington State Patrol "is a gross underestimate," particularly when it comes to tracking missing Indigenous people.
The patrol acknowledged that the list is imperfect. Emily Main, the patrol's tribal liaison, said in an email, "We are continually aware that data is only as good as the information known at the time of reporting."
In Washington, local law enforcement is not required to use NamUs. Only the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC), an organization that works with law enforcement, is legally mandated to do so.
WASPC's updates to the system in the last four years have been sporadic at best. And as of August 2024, 65% of the state's 2,349 missing people weren't listed in NamUs, according to NPR's analysis.
Strachan, the executive director of WASPC, says tech issues and a cumbersome process are parts of the reason why.
Among the 127 Indigenous people listed as missing in the Washington State Patrol's data , just 55 appear in NamUs.
Benita Long, who went missing in 2022, is one of those individuals left out.
Julie Miller, 64, missing since 1989, is also not listed.
Neither is Earl Patrick, 43, listed as missing since 2015.
Nor is Janessa Villa, 17, listed as missing since 2023.
The Yakama Nation police, the agency that Benita Long's family first reported her missing to, has not responded to multiple inquiries from NPR.
The issue of incomplete databases cuts deepest in Indigenous communities. Indigenous women and girls, like Benita, are .
In Washington, Indigenous women that of white women, according to .
"We weep in silence and invisibility, and it has only been in the last 10 years, as a direct result of community advocates, family members and tribal communities, both urban and rural, that we've seen this issue elevated," said Echo-Hawk, who is also a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma.
Experts and advocates within the missing-persons movement told NPR that there's only so much individuals can do when the system is broken.
Even getting correct data on the number of missing people nationwide can be difficult.
The NCIC reports that "in 2016, there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls," according to the . However, NamUs logged only 116 cases.
"My team and I have been advocating for national legislation that requires NamUs use across the nation, because it is a national tool and should be utilized as such," Echo-Hawk said.
NamUs solves decades-old cases
The with resolving nearly 47,000 cases involving missing, unidentified and unclaimed individuals since the database's inception.
Founded in 2007, NamUs initially aimed to collect information about unclaimed bodies. A year later, it expanded to include profiles of missing people. Today, NamUs offers free dental record and fingerprint analysis and coordinates DNA testing services.
The system allows users to compare a missing person's profile with that of an unclaimed body.
Drain, the detective who worked on missing-person cases in Seattle, became a strong advocate for NamUs. She experienced the database's potential firsthand. In 2002, , and his car appeared near Salem, Oregon.
"There were no unidentified remains found. So the case went cold," said Drain.
Drain retired shortly after NamUs was fully operational. As she reviewed her cases before retirement, she realized she never obtained a DNA sample from Tew's mother. Within months of the sample being uploaded into NamUs, a match was made with an unidentified body that had washed up on a beach in Oregon.
"This is an example of how I didn't use it when I could have used it, and it would have made a difference a lot sooner," Drain said, adding that before she retired she also put all of her cold cases into the system.
Although 16 states have enacted legislation for the use of NamUs in some capacity, the majority don't.
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"So at the end of the day, NamUs does not have all the missing or unidentified or unclaimed persons cases that exist in the United States," said Chuck Heurich, the program manager of NamUs.
There are more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S., and 80% of them employ fewer than 20 employees, Heurich said.
"The capacity for some of these small and rural departments to even have a person solely dedicated to missing-persons cases is really difficult for them," he said.
It's not just rural departments facing staffing problems.
The Seattle Police Department, which is not legally required to submit to NamUs but could use it as an investigative tool, told NPR in a statement that the agency is experiencing "unprecedented staffing shortages." NPR's analysis found that more than 70 missing-person cases in Seattle remained unresolved for more than a year and are not in NamUs.
Many tribal police departments also lack the infrastructure for training for systems like NamUs, Echo-Hawk said.
"We really need Congress to make specific allocations and also hold the Department of Justice accountable for fulfilling those expectations," Echo-Hawk said.
In recent years, NamUs has worked to increase training, particularly within the Indigenous community. Since 2021, there has been a , according to NamUs data.
The perfect is the enemy of the good?
Strachan, of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, blamed compatibility issues for his agency's failure to update NamUs over the past four years.
