Family breaks silence five years after Maya Millete’s disappearance

Five years after Maya Millete vanished from her Chula Vista home, her family was still seeking answers in a case that ended with Larry Millete’s first-degree murder conviction but no recovered body. Maya Millete was 39, the mother of three children, when she was last seen on Jan. 7, 2021.

Her disappearance quickly moved from a missing-person case into a criminal investigation. Chula Vista police and prosecutors later treated it as suspicious, and Larry Millete was arrested on Oct. 19, 2021, in connection with her disappearance. Maya Millete’s body has never been found, and there is still no confirmed cause of death.

Court proceedings and earlier reporting described a marriage under strain, with divorce tensions at the center of the case narrative. Investigators and prosecutors also alleged that Larry Millete contacted spellcasters in an effort to put a hex on his wife so she would not leave him. That allegation became one of the most unusual details in a case built on digital evidence, witness testimony and the absence of a crime scene or a body.

The lack of remains made the case especially difficult for both sides. CBS 8 noted that without a body and without a confirmed cause of death, prosecutors and the defense faced unique challenges in presenting what happened in the Millete home and after Maya Millete disappeared. Even so, the case moved forward as a no-body murder trial, a form of prosecution that depends on circumstantial proof rather than a recovered body.

Maya Millete’s relatives kept searching long after she vanished, holding vigils and asking the public to keep her name alive. NBC 7 San Diego said the family broke its silence five years after she disappeared, a milestone that underscored how unresolved missing-person cases keep reshaping a family’s life long after the first search crews leave. For Maya Millete’s three children and close relatives, the burden has been measured in years without certainty and in a case where the central question still is what happened to her.