It’s been almost seven months since anyone has seen or heard from Natasha Requejo. The 41-year-old mother of seven children disappeared last July from her home in Lusk, a small rural community of around 1,445 people in the southeastern corner of Wyoming.
Her boyfriend at the time, Tim Ober, said Requejo left town on her own, and Lusk police suspect that’s the case since she was positively identified by a convenience store worker in Casper a couple weeks later.
Her friends and family, however, say they are concerned and said there’s no way Requejo would not have been in touch with them by now. They fear for her safety.
Meanwhile, there’s no traceable financial activity for Requejo and her phone has long ago been shut off.
Last Sighting In Lingle
One of those friends, Amanda Roesch, said she was one of the last people to physically see Requejo before she disappeared the weekend of July 19. To date, she has not yet been interviewed by police, she said.
Requejo had called Roesch her one afternoon two days prior to disappearing to ask for a ride. Apparently, Roesch said, that Ober had dropped Requejo off at his friend’s house in Torrington when he went to work.
That friend gave Requejo the creeps, she told Roesch, due to his erratic behaviors, and she asked her friend to pick her up.
Roesch quickly got dressed and drove the 10 miles from her home in Lingle, a town of just under 400 people, to pick up Requejo and take her back home.
Ober was supposed to meet her later at the Roesch’s when he got off work but didn’t show up or call that night as planned, Roesch said, which bothered Requejo.
“I could see it on her face that she was irritated,” Roesch said, “and maybe a little worried but more irritated.”
Roesch said she didn’t know Ober well, and she thought the couple had been dating for seven months or so.
Requejo spent the night at the Roesch’s, and on Friday, the friends hung out, cleaned the house, and spent the afternoon together before Roesch headed out that evening for work at a Torrington country club.
The details of what happened that evening were murky because Roesch wasn’t home, and the story was reported to her second hand by her husband Cody and her oldest son.
Apparently, Ober showed up at the Roesch’s home Friday night after he got off work, but things were tense between the couple because he hadn’t shown up as planned on Thursday.
Cody later told his wife that “attitudes were running high,” and he asked the couple to “take it somewhere else,” at which point they left. It’s Roesch’s understanding that they’d worked it out and returned to their house but left before she got home from work.
Since they had already talked about returning to Lusk, Roesch figured all was well and she’d catch up with Requejo later.
She was later told by mutual friends that they’d made it back to Lusk, where Ober ran into his mother’s house to return her car keys and car. When he came back outside, Requejo, her purse and her backpack were gone.
Ober did not respond to Cowboy State Daily’s request for comment over Facebook messenger. A phone number for Ober could not be found nor could Roesch provide one.
Same Story
Andrea Gustafson, Requejo’s close friend of three years, told a similar story about Requejo’s disappearance.
Over Facebook messenger, Gustafson told Cowboy State Daily that Requejo was last seen with Ober in Lusk. Though Gustafson didn’t physically see her friend, she was told by Ober that he had brought Requejo back to Lusk that day and that she’d taken off while he was returning his mother’s car.
Since then, none of their friends or family have seen or heard from Requejo and her phone has been turned off.
“People claim to have seen her in Casper, but that’s not for sure,” she said.
Gustafson said she was not questioned by police about Requejo's disappearance but said it's not like her to go off the radar for more than a few days.
"This is very out of character for her," Gustafson said. "No one has heard from her or seen her since July 2024."
She said her missing friend is an amazing person, friend and mother and that they all miss her deeply.
Potential Sighting
Eyewitness testimony puts Requejo in Casper about two weeks after she left Lusk, according to Lusk Police Chief Jacob Gordon.
Gordon told Cowboy State Daily that a convenience store clerk had ID’d Requejo based on her missing person poster provided by police.
Gordon said the clerk was adamant that he’d seen Requejo going back and forth from the store to her motel a couple times before she again disappeared.
“This individual was very confident that it was her, and so she made it out of Lusk,” Gordon said, noting that the tipster said he recognized Requejo’s distinct appearance.
There was no surveillance footage, however, to verify the sighting, Gordon said.
Gordon said that along with that sighting, he also interviewed Ober, and other mutual friends, including Requejo’s ex-husband, Ricardo Vincent Requejo, with whom the children live and who reported her missing on July 29.
Those questioned were not concerned about Requejo’s welfare at the time she disappeared, Gordon said, because she’d told them that she wanted to leave, and she’d apparently chosen to leave on her own.
Efforts to contact Ricardo were also not responded to.
Police Say No Foul Play Suspected
Apart from the reported Casper sighting, Gordon said there have been no subsequent tips or leads in the investigation.
After interviewing Ober and others close to her — all of whom said she’d left on her own accord — Gordon said he does not believe there’s any foul play.
“There’s no inkling that there was any concern from these individuals that there was any criminal activity afoot,” he said.
Gordon admits that the fact that Requejo has been out of touch for so long is concerning given how much time has elapsed, and that by most accounts, the longest she’d ever go off the radar was maybe three weeks at the most.
He encourages anyone with information to contact the Lusk Police Department.
Desperate Friend Still Searching
Despite the lack of leads and communication, one man continues actively searching for Requejo.
Thomas Mitchell, who did not respond to Cowboy State Daily but who Roesch described as a close friend to both she and Requejo, has been on a mission to find answers in the wake of Requejo’s disappearance.
A post on his Facebook page describes his attempts to reach national media outlets to air Requejo’s story as well as his frustration in tracking down law enforcement — including the FBI, sheriff’s offices in neighboring counties among other state agencies — to share video footage he said he retrieved from weather cams on Highway 85 at Jay Em and on Highway 18/20 at Manville.
“I've also taken over 1,000 photos in old houses, tunnels under roads and railroad tracks and off beat places somebody might hide a body,” he wrote on social media.
Roesch said she’s been on several car searches with Mitchell where the two drive back-country roads searching for any sign of Requejo.
So far, there has been none.
Medical Concerns
Roesch is further concerned that her friend may be living without her medications.
“I’m worried sick about her,” Roesch said.
Requejo has epilepsy with seizures as well as Tourette’s syndrome, according to Roesch, that causes Requejo to have some noticeable tics. Her seizures are serious enough that it prevented her from working, Roesch said, and she struggled to get the proper care given her lack of reliable transportation to get to Denver to see a specialist.
Due to her medical issues, Requejo turned to marijuana, Roesch said, but to her knowledge Requejo wasn’t a known drug user.
Still, she worries that Requejo’s case is not being taken seriously by police given her “questionable lifestyle.”
Much like her other friends and family, Roesch asks anyone with information to come forward to help locate Requejo and bring her home.
She fears she’s no longer alive because she firmly believes that she would have contacted someone by now.
“There was always somebody that was in contact with her,” Roesch said. “Someone always knew where she was.”
Roesch described Requejo as a kind person with a heart of gold and a good mother who was always looking out for her children and who always stepped up to help others in need.
“She would never walk away willy nilly from her kids and family,” Roesch said.
Requejo is described as 5-foot, 4-inches and around 120 pounds with hazel eyes and purple-tinted hair.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Lusk Police Department 307-334-2212 or DCI at: 307-777-7181 to report information. Tipsters can also report anonymously on DCI’s website.
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
