Police Said They Found Shayna Feinman Alive in Mexico. The Next Day, It Wasn’t Her

A missing woman was found alive. Then she wasn’t

On the night of Friday, October 23, 2026, municipal police in Tijuana, Mexico, were working a hillside neighborhood called Encino. There they came across a woman who matched the description in an American missing-person case.

The missing woman was Shayna Feinman, from Arizona. She had vanished in March 2024, more than two and a half years earlier. She was presumed dead. Two men had once been charged with her murder.

Tijuana is a big border city, just south of San Diego. Shayna had disappeared hundreds of miles away, in the empty high desert of northern Arizona.

By the next day, Mexican authorities were saying they had confirmed who she was. Tijuana police even posted a photo of the woman.

Shayna Feinman was alive. That was the official word.

Within four days, American investigators would say the opposite. (KTAR)

Two years of grief, undone by one Facebook post

For her family, the news landed on top of years of grief.

Shayna had been gone since March 2024. Searchers had covered the desert of west-central Arizona and pushed on into California. They found nothing. Her sister Kara would later write that the family had been “living with the belief that Shayna is no longer alive.”

They had even watched a murder case begin and end. In 2024, her boyfriend and another man were charged with killing her. In January 2025, those charges were dropped. Through all of it, there was never a body.

So the family had learned to live in a strange in-between. Not a funeral. Not a homecoming. Just a missing person who everyone believed was gone.

Now a police department in another country was saying she had been found.

It should have been the end of the story. Instead, it was the start of the strangest week the case had ever had. (FOX 13)

Her sister listened to the voice. Something was wrong

Her sister Kara got the chance to hear the woman’s voice.

Think about what that moment means. For two and a half years, the family had braced for the worst. Now there was a living woman on the other side of the border, and she was attached to her sister’s name.

Kara later said she was hopeful. But she was also waiting for official verification before she let herself believe it.

Then she listened. And she said something no one wanted to hear. She didn’t recognize the voice.

A sister knows her sister’s voice. If this really was Shayna, why did she sound like a stranger?

Kara’s doubt came before any lab test, before any official statement. She was the first person to say out loud that something didn’t fit.

To understand why that moment mattered so much, you have to go back to where Shayna disappeared. (Arizona’s Family)

A Route 66 town, surrounded by nothing

Seligman is a small town in northern Arizona. It sits on old Route 66, and on Interstate 40, the main highway between Flagstaff and Kingman.

According to a local motel owner, the town gets a lot of people passing through. Around it, the land opens into high desert: juniper scrub, red rock, dirt roads and scattered rural parcels.

Sebastian de Boorder owns the Aztec Motel off Route 66. He told reporters the town itself is safe. But he added a warning: “You can get lost very easily because we’re a small little towns but outside there’s a vast wilderness.”

Longtime residents told reporters, off camera, that the area has seen many missing-person cases.

In early 2024, Shayna Feinman, a woman in her thirties, was living out in that wilderness. She was staying in the Hyde Park area, near Seligman and Peach Springs in Yavapai County, with her boyfriend, Cavett Richards.

She had a car. She had a dog. And she had a friend who lived close enough to reach on foot. (KTAR)

She set out on foot. She never arrived

One day in March 2024, Shayna set out walking toward that friend’s house.

She never got there.

Reports don’t even agree on the exact date. Most say March 9. One says March 8. What they all agree on is the shape of it. She left on foot, she was heading to a friend’s place, and after that walk, no one who knew her saw her again.

Sheriff’s deputies would later describe it in five words. She vanished without a trace.

There was no call for help that anyone has described publicly. No witness has come forward to say what happened on the way. Out on those dirt roads, between fenced parcels and scattered trailers, the distances are long.

A short walk to a friend’s house. It is the most ordinary thing a person can do.

And somewhere along it, Shayna Feinman simply stopped being anywhere. (KTAR)

The dog waited. Nobody came back for it

A neighbor had been looking after Shayna’s dog.

It was the kind of small favor people do for each other all the time. Watch the dog. I’ll pick it up later.

The neighbor waited for her to come back. She never did.

In the end, it was this neighbor who raised the alarm.

