Remains identified as woman who vanished 36 years ago, Washington officials say

Thirty-six years ago, Daisy Mae Tallman vanished while living with family on an Indian reservation in Washington.

At the time of her disappearance, the 29-year-old, also known as Daisy Mae Heath, was “staying with family in the White Swan area of the Yakama Indian Reservation,” according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs).

Tallman, a citizen of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, was last seen in August 1987 and reported missing that October, according to NamUs.

Her keys and backpack were found at Soda Springs, “a remote part of the reservation.”

Two decades after her disappearance, skeletal remains were found west of White Swan in Yakima County in 2008, Yakima County Coroner Jim Curtice told McClatchy News in a Jan. 4 email.

Those remains were just identified as belonging to Tallman, Curtice said.

“I am hopeful that this may help with the healing process for family and friends of Mrs. Heath-Tallman,” Curtice wrote.

Despite Yakama Nation Tribal Police and Yakima County Coroner’s Office saying they worked all leads at the time — including attempting to get a DNA profile from the remains — nothing was successful, according to Othram, the company that assisted in identifying Tallman’s remains.

“Without a DNA profile and with all leads exhausted, the case eventually went cold,” the company said.

In 2022, the remains were sent to Othram, where scientists were able to extract DNA from the remains to create a “comprehensive DNA profile,” the company said. The profile was compared to a “familial reference DNA sample.”

“The Yakima County Coroner’s office then confirmed that the unknown woman was in fact, Daisy Mae Tallman,” the company said.

Tallman’s cause and manner of death have yet to be determined, Curtice said.

Tallman is listed as a victim of a suspected homicide on the FBI’s Seattle office’s website. Her name is included among 16 other indigenous women found dead or declared missing from the Yakama Reservation between 1980 and 1992.

“These deaths ... have led some in the community to believe that a serial killer was operating on Tribal lands,” the FBI said.

Out of the 10 homicides, murder charges were brought in three cases, the FBI said.

Tallman’s disappearance continued to impact her family decades later, Yakima Herald-Republic reported in 2021.

“It’s hard to put your hands around this issue, particularly if you’re a family member,” Tallman’s older sister, Patsy Whitefoot, told the newspaper. “The loss that people feel, the lifelong grief, anger ... once someone has gone missing or was murdered and you don’t know what happened.”

Yakima County is about 160 miles southeast of Seattle.

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