Ann Linda Riffin’s story reminds me a bit of both Jennifer Pentilla and Melissa Crabtree. Ann Linda Riffin was a 33-year-old woman with the heart of a young girl and a taste for adventure, who had recently moved to New Mexico from New Jersey to try something new. She was last seen on September 13, 1983, en route from Ruidoso to Colorado Springs. What happened to her after she left Ruidoso is a complete mystery.
The only trace of her left was her car, found abandoned on September 21. The car was parked, not stuck, in the ditch off Highway 518 (then Hwy 3) near Holman, an unincorporated community between Mora and Tres Ritos. It was undamaged and locked. Inside, it contained her clothes, painting supplies, and some paintings she had done of the New Mexico landscape, which had enchanted her from the time she visited New Mexico as a teenager. Her purse and car keys were missing, suggesting she had left the car, intending to return at some point.
A rancher spotted the car on September 21. When it didn’t move for a week, he called it in on the 27th. Officer Herman Silva arrived on scene and initially believed the white 1979 Chevy Chevette was stolen and abandoned, given its New Jersey plates. When he ran the plates, he discovered it belonged to Irving Riffin, Ann’s father, and it had never been reported stolen. This was the first time the Riffins realized something bad may have befallen their daughter.
A woman at the nearby Tres Ritos Lodge recalled a young woman asking for change for a phone on September 13th. But she was not totally sure the young woman matched Ann Riffin’s description. There has been absolutely no confirmed sightings of her since she had left Ruidoso.
Riffin’s case has never gotten attention like Tara Calico’s. But Riffin matches the profile of both Tara Calico and Jennifer Pentilla – a 19-year-old girl who vanished in New Mexico without a single trace. She did not live a high-risk lifestyle and did not have a criminal record. Clues as to what happened to her are not forthcoming. And nobody in the Mora Valley is talking if they do know anything. That area is a tightknit community where family will protect each other – even if they do something evil. New Mexico is not unlike Sicily in that way.
Ann Riffin
Riffin was raised in a well-off and devout Jewish family in Montclair, New Jersey. She was introverted and creative, with a love for drawing, painting, and pressing wildflowers. She had an older sister, Jane, who was a star student and more extroverted and competitive. Her parents often made unfair comparisons between the two sisters, making it clear they favored Jane.
When Jane married and Vietnam started, Riffin felt she might crumble under the pressure. She decided to withdraw from Wellesley, the Massachusetts college she and Jane had both attended. After that, she moved around, even visiting England and writing a book about peace that was never published despite interest from Apple Records. She eventually graduated with a degree in anthropology and briefly became a college teacher. Eventually, she converted to Christianity, and she tried to convert her family, to their great displeasure. She bounced around between jobs, from private caregiving to real estate to teaching to secretarial work, and she lived in many different states and even Israel. She often returned to her parents’ home between new ventures. Her parents soon became frustrated with her and felt she led a “rudderless” existence. Her mother, Babs, urged her to find what she enjoyed but this appeared to be a struggle for Ann. Babs also urged Ann to leave Montclair, as it was not a good place for a single woman to meet someone and settle down.
At some point, Ann moved to her sister’s house. The two butted heads because Ann just wanted to draw and not meet friends, get married, or help around the house. “She was not easy to live with,” her sister said. This situation resulted in Ann Riffin becoming deeply depressed. Her despondence was bad enough that her family became concerned.
Eventually, in spring 1982, she told her family she was taking a trip to Pennsylvania. Then she sent a postcard from Oklahoma, and later she called and told her family that she had moved to New Mexico. This state was the perfect place for her adventurous and creative spirit. But ultimately, this would be the last place she would live that we know of. She took a job at the Whispering Pines restaurant in Ruidoso and roomed with her co-worker, Joan Stokes. She traveled twice to Albuquerque, for reasons unknown. Babs urged her friend in Taos, Linda Duettra, to reach out and reconnect with Ann but this did not happen.
While in Ruidoso, Ann mostly kept to herself. She dressed plainly, did not spend money unless she had to, and remained private about her life. No one recalls her dating or having many friends. Her boss at the restaurant thought it was odd that Ann was not extroverted and flashy, like most restaurant staff. She also noticed how Ann was keen to learn about the operations of the kitchen. Ann asked more questions than anyone who had ever worked there before.
In September, she took off on vacation, telling her sister she was going to Colorado Springs for a brief trip to visit some relatives. Her roommate noted that Ann Riffin took everything she owned with her, suggesting she never planned to return. Ann had previously mentioned to her mother she wanted to leave Ruidoso, but her mother encouraged her to stay and see what might happen.
Why Holman?