That delay matters. According to the Arizona Daily Star, Shayna wasn’t reported missing until nine days after she was last seen. Other outlets say only that the neighbor reported her missing when she failed to pick up the dog as expected.

Either way, the clock had already been running for a while before anyone official started looking. In a missing-person case, the first days are usually the most valuable. That is when memories are fresh and tracks are still on the ground.

And what turned up next made things look worse. (KTAR)

Her wallet was still in the car

Shayna’s car was found near the property where she had been staying with her boyfriend. According to KTAR, it was the same neighbor who found it.

The car hadn’t gone anywhere. And inside it were her wallet and her ID.

That small detail changes the whole picture.

People who leave on their own, who decide to start over somewhere else, usually take their wallet. They take their ID. You need them to rent a room, to cash a check, to cross a border, to prove who you are.

Shayna had left both behind, sitting in a car parked near the place she lived.

Whatever had happened to her, she had not driven away. And she had gone without the two things she would have needed to begin a new life anywhere else.

Then something else turned up, somewhere it shouldn’t have been. (FOX 13)

Her phone was lying in someone else’s dirt

Later, her cellphone was found too.

It wasn’t in the car. It wasn’t at the house where she had been staying. It turned up on a nearby parcel of land, a separate piece of property.

Out in rural Arizona, a “parcel” can be a big fenced lot with a trailer on it, or just open scrub with a property line drawn on a county map. A phone on one of them, away from its owner, raises an obvious question. How did it get there?

Reports don’t say exactly where on the parcel it was found, or what investigators learned from it.

But by now, the list was complete. Her car. Her wallet. Her ID. Her phone. One by one, everything she would have carried had been found within a short distance of where she was last seen.

Everything except Shayna. (FOX 13)

They searched two states. They found nothing

Search teams went out across the desert of west-central Arizona. Then they pushed the search on into California.

That is a huge area. West-central Arizona is mostly open country: dry hills, washes, scrub and long dirt roads with very few people on them. Someone could walk for hours and see no one.

Searchers covered open ground and empty parcels. They found nothing.

Weeks became months. Months became years.

To this day, no remains have been recovered. No one has been able to say exactly where Shayna Feinman’s walk ended, or what happened to her after she left for her friend’s house.

Detectives say the search is still active. The family has never stopped asking where she is.

But even without a body, investigators believed they knew who was responsible.

And in 2024, they said so publicly. (FOX 10)

A murder charge, with no body

In 2024, the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office announced it had probable cause to charge two men in Shayna’s disappearance.

“Probable cause” is the legal bar for an arrest. It means investigators believe there is enough evidence to think a crime happened and that a particular person did it. It is not proof. It is the start of a case, not the end of one.

One of the men was her boyfriend, Cavett Richards. The other was William DalCerro, who owned the property where she was last seen.

The charges named were second-degree murder, conspiracy, and concealment of a dead body.

Even the date is fuzzy in the record. KTAR says April 28, 2024. Other outlets say August 2024.

Cases like this have a name: a no-body homicide. They are rare, and they are hard. Without remains, prosecutors have to prove a person is dead before they can prove anyone killed her.

And this case had a hole right in the middle of it. There was still no body. (FOX 13)

Both men were already locked up

By the time of the announcement, both men were already in jail.

They weren’t there because of Shayna. They had been held on unrelated weapons and stolen-vehicle charges.

For Shayna’s family, it looked like an answer was finally coming. Two men had been named. Both were in custody. A murder case was on the books.

In a courtroom, the evidence would have to come out. Someone, eventually, would have to explain what investigators thought had happened out in the desert.

It is important to be clear about what this was, and what it wasn’t. Being charged is not the same as being found guilty. Neither man has ever been convicted of anything connected to Shayna’s disappearance.

Leising, the retired FBI agent, later pointed out how hard a case like this is without remains. The family waited for it to move forward anyway.

That moment never arrived. (FOX 13)

Then the murder charges vanished too

In January 2025, according to court records, the murder charges against both men were dismissed.

Reports cite the court records, but they do not give the reason for the dismissal.

