Black Magic, Mind Control, and the Bizarre Vanishing of Maya Millete

From outward appearances Maya Millete seemed to have had the perfect life for herself. Born in the Philippines but raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, the 39-year-old Maya was a pretty, well-off and well-educated woman with what at least appeared to be a happy marriage with her high school sweetheart Larry Millete, who she had moved off to live in San Diego with, as well as three young children she by all accounts absolutely adored. She seemed to have a happy home life, or at least that was the façade she and her husband had put up, because it would seem that there were dark forces lurking under the surface that were about to propel her into a bizarre unsolved disappearance involving mind control and the sinister world of black magic. 

On January 7 of 2021, Maya was reportedly in good spirits. It was just days before her eldest daughter’s birthday party that she had been excitedly planning for, and friends she talked to that day reported that she had been her usual self, with nothing seemingly amiss. At some point on that day, Maya stopped communications with everyone she knew and could not be found at her home in Chula Vista, a suburb of San Diego, California. The next day she was still nowhere to be seen and her worried relatives talked to her husband Larry about what was going on. When asked, he seemed nonchalant and told everyone various different versions of where Maya had gone, from hiking to visiting wine country, but those who knew her best were not convinced. They insisted that she was simply not the type to just leave on some spontaneous trip on a whim somewhere without saying anything, and she certainly would not have done it without telling her beloved children, especially not just before her daughter’s big birthday celebration. The following day he would change his story to say that she had locked herself in her room, but when family forced him to let them in she was nowhere to be found.

Maya’s sister and brother-in law did not buy any of what what Larry was saying in the slightest, and reported her missing to the Chula Vista Police Department on January 9 when she still had not contacted anyone. The police would begin looking into it, and although Larry told them the same kind of stories he was telling everyone else, it did not take them long to scratch under the cheery surface they had projected to the dark undercurrent beneath. The first thing they discovered was that, far from the perfect marriage Larry and even Maya had tried to give the illusion of, their relationship had been deteriorating since at least late 2020, when Maya allegedly had an affair with a co-worker, and after her husband’s behavior had grown increasingly jealous, overbearing, and controlling, to the point that she had begun to think about divorce. In fact, it would turn out that she had made a call to a divorce attorney the very day before her mysterious vanishing. Some friends also claimed that she had expressed fear of Larry and told them that he had physically abused her, with one friend allegedly even offering to let her use their condo until the divorce went through. On top of this, Larry had been prohibiting Maya’s parents from seeing their grandchildren, which had forced them to contact child protective services and engage in a custody dispute. He had also purportedly hidden their daughter’s cell phone in his wife’s vehicle so he could track her location and had even stalked her at one point and found her sitting with her alleged lover in a white truck. None of this was even the worst or strangest thing they found out. 

It would be found through interviews with those who knew her best that Larry had been planting about their home “subliminal messaging devices” that were apparently designed to mind control or brainwash people, in a bid to attempt to subliminally influence her to call off the divorce and stay with him. It appeared that he was extremely possessive and did not want her to leave, and so in desperation he had resorted to more unorthodox tactics such as the subliminal messaging devices and various supplements and herbal concoctions he had been slipping her to cause her to be more lethargic and open to mental suggestion, as well as spraying a myriad of mysterious pheromones around the house to manipulate her through her sense of smell. Police even found messages on her phone from Maya to her husband telling him she wanted him to stop taking the vitamins he was supplying her as they were making her fatigued. By this time, they had enough to get a search warrant for Larry’s home, and things would only get weirder from there. 

Authorities would find quite a few pieces of damning and very often bizarre evidence against him. One was a video of them having a heated argument over Maya’s purported affair, during which she can clearly be heard to tell him “So that’s enough for you to wish death on me all the time?” Not enough evidence of foul play, but certainly not a good look for a guy who was already being looked upon with more and more suspicion. A search of Larry’s computer records also turned up all sorts of interesting things. In addition to a folder of explicit sexual images of him and his wife called “Daddy’s File” creepily found on the Millete’s children’s computer, on his own computer there were also photos he had covertly taken of her and her alleged lover, a search history for all different kinds of pheromones, supplements, sedatives, and mind control devices, and even poisons that would not be detectable. Even more bizarre still was that there was a comprehensive online history of him contacting spellcasters and practitioners of Filipino black magic in order to get them to cast arcane spells and hexes against his wife. They start out with merely asking them to cast love spells on her, with one of the first of these messages reading:

I would like a powerful Love Spell to Bind my wife May T. Millete to me forever. Also for her to love me unconditionally as I Love her. To keep her from hurting our family even further.

This is perhaps creepy enough already, but his requests of these black magic users would get progressively more sinister from there. He would begin asking for spells to give her nightmares or make her sick or to break her bones, anything that would incapacitate her and keep her home with him. One message to a spellcaster rather chillingly reads:

Do you have any spells that can manifest to cause physical harm? Can you give someone cancer? Please give her the worst nightmares she needs to be punished for her actions. If you are able to cast a spell to cause bodily harm or cripple without killing. Is there a spell you can cast for May to be dependent on me and weigh her down? I’m desperate to calm her down. Make her sick and keep her really sick. She’s only nice to me when she needs me or sick. My wife May is adamant about getting divorced. She’s saying we’re over and she’s done trying. She’s out of control and pushing, I think she wants me to snap. Please punish May and incapacitate her enough so she can’t leave the house. It’s time to take the gloves off.

Through such exchanges Larry would purchase a total of 70 spells and hexes of all types like this against his wife, to the tune of thousands of dollars, and he would even order spells against Maya’s alleged secret lover. Police would find hundreds of these messages to various online spellcasters, and believed there were many more he had erased before they could be accessed. San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan would say of it:

Larry was trying to hold onto Maya, and he resorted to contacting what are called spellcasters. He was asking May to become incapacitated, for May to be in an accident, to have broken bones so that she could stay at home. Thus displaying homicidal ideations to harm May.

Rather eerily, one request for a hex against her was made on the day before she disappeared. None of this was direct evidence that he had been responsible for Maya’s disappearance and possible death, but it definitely illustrated that he had intent and fantasies of harming her. Then there were other odd pieces of evidence as well. In one piece of surveillance footage, Maya’s SUV can be seen backing up to her home on the day of her vanishing, and authorities would also find that there were 444 miles on the vehicle that were unaccounted for. There was also a piece of audio footage recorded on a neighbor’s camera at 9:57 p.m. on January 7, 2021, which features what sounded like eight gunshots and a dog barking. Another spooky piece of evidence was what Maya allegedly told her sister, Maricris, that “If something happens to me, it’s going to be Larry.” Although none of this was concrete evidence of foul play on Larry’s part and Maya’s body had still not been found despite intensive ongoing searches, based on all that had been found Larry Millette was arrested on suspicion of murder. 

Larry continued to plead innocence, denying that he had anything to do with his wife’s disappearance, and although he did admit that they’d been having marriage problems, he claimed that she had simply run off on him to start a new life. This is something Maya’s family are positive she would never do, as it would mean abandoning her children. In the meantime, Larry’s attorney tried to have him declared not competent to stand trial but this was unsuccessful and the trial had gone ahead scheduled. As of this writing, it is all still unfolding. Larry has maintained his innocence all the way, and it remains to be seen if he will be found guilty or not. In the meantime, Maya has never been found, the strange clues never really understood, and it remains a damn strange case, indeed.