No one knows why Ann took the route she did through the Mora Valley. It is not the logical way to travel to Colorado Springs. Some people noted that Ann Riffin tended to get lost easily. She may have gotten lost off of I25. Another theory is that she went to Mora to see the apparition of Jesus Christ in the stucco on the walls of a Holman, NM, church, since she was deeply religious. Yet another theory is that she was simply sightseeing, something that certainly fits her creative and artistic personality. New Mexico enchanted her and she was probably especially enchanted by the Mora Valley area.
Some think she was driving that way to visit Linda Duettra who lived in Taos. But Riffin had not spoken to Duettra in years. Furthermore, Duettra was not aware she had planned a visit. Duettra said, “That is no place for a young woman to travel alone. The Mora Valley has a history of being strange and even dangerous.” What she meant by that is unclear.
The place where Ann’s car was found seems odd, as well. It is a remote spot that most people don’t know about besides locals. It is unclear why she had pulled over to the side of the road, when her car did not have mechanical problems and the gas tank was a quarter full. Did she pull over because someone was following her closely and she wanted to let them pass? Was someone pulled over on the side of the road, pretending to have mechanical trouble, and then Ann stopped to help? Or did Ann pull over to go hike in the woods, where she got lost or met her killer?
There is also the chilling fact that no one knows for certain that Ann was the one who parked the car there. What if someone had abducted her elsewhere and dumped the car in that ditch? Someone who knew the car wouldn’t be noticed for a while in that spot? That could point to a local or a person who had hiked or hunted in the area before.
If Ann was abducted and hurt somewhere else, then it would be helpful to know where she had last been seen – a gas station most likely or even a restaurant. But nobody seems to have seen her since Ruidoso, at least nobody who has come forward. Ruidoso is 231 miles from Holman, so I am sure she had to stop for gas somewhere. Her car may have had valuable DNA evidence that could be useful now but there was no way to test it back then. I wonder if her car has been destroyed or if it’s still in an evidence yard somewhere?
Another interesting point is that she took her purse and keys. It could be that someone hurt her and took her purse in a robbery, then drove to the Holman location, dumped the car, and took the keys. They did not notice the cash and checks in her car. But it seems more likely that she took her purse and keys herself, locked the car doors, and headed off somewhere on foot. The fact she took the keys tells me she had every intention of coming back to that car.
Did she pick up hitchhikers? Did she have a travel companion? Nobody knows. There is no proof she was alone for the trip, though, so we can’t definitively rule out a companion who may have played some role in her disappearance. But Lester Lieb doubts this theory due to the fact a large duffel bag and clothes were on the passenger side seat and floorboard.
We just have so few details about what actually happened to that day, making this case incredibly murky and frustrating!
The Investigation
Once the car was identified as Ann’s, police brought in bloodhounds. But the recent rains had washed away her scent. The rain had also ruined any chance of getting fingerprints off of the car.
The Riffins contacted every friend in Ann’s address book and in the stack of letters found in her car. None of her friends had heard from her recently. Most of her friends were part of the New Testament Church, leading her family to think she may have ended up in a cult. However, the only local cult moved from Holman, NM, to Texas in 1982, and their membership did not include Ann Riffin at the time of the move.
Police and Ann’s uncle, Lester Lieb, searched for her all over northern New Mexico the week after she went missing, to no avail. A former pastor whom Ann had lived with also spent a week in New Mexico searching in 1983, again to no avail. Her own parents could not come due to her father’s heart troubles at the time. Police scoured hospitals, morgues, motels, convents, and communes for her and sent her family lists of convents she may have joined. Missing persons posters plastered all over the Mora Valley did not generate any substantial leads, even with their promise of a sizable reward. Her face was broadcasted on TV without results. Officer Herman Silva located the woman at the Tres Ritos Lodge who thought she had seen a young woman who resembled Ann Riffin on the 13th of September, asking for change to make a payphone call. That sighting could not be proved to be Ann. Lester Lieb located a man who thought Ann had approached him in the woods, but this lead was also never substantiated.
On September 19, 1982, a woman’s skull was found in the San Juan River. Riffin’s family provided dental records and DNA, which ruled out the skull. The skull was later found to be that of Margaret Walden, a fascinating crime story in its own right. Check out my entry about Walden and her boyfriend Stewart Simmons.
A woman was seen boarding a bus in Arkansas. People thought she looked like Ann and called in the tip. But the woman was tracked down and turned out to be someone else.
In January 1985, someone thought they recognized Ann Riffin’s face in a People magazine photo of a volunteer nurse holding a baby in Bangladesh. Her family became excited, as this certainly seemed like something Ann would do, given her penchant for travel and caring for others. After contacting the Save the Children foundation that the nurse volunteered for, investigators determined that the nurse was someone else. Police noted the lack of tips in her case, even after her face was broadcasted on TV. It’s as if she had just stepped out of her car and then vanished into thin air.
