In March 2020, brothers Matthew and Philip Reagan left Fairview Park, Ohio, on a cross-country road trip. Matthew, 39, an engineer and father of five, was driving his younger brother Philip, 29, out to California for a new job — with a planned stop at Canyon de Chelly National Monument along the way.
Their route took them onto the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American reservation in the country, and somewhere near a small community called Sawmill, Arizona, they left the highway for a back road. Their SUV got stuck in the mud. With no cell signal, they got out and started walking for help.
On March 21, 2020, their bodies were found along that road, about half a mile from the SUV. Both men had been shot. The county medical examiner ruled both deaths homicides.
Investigating a homicide on tribal land means navigating a jurisdictional split between the FBI, the Navajo Department of Criminal Investigations and the Apache County Sheriff’s Office — complicated further in this case by the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The FBI issued a Seeking Information poster, printed in the Navajo language, and the reward climbed from $5,000 to $10,000 by September 2020. FBI Special Agent in Charge Sean Kaul said investigators believe someone knows what happened. Matthew’s wife, Faye Wurstner-Reagan, has appealed publicly on behalf of their five sons.
No suspect has ever been publicly named. In August 2026, the FBI announced a new $25,000 minimum reward for this case and more than fifty other unsolved cases across Indian Country nationwide — part of the Bureau’s own acknowledgment of a broader, well-documented pattern of violence and unsolved cases in these communities.
If you were on the Navajo Nation near Sawmill, Arizona in March 2020, or if you know anything at all about what happened to Matthew and Philip Reagan, the FBI’s Phoenix Field Office wants to hear from you: (623) 466-1999, or submit a tip anonymously at tips.fbi.gov.
Related reading
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Sources
FBI Phoenix Field Office, “FBI, Partners Seeking Information on Double Homicide; Up to $10,000 Reward Available” (originally issued June 17, 2020, updated September 23, 2020); FBI Seeking Information poster, “Matthew and Philip Reagan” (fbi.gov/wanted/seeking-info/matthew-and-philip-reagan); Associated Press/ICT, “FBI pursues leads in double homicide on Navajo Nation,” October 7, 2020; Cleveland19/WOIO (Sara Goldenberg), “Six years later, the murders of Ohio brothers in Arizona remain unsolved,” March 20, 2026, and its 2024 anniversary coverage; U.S. News/AP, “FBI Sets $25,000 Minimum Reward for Dozens of Unsolved Indian Country Cases,” August 25, 2026. Full slide-by-slide image credits appear in the video description. Both photographs of Matthew and Philip Reagan used in this video are from the FBI’s own public-domain Seeking Information poster for this case.
No suspect or person of interest is named in this case. This article and the video below report only what investigators and the family have said publicly, and do not speculate about who is responsible.
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