On May 21, 1994, 26-year-old Aaron Leland Rivers Sr., a member of the Gila River Indian Community, disappeared from Wet Camp Village, Arizona. He and another man, Fred Joe Walking Badger, were working on a church on the reservation when they left to run an errand and were never seen again. The two men had told their partners they would be back in an hour, but they never returned.
At the time he went missing, Aaron was wearing a white t-shirt, gray shorts, white high-top Nike sneakers, and a navy blue bandana. The turquoise 1993 Pontiac Grand Am the men were driving also vanished with them.
Aaron was a father of two with a fiancée whom he planned to marry later that year. He was known to have numerous distinct tattoos, including a teardrop under his left eye, a spider on his right hand, barbwire around his right wrist, and a depiction of a Native woman on his left forearm. He also had one of his ears pierced. About a month after the men went missing, the Pontiac Grand Am they were last seen in was discovered abandoned and burned in the Gila River area. This discovery added a grim dimension to the case, intensifying the fears of their families and community.
More than five years later, in December of 1999, the remains of Fred Joe Walking Badger were found and identified through dental records. However, there was no sign of Aaron. His disappearance, coupled with the homicide of Walking Badger, remains an unsolved case that has stretched on for decades. The Bureau of Indian Affairs continues to seek information regarding Aaron's whereabouts and the circumstances that led to his disappearance and Walking Badger's death. The case is a painful reminder of the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people, leaving a family without answers and a community still searching for one of its own.Last Seen: May 21, 1994
