| A SPOTLIGHT ON THE JOURNALISM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION HELPS BRING TO LIFE. |
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Kara Edgerson | Manager of Digital Operations
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| But behind the headlines are deeper failures of a justice system that fractured around her, of institutions that missed the signs, and of adults who didn’t know, or didn’t act, until it was too late. |
| Here’s what they had to say: |
What happened to Emily Pike
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| You’ve spent time trying to piece together Emily’s life from court records, interviews and documents. What have you learned about how systems failed her that wasn’t immediately obvious? |
| The most important thing we learned was that she was sexually assaulted in 2023 and tribal officials declined to prosecute her alleged attacker. The case was not handled by tribal police but by investigators with tribal Game and Fish. Tribal officials can’t explain why. Or why the person arrested for her attack was released from custody without being charged. |
| We learned the person arrested in the attack was a relative and frequent visitor to the home where Emily lived. |
| Tribal leaders on April 14, in response to The Republic’s inquiries, called for an investigation into the handling of Emily’s 2023 case and “why the tribe’s police and specialized law enforcement officers were excluded from the investigation.” |
| Many of Emily’s closest relatives, even those hoping to adopt her, had no idea she’d been assaulted, only that tribal Social Services had removed Emily from her home for her own safety. They didn’t learn of the assault until after her mutilated body was found on Feb. 14. |
| Emily’s sexual assault helped us to explain why her personality changed in the 18 months before her death. She became moody and withdrawn. She frequently ran away from the group home where she had been placed. We learned she had attempted suicide on multiple occasions, including once when she attempted to grab a police officer’s gun. |
| The incident resulted in her transfer to a behavioral health facility for nearly a year. She returned to a regular group home only a month before she ran away for the last time. |
‘Failing to protect her and other children’
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| Emily’s story is shining a light on deeper cracks in how group homes are monitored and how abuse is handled on tribal land. In your conversations with sources, what structural problems have come up again and again? |
| Tribal leaders initially tried to make this case about group home failures without addressing the tribe’s own handling of Emily’s sexual assault case. |
| Tribal leaders were the first to publicly name the group home where Emily was placed. They attempted to blame it for failing to protect her and other children. They called on state lawmakers to investigate and tighten regulations on state-licensed facilities. |
| Our investigation found the Mesa group home had a low incidence of runaways and often went above and beyond procedures in responding to Emily’s suicide attempts and runaways. |
| Police reports show managers immediately notified police as soon as Emily went missing. They called 911 and sought help when she attempted suicide. |
| Mesa police and advocates who track runaways said the group home recorded fewer missing children than other group homes. Mesa police opened 30 missing person investigations involving 18 children from the group home since 2022. Some, like Emily, ran away multiple times. The department located all but one of the children and closed their cases. |
| The remaining open case involved a girl who was a few weeks away from her 18th birthday and feared that if she revealed her whereabouts to police, she would be picked up by the Department of Child Safety. |
| Records do show that the San Carlos Apache tribe has to rely on group homes outside of the reservation because it only has one group and can only house about a dozen kids at a time. It lacked the resources and facilities to handle kids with more complex behavioral issues. |
‘Emily’s death set off an international firestorm of outrage’
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| There’s been a lot of public outrage — but do the people you’ve interviewed, especially within the San Carlos community, believe that outrage will lead to meaningful change? Or is there a sense this could fade like so many other cases in indigenous communities? |
| Emily’s death set off an international firestorm of outrage over missing and murdered Indigenous women. Her smiling face became the latest symbol in a decades-old call for justice. |
| There is a clear sense of hope that her death will bring about social change, and renewed accountability for all tribes. |
| Tribal communities held marches and vigils in Emily’s name. Women painted red handprints across their mouths and faces to represent the inability of victims to cry out. |
| Local artists helped paint a large mural of Emily on a water tank in Peridot. The San Carlos Apache Tribe in March announced a $75,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in Emily’s case. Tribal community members privately raised money to put up billboards advertising the reward in Miami, Superior and Globe. |
| All of that attention brings renewed scrutiny about the plight of Indigenous women, who are murdered at a rate 10 times more than the national average, multiple federal studies have found. |
| In Emily’s case, that goes beyond just finding the person who killed her. Her relatives said the tribal system of justice needs examination, from the tribal police to tribal prosecutors, to social services. |
| “Everyone let that girl down,” Emily’s uncle, Allred Pike Jr., said. “The system failed her in all aspects, not one, not two, all of it.” |
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