By Wheeler Cowperthwaite
Special to the SUN

Prosecutors added two charges against a former Jicarilla Apache Nation police officer, accused of raping her son, physically attacking her daughter and lying to federal investigators.

A grand jury first indicted Lory Muniz, 49, on a single count of aggravated sexual abuse for allegedly raping her son on May 13.

FBI Agent Jared Harshbarger initially charged Muniz with an additional count of abuse of a child for allegedly beating her daughter on April 17.

The superseding indictment, brought by a new grand jury, adds two charges to the initial rape charge by the first grand jury: assault resulting in serious bodily injury, which happened on April 19, 2009; and making false statements and representations on April 17, 2025. The superseding indictment was filed on Jan. 21, 2026.

The alleged child rape happened between 2018 and April 9, 2024.

Muniz pleaded not guilty to the three charges on Jan. 29.

Despite prosecutors seeking to have her held without bail pending trial, Federal Magistrate Judge John Robbenhaar released her to a halfway house in Albuquerque in April 2025.

After her defense filed a motion to continue her case, it is tentatively, although not likely, set for trial on May 4.

The Case

The federal investigation into Muniz started on April 4, 2025, after Jicarilla Apache Police Department Detective Christopher Rafferty told the FBI that Muniz’s son, 13, told his father that Muniz raped him when he was between the ages of 7 and 11, Harshbarger wrote in court documents.

When Harshbarger started to investigate, he found that Muniz was charged with child abuse in the tribal courts in 2023 and she had not been allowed to see her children since that case was brought. She stopped working as a police officer during the case and then started work again for the Jicarilla Apache Police Department at the end of March 2025, at the end of her deferred tribal sentence, Harshbarger wrote.

A few days later, the son went through a forensic interview where he said his mother physically abused him from ages 9 to 11 and it only stopped when the tribal case against her started, Harshbarger wrote.

The boy described physical abuse, like being thrown against a wall, punched in the face and stomach and not being allowed to go to school while his bruises were visible. He also talked about being raped and molested from ages 6 to 12, he wrote.

The sister alleged violence where her mother broke her arm against a toilet bowl when she was 5. She remembered hearing their mother beat her brother and said that her brother told her about being molested, Harshbarger wrote

Jicarilla Apache Police Chief Joseph Schake wrote in a statement on Facebook that he was “extremely disappointed” to learn that one of his officers was the target of an investigation, even though his department allowed Muniz to come back to work after she finished serving a deferred sentence in the tribal court that he and his officers work with and in.

It is unknown how Schake didn’t know about allegations of abuse against Muniz since she stopped working as an officer during her deferred sentence.