"We manage a lot of databases. … We have quite a lot of experience in this, we do it a lot, and we've never seen the kinds of challenges that we've seen with NamUs," Strachan said.
NamUs requires 19 fields to be filled out and rejects missing-person reports that omit even a single field, Strachan said.
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State officials in New Mexico say they experience similar issues, but are trying to find ways around them. As of January 2025, only 138 of the 959 missing persons cases listed by the New Mexico Department of Public Safety (DPS) are included in NamUs — even though that department is mandated by state law to use the database.
"We are actively refining our data submission processes and exploring solutions to enhance data sharing and compliance. Reuniting families with missing loved ones is a critical priority for DPS," spokesman H.L. Lovato said.
New York is the only state with an automated system for importing cases into NamUs, ensuring all required fields are included. Because of this, it's frequently looked at by NamUs as an example for other states to replicate.
However, issues remain.
On Dec. 12, the told NPR there were 1,867 active missing-person cases that were at least 180 days old. (In New York, missing person cases must be submitted within 180 days.) Yet, when NPR checked the NamUs database the following day, only 1,032 cases were older than 180 days.
The agency attributed the discrepancies to several factors, including cases lacking agency approval, despite state reminders, and cases closed by investigating agencies but not updated in state records.
Heurich, the program manager for NamUs, said the required fields are meant "to strengthen the chances of the resolution."
A spokesperson from the Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice explained that this requirement facilitates automatic data imports, advanced searches and cross-matching capabilities.
Strachan and his colleagues have asked NamUs for work-arounds but say they have received no solutions.
What's more, NamUs and the National Crime Information Center can't share information. Achieving this connection poses a huge challenge from both an IT and a financial standpoint, according to Heurich, who estimated that the necessary technical revamp could cost "tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars."
These challenges ultimately hinder efforts to help the most vulnerable populations, Strachan said.
"Anything that stands in the way of connecting those dots and finding closure for a family that every single day gets up thinking about their missing family member, to me, is not acceptable," he said.
Not listened to or believed
Benita Long's family continues to pray for a reunion with her. But they feel law enforcement did not prioritize her case from the outset.
When Benita was reported missing to the Yakama Nation police, "they just figured she was, I don't know, passed out somewhere, but they didn't really take it serious," Benita's aunt, Georgette Long Abrahamson, said.
Many people hesitate to report their loved ones missing to the police — due to distrust in authorities or confusion over who has jurisdiction — leading families to conduct their own investigations, according to Echo-Hawk.
"In doing this for more than 15 years now, I've seen most investigations done by families and community members and tribes than I've ever seen done by law enforcement," Echo-Hawk said.
Loni has since moved out of the Yakama Nation reservation and started a family of her own. Her son is named after Benita's brother, Vincent, who died in 1997.
"She would always tell me ... 'Don't you forget to tell him who he's named after. Don't you forget to tell him stories of who he was.' And I'm like, 'You're gonna be there to tell him. You tell him,'" Loni recalls tearfully.
Loni continues to seize every opportunity to use her voice, just as Benita taught her, to draw attention to the case.
"I don't want to give up on her ... She's out there somewhere," she said.
In the absence of any real answers, Loni has sought her own closure. In her family's tradition, there is a ceremony for when a person dies, she told NPR.
"We need to know if she's not alive. We need to have [a] ceremony to make sure that she's with her family, so she's not wandering" and so she can be reunited with her mother and grandma, Loni said.
After Benita had been missing for about six months — a long time for a spirit to be wandering in this world — Loni said she turned to her husband, Israel Scott Rehaume, who is a sun dancer, for help.
The Sun Dance is a ceremony practiced by some Indigenous communities that involves community participation and prayer, connecting them to the spirit world.
"So I asked him if he would bring her name out and bring out her mom and ask them to come there and find Benita, wherever she's at, to take her home so that she's not left here," Loni said.
"That's the last thing that I could do to love her in this world."
If you know anything about , please contact the Yakama Nation police at 509-865-2933 and refer to case number 22-004079. Benita Long was last seen wearing gray sweatpants and a black hoodie on March 26, 2022, while getting dropped off at the El Corral Motel in Toppenish, Washington.
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