Lance Leising, a retired FBI agent who handled missing-persons cases, put the core problem bluntly: “Without the body, very difficult to prosecute that.” He suggested that prosecutors may have dropped the charges expecting to find more evidence, and could charge again if it turns up. That is his view, not an official explanation.

Neither man was convicted of anything connected to Shayna’s disappearance. County prosecutors have said the investigation into the two men remains active.

But for now, the courtroom answer the family had been waiting for was gone.

Shayna was still missing. And now, no one stood accused of anything. (Arizona’s Family)

The family had stopped waiting for her

The reward for information grew to $20,000, offered through Yavapai Silent Witness.

Silent Witness programs let people pass tips to police anonymously. The idea is simple. Somebody out there knows something, and money plus secrecy might be enough to get them to talk.

Still, no one came forward with the answer.

By then the family had reached a painful conclusion. Her sister Kara later wrote that they had been “living with the belief that Shayna is no longer alive, and her remains still not located.”

They had stopped waiting for her to walk back through the door. What they wanted now was to find her, and to find out what had happened.

Kara has said she is not done searching. Not for answers, not for Shayna’s remains, and not for justice.

And yet, strangely, people kept saying they had seen her. (Arizona’s Family)

A dozen sightings. Every one led nowhere

The sightings never fully stopped.

Someone thought they had seen her in one place. Someone else was sure they had seen her somewhere else. Her family says it happened at least a dozen times.

Each report forced the same cycle. A flash of hope. A wait. Then nothing.

Kara has said that reports with little evidence from law enforcement are disheartening. Imagine having accepted that your sister is dead, and then being asked, again and again, to wonder if she isn’t.

Missing-person cases with public attention often attract this. A face on a flyer starts to look like a stranger at a gas station or a woman on a street corner. Most of these tips come from people trying to help. Almost all of them turn out to be wrong.

So when the next report came in, the family had every reason to be careful.

This one came from Mexico. And this time, it came from the police. (KOLD)

Tijuana: a border away from where she vanished

On Friday, October 23, 2026, municipal police in Tijuana got reports of a woman matching Shayna’s description in the Encino neighborhood.

They went and found her.

Tijuana is one of Mexico’s biggest cities. It sits right on the border, directly south of San Diego, California. Encino is one of its hillside neighborhoods.

Shayna had vanished far from there, out in the high desert of northern Arizona. To get from Seligman to Tijuana, you would have to cross most of Arizona, then a stretch of California, then an international border.

It is a long way for anyone. It is an especially long way for someone whose car, wallet and ID had all been left behind.

But the woman matched the description. And Mexican police were taking it seriously.

More than two and a half years after Shayna vanished, could this really be her? (KTAR)

Mexican police said: we confirmed her identity

Officers took the woman to a safe place, where she could contact officials from the US consulate and her family.

A consulate is a government office one country keeps in another country’s city, partly to help its own citizens in trouble. If an American woman had turned up after years missing, that is who you would call.

The next day, Saturday, Tijuana police posted about it on Facebook. They said a woman matching Feinman’s description had been found. They posted a photo of the woman and said it was her.

Mexican authorities said they had confirmed her identity.

Nobody has publicly explained how they reached that conclusion. That is still one of the open questions in this case.

But for the first time since March 2024, an official police statement said Shayna Feinman had been found alive.

And the internet did the rest. (KTAR)

The headlines said alive. Two men had been charged with her murder

By Monday, October 26, the story was everywhere.

Reports spread on social media, and headlines across the United States said the missing Arizona woman had been found alive in Mexico, more than two years after she vanished.

The detail that made the story explode was the one that should have made people stop and check. Two men had once been charged with her murder.

If she was alive, then what had that whole case been? A murder charge for a woman who was living in another country?

It was the kind of twist that spreads fast. And it spread before anyone in the United States had confirmed a single thing.

Lance Leising, the retired FBI agent, later said: “It is shocking that they would post on social media before confirming with a U.S.-based law enforcement agency.” He called it “not even close to best practices.”

Back in Arizona, one office wasn’t celebrating. (Arizona’s Family)

The sheriff refused to celebrate

The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office would not confirm the identification.

On Monday, while the headlines were spreading, its spokesperson, Paul Wick, said the information was unconfirmed and that there was not enough evidence.

