Key facts
- Name: Maureen Erin Fields
- Age at disappearance: 41
- Last seen: February 15, 2006
- Location: Pahrump, Nevada
- Status: Still missing — open investigation; Nye County’s only unsolved murder case, per the sheriff
- Investigating agency: Nye County Sheriff’s Office
“Something is going to happen to me”
On February 14, 2006 — Valentine’s Day — 41-year-old Maureen Fields was working her shift at a bank in Pahrump, Nevada, when she told coworkers she was afraid something was going to happen to her.
The next day, she didn’t show up for work. Her husband, Paul Fields, said he last saw her that morning when she left the house. Her abandoned car was discovered in the desert. Maureen was nowhere near it.
She has never been found. Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo has called her disappearance the county’s only unsolved murder — a characterization that says everything about what investigators believe, and nothing about what they can prove. No body. No charge. Twenty years.
Who Maureen was
Maureen and Paul Fields had moved from New Jersey to Pahrump — a desert town about 60 miles west of Las Vegas — roughly ten months before she vanished. She worked at a local bank. The couple’s move west was supposed to be a fresh start. Instead, within a year, Maureen was telling coworkers she feared for her safety, and then she was gone.
Her father never stopped asking questions. Years later, he was still pressing the case in the press, still waiting for an answer to what happened to his daughter in the desert outside Pahrump.
The investigation
Paul Fields became the immediate and enduring focus. He allowed police to search the house and property several times. He initially agreed to a polygraph, then withdrew the consent on his attorney’s advice, and eventually stopped cooperating with police altogether. Investigators found his statements about the couple’s finances were inaccurate — he had claimed Maureen took large cash advances; in fact she had taken a single $4,000 advance and used it to pay off another card.
Ninety days after she vanished, Paul went to court to have her name taken off their jointly owned land, claiming abandonment. Maureen’s father tried to intervene, attempting to become her legal guardian to block Paul from getting her assets. Paul dropped the abandonment claim — while she was legally missing, he couldn’t divorce her — and in 2009 had her declared legally dead, becoming executor of her estate.
Then, in the fall of 2012, the case broke in an entirely new direction. DNA recovered from a knotted pair of pantyhose found near Maureen’s abandoned car was matched to Keith Wayne Holmes — a registered sex offender in his mid-seventies, with two prior convictions for child molestation, arrested in 2011 for trying to lure a twelve-year-old girl into his car. He lived in Pearblossom, California, over 200 miles from Pahrump — but investigators established he had been in the Pahrump area in 2006.
Holmes claimed he had met Maureen, that they’d had consensual sex on the 15th, and that he’d left her alive near Death Valley. He said he knew Paul. He said nothing else useful — he had dementia, was often not lucid, and died in a prison hospice in April 2014. Authorities were explicit: finding Holmes’s DNA did not rule Paul Fields out as a suspect.
Sheriff DeMeo, who put anniversary notices out year after year to shake loose new information, once described the toll of the case’s strange tactics — including flying remote-controlled drones over the desert looking for disturbed earth. “We exhausted every lead from the very beginning,” he said, “but we still have not been able to find Maureen Fields. We don’t want her family and friends to think we’ve forgotten about her.”
Paul Fields, maintaining his innocence, said: “It’s never dead in your mind. You’re waiting for her to come up the driveway because you never know.”
Theories: what might have happened
Twenty years, two men, one set of pantyhose, no body.
Her husband. The theory investigators pursued first and never abandoned. The points of pressure: the fear she expressed the day before, the inaccurate financial statements, the withdrawn polygraph, the ceased cooperation, the rush to declare her dead and take the estate. Against a conclusion: no forensic evidence has ever tied Paul to her disappearance, no charge has ever been filed, and he maintains his innocence. The presumption of innocence stands fully.
Keith Wayne Holmes. The DNA is real — a convicted sex offender’s genetic material on knotted pantyhose beside her abandoned car, a man who was in Pahrump in 2006. But DNA at a scene is not a narrative: Holmes claimed a consensual encounter and said he left her alive, and dementia took any further answers with him to the grave in 2014. Investigators never treated the DNA as closing the case — explicitly noting it didn’t clear Paul, either.
Both, or neither. The honest shape of the case: two threads that never braided into proof. A husband with suspicious behavior and no forensic link. A sex offender with a forensic link and no coherent account. Twenty years of neither thread producing a body or a charge.
Have information?
Contact the Nye County Sheriff’s Office (Pahrump, Nevada). In an emergency, dial 911.
Timeline
- 2005 — Maureen and Paul Fields move from New Jersey to Pahrump, Nevada.
- February 14, 2006 — Maureen tells bank coworkers she fears something will happen to her.
- February 15, 2006 — She fails to show up for work; Paul says he last saw her that morning. Her abandoned car is found in the desert.
- 2006–2009 — Paul is the focus of the investigation; he stops cooperating; in 2009 he has Maureen declared legally dead.
- Fall 2012 — DNA from pantyhose near her car is matched to registered sex offender Keith Wayne Holmes.
- April 2014 — Holmes dies in a prison hospice, his account incoherent with dementia.
- 2016 — Review-Journal: “DNA links California sex offender to missing Pahrump woman”; her father still has questions.
- 2018 — The Trail Went Cold, Episode 59, profiles the case.
- Today — Still missing. Nye County’s only unsolved murder case, per the sheriff. No charges ever filed.
FAQ
Is Maureen Fields still missing?
Yes. As of October 2026, Maureen Fields has been missing for more than 20 years. No trace of her has ever been found.
What happened to Maureen Fields?
On February 15, 2006, the 41-year-old bank worker vanished from Pahrump, Nevada, the day after telling coworkers she feared something would happen to her. Her abandoned car was found in the desert.
Was Maureen Fields’ husband charged?
No. Paul Fields was the immediate focus of the investigation and stopped cooperating with police, but he was never arrested or charged. He maintains his innocence and is presumed innocent.
Who was Keith Wayne Holmes?
A registered sex offender whose DNA was found in 2012 on pantyhose near Maureen’s abandoned car. He claimed a consensual encounter and said he left her alive; he died in 2014 with dementia. Police said the DNA finding did not rule out other suspects.
How old would Maureen Fields be today?
She was 41 when she disappeared in February 2006 — she would be 61 in 2026.
How can I help?
Share this case file. Anyone with information should contact the Nye County Sheriff’s Office.
Sources
- Official / law enforcement: Nye County Sheriff’s Office (Sheriff Tony DeMeo statements).
- News: Las Vegas Review-Journal, “DNA links California sex offender to missing Pahrump woman” and “Father of missing woman still has questions”; NJ.com, “The Lady Vanishes” (Aug 2014).
- Reference: The Charley Project, “Maureen Erin Fields.”
- Media: The Trail Went Cold, Episode 59 — “Maureen Fields and Jodine Serrin.”
Found an error? Tell us via the About page and we will fix it promptly and note the change here. Last verified October 2026.