In the autumn of 2014, 56-year-old Anthony Colfax Peters, an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, disappeared without a trace. Known affectionately as Tony, he was last seen around October 1st at the Legends Casino on the Yakama Reservation in Toppenish, Washington. At the time he went missing, Tony was described as a Native American male, standing between 5'3' and 5'6' tall, and weighing between 160 and 170 pounds, with black hair and
brown eyes. His disappearance created a void of information and left his family and community grasping for answers that have yet to come.
The circumstances surrounding Tony's disappearance are shrouded in uncertainty. At the time he went missing, he was experiencing homelessness and would sometimes stay with various friends or relatives. It was not entirely unusual for Tony to travel, sometimes journeying to Seattle or other areas within a 200-mile radius of the Yakima Valley, and he had previously been out of touch with family for periods of up to six months. However, he would always make contact with his loved ones eventually. A significant and concerning detail is that since his disappearance, he has not collected any of his monthly tribal per capita checks, which were his primary source of income.
The investigation, led by the Yakama Nation Tribal Police, has unfortunately not yielded any significant breakthroughs, and Tony's case has grown cold. The lack of progress is a painful reality for his family, who are left to wonder what happened to him after he was last seen at the casino. His story is a heart-wrenching example of the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people, a tragedy that disproportionately affects communities like the Yakama Nation. The overview of Anthony Peters' case is one of a sudden and complete silence after a known point in time; a man vanished from a familiar place within his own community, leaving behind a family in anguish and a case that remains unsolved.Last Seen: Oct 1, 2014
