Federal investigators have uncovered new leads in the unsolved murder of a New Mexico musician who disappeared under suspicious circumstances during a recording session at a motel, his mother said.
Zachariah Shorty was last seen alive on July 21, 2020, at the Journey Inn in Farmington, a close-knit town on the edge of the Navajo Reservation in northwestern New Mexico.
He was a 23-year-old musician who had come to the motel to record with a group of four others.
It’s unclear exactly how he left home, but his mother, Evangeline “Vangie” Randall Shorty, received a call from one of her son’s friends around 11 p.m., who said her son had gone outside to smoke a cigarette and never returned.
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Zachariah Shorty is seen in an undated photo provided by the FBI, which is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the July 2020 murder. (FBI)
But when Randall Shorty called his son’s cell phone, the same friend answered.
“[She] “I answered the phone and she said Zach left his phone behind,” she told Fox News Digital. “I asked her if it was back and she said no, because Zach never leaves his phone behind.”
Randall Shorty had gone to the motel around 7 p.m. that night to deliver pizza to his son.
One of the last things he said to her was, “I’m going to finish this song.”
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Zachariah Shorty was 23 when he was “abducted” from a motel where he was recording music with four others. Authorities found him four days later, 13 miles away, shot to death. (FBI)
He had been missing for four days before investigators discovered his body in a field on the Navajo Reservation, suffering from gunshot wounds and abandoned by his attackers.
“I say ‘taken’ because he was found on a dirt road in a field in Nenahezad,” his mother said.
That’s 13 miles from where he was last seen in Farmington, and to get there you have to go through his home in Kirtland.
With the fourth anniversary of the murder coming up later this month, Randall Shorty said investigators have given him a new ray of hope that justice will be achieved.
“We got a call from the FBI saying they have a new lead,” she told Fox News Digital. “We’re hoping and praying that it’s the lead we need to solve Zach’s case.”
They asked her if she knew some of the names, she said. She did.
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Zachariah Shorty left the motel to smoke a cigarette, she said, and the same friend later took his cell phone after receiving a call from his mother. (FBI)
“After I got an update from them (the FBI), I got other information and I gave them that information as well,” she said. “The same names kept coming up.”
The FBI declined to comment on the case, citing an ongoing investigation, but Randall Shorty and her lawyer are hopeful investigators will bring her son’s killer to justice.
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“In this case, there were witnesses in the hotel room who were with him before he went missing,” said Darlene Gomez, an attorney representing Shorty’s mother. “The family provided a lot of clues. A body was found. It’s a small community. Those are usually precursors to a solved case.”
Gomez, who runs MMIWR, a nonprofit that works to solve cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and their relatives, said businesses along the street also have surveillance cameras.
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But as the case dragged on, several witnesses died, she said.
Because Shorty’s body was found on tribal land, the FBI has jurisdiction.
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A $10,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to a conviction and resolution of the case.
Anyone with information is asked to call the FBI at 505-889-1300 or hint.fbi.gov.
Fox News’ Peter Petrov contributed to this report.