Possible Explanations
In a final act of desperation, Ann Riffin’s mother, Babs Riffin, contacted a psychic. The psychic told her that Ann had disappeared willingly and had changed her name and wore long clothes. She saw Ann doing some kind of hard physical labor, possibly in Israel. This made Babs believe that Ann Riffin was alive somewhere, waiting to prove herself before she called home.
Since this was over 40 years ago now, that possibility seems more and more remote. But it would make sense that Ann Riffin might have chosen to disappear. Ann did not have the happiest life or the best relationship with her rigid parents, who were always disappointed in her and who even continued making snide comments about her after she went missing. Thus, she may have decided to abandon her car and take off into the world to get as far away from them as possible. She may have intended to call but something bad happened to keep her from doing so. Maybe she never wanted to call. Most people who disappear do so of their own accord.
Babs believes that Ann would have called at some point, though, given her sentimental and sweet nature. I think she probably would have, too. But sometimes, people just get fed up and break, especially if they have strained relationships with their families or suffer from mental illness. Some things about Ann’s behavior strike me as signs of mental illness or even undiagnosed autism. Then again, she may have just been unhappy due to pressure put on her from her family.
Interestingly, Ann had contacted her mom sometime while she was in Ruidoso and stated she was unhappy and wanted to come home. Her mother told her to stay put in New Mexico, so she did. But this suggests that Ann wanted to leave, especially since she took everything she owned from the cabin. Maybe she decided to leave New Mexico without telling her mother because she felt her mother didn’t care. Or she may have feared disappointing her parents even more if she left New Mexico.
If this is true, though, then why would she have just abandoned her car in that remote area? Had she wanted to vanish, why didn’t she drive the car to a bus station or train station, or at least Albuquerque, where getting around would have been easier? If she intentionally abandoned it, then why did she take the keys?
The young woman at the Tres Ritos Lodge was never confirmed to be Ann, but it seems very plausible it was her. Did she get a hold of someone on the phone at the Tres Ritos Lodge and that person came to get her and she never felt the desire to come back for anything, including the car? Did she move on to a new life? Or did the person who came to get her do her some kind of harm? Did she meet someone local who offered to help her and then things went sideways?
Further support of the foul play theory is the fact that Ann didn’t take the fifty dollar bill or the checks worth $222 in her car, which certainly would have been helpful in disappearing. She didn’t take her clothes, either. The words of her friend Linda Duettra seem eerie in light of the disappearance.
Ann’s disappearance seems to jibe with the disappearances of other girls and women in New Mexico in the 80s. Lots of violence befell women then, especially in the Santa Fe area. The serial killer David Bruce Morton was active there in 1983-1990. Tamara Britton and Michelle Quintana are some of the many women who vanished from the Santa Fe area in the 80s. A lot of women went missing in Albuquerque, too, and several of them were later found dead. Debra Landsdell and Tara Calico are examples of women who vanished from the Belen area and still have not been found. Then you’ve got the case of Jennifer Lynn Pentilla, who vanished while riding her bike through Deming. New Mexico is not a safe place for women and it appeared to have been worse in the 80s.
Her father has a different dark theory. As a physician, he was keenly aware of her depressive episodes. He thinks Ann Riffin may have committed suicide. He compares her latest watercolors set in New Mexico to Van Gogh “before he went mad.” He noticed her depressive symptoms and felt she may have done something to herself. But if she drove out to Holman to kill herself, why hasn’t her body been found? I guess that wilderness is pretty gnarly, but there is a lot of ranching, hunting, Christmas tree cutting, and hiking in the area. Surely someone would have seen her or found her remains.
The case also reminds me of Melissa Crabtree. Crabtree supposedly jumped off the Taos Gorge Bridge. But multiple sightings of her since suggest she is still alive and very mentally ill. Could that be Ann Riffin’s fate? Did she have a psychotic break and then fade into the underworld of the homeless and disenfranchised? Did she drift somewhere like Albuquerque where nobody recognizes her?
Here’s my theory. I think that Ann Riffin deliberately pulled off I25 to check out the Mora Valley. She pulled over in that remote area near Holman because she was enchanted and inspired by the land she was driving through. The Mora Valley is actually quite spellbinding and verdant, different from most of New Mexico. She wanted to paint the area, so she pulled over on the side of the road and got out with a few painting supplies. As she wandered into the woods, seeking the perfect scene to paint, she got lost. Eventually she succumbed to the elements out there. She may have even made her way to Tres Ritos Lodge to make a call for someone to pick her up and help her find her car, but then something happened to her after that, including possible foul play.
The truth is, we don’t know what happened, and we probably never will. But this is one of the cases where I desperately want to know what happened.
Ann Linda Riffin was 33 when she vanished. She was 125 pounds and about 5’3”. She had dark brown hair.