The office was blunt about the news coverage. “Those news stories were published without official law enforcement confirmation,” it said.

You might expect the agency handling a missing-person case to be the first to share good news. Here, the sheriff’s office was the one urging caution.

It had good reason. This was its case. Its detectives had worked it since March 2024, alongside the family. And they knew how many false sightings had already come and gone.

So instead of joining the celebration, the sheriff’s office waited for proof. Not a photo. Not a description. Evidence.

Proof came the very next day. (KTAR)

Physical evidence said: this is someone else

So American authorities did what the headlines hadn’t. They checked.

On Tuesday, October 27, the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office said US authorities had confirmed to its detectives, using physical evidence, that “the individual located is not Shayna Feinman.”

Officials did not say what kind of physical evidence was used. Reports don’t explain it either.

In identity cases, “physical evidence” means something you can test or compare, rather than a resemblance in a photo or a matching description. A photo can fool people. A test result is much harder to argue with.

The sheriff’s office said detectives “continue to work diligently with the family during this stressful time.”

The result was clear. The woman found in Tijuana was not Shayna Feinman.

Her sister had heard it in the voice four days earlier. Now it was official. (FOX 13)

“Shayna has still not been found”

Her sister put out a statement of her own. Four days earlier, it had all started with a photo on a police Facebook page.

“We can now definitively say she is NOT my sister, Shayna Feinman,” she wrote.

The family had been pulled from grief to hope and back again in four days. Kara called the false reports traumatic. She also criticized news outlets for reporting unconfirmed information as fact.

She has said she is taking time to process what happened. She has also said she is not done searching, for answers, for Shayna’s remains, and for justice.

There was one more sentence in her statement. It was the simplest one. And it was the one that had been true the entire time, through the Facebook post, the photo, the headlines and the celebrations.

“Shayna has still not been found.” (FOX 10)

Nobody knows who the woman in Tijuana is

The woman police found in Tijuana has never been publicly named. Officials have not said who she is, or why she was first identified as Shayna.

Many questions are still open. What physical evidence ruled her out? Why did Mexican authorities say they had confirmed the identity? Why were the murder charges dismissed in January 2025? Reports don’t answer any of them.

In the Arizona desert, the case is exactly where it was before that Friday night. No body. No conviction. The two men once charged have never been convicted of anything related to her disappearance. Prosecutors say the investigation is still active.

The $20,000 reward through Yavapai Silent Witness still stands.

Somewhere between a dirt road near Seligman and a friend’s house she never reached, a woman in her thirties disappeared in March 2024.

Shayna Feinman is still missing. If you have information, contact the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office or Yavapai Silent Witness. (Arizona’s Family)

Case notes: a Facebook post, a voice the sister didn’t know, and a case still open

Shayna Feinman, a woman in her thirties, disappeared in March 2024 from the Hyde Park area near Seligman and Peach Springs in Yavapai County, Arizona (KTAR) (FOX 13). She had set out on foot for a friend’s house and never arrived (Arizona’s Family) (KTAR). Her car, with her wallet and ID inside, was found near the property where she had been staying with her boyfriend, Cavett Richards (FOX 13) (FOX 10).

In October 2026, police in Tijuana, Mexico, announced they had found her alive. Four days later, US investigators said physical evidence showed the woman was someone else (KTAR) (FOX 13) (Arizona’s Family). As of Oct. 28, 2026, Shayna Feinman is still listed as missing, and nobody has been convicted in her disappearance.

