Two years after 36-year-old Marine veteran Juan Merlos vanished along Interstate 10 near the Texas-New Mexico border, his family in Houston is still waiting for a single solid lead. Merlos, who had moved to Houston to be closer to family after six years of military service, was last tracked by a license plate reader in Anthony, New Mexico, and has not been seen or heard from since.
Merlos left Houston on August 20, 2024, at 4:59 p.m., according to KVIA. That morning, he had worked his regular shift before returning home to swap vehicles with his uncle, taking a truck with working air conditioning for what he expected to be a long drive. He was driving a blue Chevrolet Silverado, and his truck was last seen on I-10 near mile marker 161, close to Anthony, Texas, and the New Mexico state line.
A worker at a nearby Love's Travel Stop told the outlet's reporting team that he observed Merlos driving away from the gas station toward a motel across the street, offering the last known sighting of the missing veteran. Investigators have also pieced together a broader picture of his final hours on the road: according to Woodlands Online, automated license plate readers tracked his truck, bearing Texas plate RRB5140, heading west through Segovia in Kimble County before it was recorded entering Anthony, New Mexico, at 2:59 a.m. on August 21, 2024.
A Trip Planned, Then Abruptly Cut Short
Merlos had planned a trip for the week after he left Houston. He had purchased a commercial airline ticket for a flight scheduled during the week of August 28, 2024, to visit friends in Los Angeles, a trip he never boarded, according to reporting cited by the Disappeared Blog. He made two phone calls to those friends in Los Angeles, who did not answer; when they called back, they reached only voicemail.
Per AT&T, Merlos's phone last had service on August 21, 2024. Investigators have said his phone may have gone dark because it died, was powered off, or had its SIM card removed. His sister Jackie Merlos said Juan was not the type of person to leave without notice, and family members have described him as the protective big brother of five who was like a father to his siblings, including Jackie and Eli. Jackie and Eli reportedly had plans with Juan for the weekend he disappeared.
Family Grief Compounded the Timing
Merlos's disappearance came amid devastating loss for his family. Weeks before he vanished, the family lost a relative, and another family member was diagnosed with kidney cancer around the same time, according to KVIA's reporting. Separately, background reporting from the Disappeared Blog identifies that loss as his younger sister Karen, who died in a car crash during Hurricane Beryl in July 2024, and notes that his brother Oscar was diagnosed with stage 3 kidney cancer and underwent kidney removal surgery as the search for Juan was getting underway.
Merlos was diagnosed with PTSD after returning from Iraq, a detail that adds weight to the case given Texas's history of tracking missing veterans. The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, which is leading the investigation under case number 24A243812 with assistance from volunteer search group Texas EquuSearch, has kept the case open. As of August 2026, the agency has continued conducting monthly searches of national law enforcement databases and auditing financial account transactions tied to Merlos in El Paso and New Mexico, according to KHOU. Detectives have responded to multiple reported sightings in border communities, though none have led to Merlos.
Border Crossing Ruled Out, Mystery Remains
Federal border monitoring systems have confirmed that neither Merlos nor his Silverado ever crossed legal checkpoints into Mexico, according to a report from Click2Houston. That finding narrows the range of possibilities but leaves investigators without a clear answer for where he went after leaving the Love's station in Anthony. Chief Hernandez is among the officials working on the search, alongside Anthony police, who are also involved in the ongoing investigation.
Merlos is formally logged in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System under federal case entry MP135828, a Department of Justice database that allows the case to be searched nationally. His family has continued to ask the borderland community for any information that might explain what happened, still seeking answers two years after he was last seen driving away from that gas station.
A Broader Gap in Support for Veterans
Merlos's case also underscores a systemic gap in how Texas handles missing veterans in crisis. The state enacted a Camo Alert law in 2019 designed to mobilize public search efforts for missing veterans with PTSD, modeled on Amber and Silver alerts. But legislative evaluations in August 2026 found the program produced zero successful rescues due to underutilization before it expired, according to US105, a gap now driving new pushes for federal Green Alert standards.