Timeline

Date	What happened
March 2024	Feinman leaves on foot for a friend’s house and is not seen again (KTAR) (Arizona’s Family)
Days later	A neighbor caring for her dog raises the alarm when she doesn’t come back for it (KTAR) (Arizona Daily Star)
2024	Her car, with wallet and ID, is found near the property where she had been staying; her phone later turns up on a nearby parcel (FOX 13) (KTAR)
2024	The sheriff’s office says it has probable cause to charge Cavett Richards and William DalCerro with second-degree murder, conspiracy and concealment of a dead body. Both are already jailed on unrelated weapons and stolen-vehicle charges (FOX 13) (KTAR)
January 2025	The murder charges against both men are dismissed, according to court records (FOX 13)
2024-2026	Searches across west-central Arizona and into California find no remains; the family reports at least a dozen false sightings (Arizona’s Family) (KOLD)
Fri., Oct. 23, 2026	Tijuana municipal police find a woman matching her description in the Encino neighborhood and take her to a safe place (KTAR) (Arizona Daily Star)
Sat., Oct. 24, 2026	Tijuana police post on Facebook; Mexican authorities say they have confirmed her identity (KTAR)
Mon., Oct. 26, 2026	US outlets report she was “found alive.” The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office says the reports went out without official confirmation (Arizona’s Family) (KTAR)
Tue., Oct. 27, 2026	US authorities confirm, using physical evidence, that the woman is not Feinman (FOX 13) (KTAR) (Arizona’s Family)

What the sources agree on, and where they don’t

Detail	Source A says	Source B says
Her age	35 (Arizona’s Family) (KOLD)	38 when she vanished (FOX 13)
Day she was last seen	March 9, 2024 (Arizona’s Family)	March 8, 2024 (KTAR)
When probable cause was announced	April 28, 2024 (KTAR)	August 2024 (FOX 13)
When the neighbor reported her missing	When she didn’t return for her dog (KTAR)	Nine days after she was last seen (Arizona Daily Star)
Reward amount	$20,000 through Yavapai Silent Witness (Arizona’s Family) (KTAR)	A linked FOX 10 headline said $10,000; the article body says $20,000 (FOX 10)

Every source agrees on the core facts: she vanished in March 2024, both men’s murder charges were dismissed in January 2025, and the Tijuana woman was ruled out on Oct. 27, 2026 (FOX 13) (Arizona’s Family). This story uses the broader wording (“in her thirties,” “March 2024”) where reports differ.

Details most coverage missed

The sister doubted it from the first call. Before the lab result came back, her sister Kara said she did not recognize the woman’s voice (Arizona’s Family) (KOLD).

The sheriff never confirmed it. Even on the day of the “found alive” headlines, the sheriff’s office said it had not verified the identification. “Those news stories were published without official law enforcement confirmation,” it said (KTAR).

The case against the two men is not over. The dismissal ended the 2024 charges, not the investigation. County prosecutors say it is still active (Arizona’s Family) (KOLD). Neither man has been convicted of any crime related to her disappearance.

It had happened before. The family says reported sightings had come in at least a dozen times before Tijuana (Arizona’s Family) (KOLD). Kara said the family had been “living with the belief that Shayna is no longer alive” (FOX 10).

What we still don’t know

• Who the woman in Tijuana is. Her identity has not been released (Arizona’s Family) (KOLD).
• What physical evidence ruled her out, and why Mexican authorities first said they had confirmed the identity (KTAR).
• Why the murder charges were dismissed. Reports cite court records but do not give the reason (FOX 13).
• Where Shayna Feinman is. Her remains have never been found (FOX 13).

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Case file summary

• Missing: Shayna Feinman, in her thirties
• Last seen: March 2024, Hyde Park area near Seligman, Yavapai County, Arizona
• Charged, then dismissed: Cavett Richards and William DalCerro (charges dismissed January 2025; not convicted)
• False identification: Woman found in Tijuana, Oct. 23, 2026; ruled out by US authorities Oct. 27, 2026
• Reward: $20,000 via Yavapai Silent Witness
• Status: Open. Still missing

If you have information about Shayna Feinman, contact the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office or Yavapai Silent Witness. Illustrations are artistic interpretations, not police or news photos. No real person has a recognizable face.

Sources

• Arizona’s Family: Missing Arizona woman found alive in Mexico after more than 2 years (updated Oct. 28, 2026)
• KOLD: Person found in Mexico is not missing Arizona woman, sheriff’s office says (Oct. 27, 2026)
• KTAR News: Shayna Feinman, missing woman, Mexico (Oct. 27, 2026)
• FOX 13 Seattle: Woman found in Mexico is not Shayna Feinman, Arizona sheriff’s office says
• FOX 10 Phoenix: Search for Shayna Feinman continues after mistaken identity in Mexico (Oct. 27, 2026)
• Arizona Daily Star (Oct. 27, 2026)