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FBI, Navajo Nation offer $25K reward in investigation of girl's death · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the deep dive. You know, today feels
0:02
a little different. Usually we're taking you through history or
0:05
maybe unpacking a complex piece of legislation from you know,
0:09
a thirty thousand foot view.
0:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, we look at the big picture.
0:12
Speaker 1: But today we're zooming all the way in. We are
0:16
landing right in the middle of a developing story on
0:20
a specific patch of high desert earth on a very
0:23
specific date.
0:25
Speaker 2: It is Thursday, January twenty two, twenty twenty six. And
0:29
the reason we are doing this today, I mean, the
0:32
reason we basically scrapped our whole planned episode to record
0:34
this one is because the news just shifted right underneath
0:37
our feet on a.
0:38
Speaker 1: Case that I think a lot of you have been
0:40
following with just a pit in your stomach for sure.
0:42
We're talking about the investigation into the death of Malika Boone.
0:46
Speaker 2: Her family called her Molly. She was eight years old.
0:48
Speaker 1: And while the headlines have been reporting, you know, the
0:51
tragedy of her death on the Navajoa Nation, something just
0:53
happened this morning that changes the entire texture of this conversation.
0:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, the FBI Phoenix Field Office, working with the Navajo
1:00
Nation Police, just announced a major.
1:02
Speaker 1: Development a twenty five thousand dollars reward.
1:04
Speaker 2: Right. And on the surface, you see that little banner
1:07
on the news, twenty five thousand dollars a reward offered,
1:10
you might just think, okay, that's that standard procedure. But
1:14
our mission today is to look past that headline. We
1:17
really want to understand the mechanics of why that reward
1:20
was offered now, you know, exactly one week after she
1:23
was found.
1:23
Speaker 1: And we want to understand the geography of this place,
1:26
coal Mine, Arizona, where this all happened.
1:28
Speaker 2: And we really really need to unpack the incredibly complex
1:32
and frankly often frustrating legal web that decides how justice
1:37
is even pursued on tribal lands exactly.
1:39
Speaker 1: This is not just a true crime story. We are
1:41
not here to speculate on suspects or you know, play
1:44
Internet detective. No, we are here to look at the system.
1:47
This case is a breaking case study in the crisis
1:51
of violence that affects indigenous communities. It's crash course in
1:54
the Major Crimes Act of eighteen eighty five. Wow, and
1:57
it's a real time look at whether these new tools
2:00
we've put in place, like the Turquoise Alert, are actually working.
2:03
Speaker 2: We have a whole stack of sources in front of us.
2:05
We're looking at the official press releases from the FBI,
2:09
community statements from the Navajo Nation Police, and some of
2:12
the investigative reports around this whole Justice for Molly initiative.
2:16
So let's get into it.
2:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's start with the timeline, because to really get
2:20
the significance of today's news, you have to understand the
2:22
last seven days.
2:23
Speaker 2: Okay, Section one that the timeline of a tragedy. And
2:27
the first thing that just it just hits you when
2:30
you lay this out chronologically is the speed. I mean
2:33
sometimes we cover these cases where a disappearance can stretch
2:37
on for weeks, months, even years.
2:38
Speaker 1: Right.
2:39
Speaker 2: The not knowing is the culture exactly. The ambiguity is
2:41
the torture. But here the timeline is so compressed, it's sharp,
2:45
it's it's violent.
2:46
Speaker 1: So take us there. Thursday, January fifteenth, twenty twenty six.
2:50
What's the scene.
2:51
Speaker 2: We're in the coal Mine community. If you look it
2:54
up on a map, you might see coal Mine Canyon.
2:56
It's in Naoho County, Arizona. It's the high desert, beautiful country. Oh,
2:59
it's stunningly beautiful. You know, red earth, stage brush, these
3:02
massive open skies. But it is profoundly rural.
3:06
Speaker 1: Okay, So when you say rural, paint that picture for us,
3:09
because someone listening might be imagining, I don't know a
3:12
small town in Iowa with the main street.
3:15
Speaker 2: It's not that at all. It's not a main street
3:17
with a general store. The housing there, specifically these Navajo
3:21
Housing Authority or NHA developments, they're built in clusters. So
3:26
you have a group of single family homes built pretty
3:28
close together. Okay, but then that whole cluster is just
3:31
surrounded by vast open fields, deep arroyos, dirt roads. It's
3:36
a landscape of sort of isolation that's punctuated by these
3:40
really tight knit family groups.
3:41
Speaker 1: So on that Thursday, January fifteenth, what is eight year
3:45
old Molly doing.
3:46
Speaker 2: She's doing what kids in coal Mine do every single day.
3:49
She's at a relative's house. It's a late afternoon, about
3:51
four one five pm, and she leaves that house to
3:54
walk back to her own home.
3:55
Speaker 1: I want to pause right there, because this is a
3:57
really crucial piece of context, an eight year old walking
3:59
up I think there is a tendency for people outside
4:02
of these communities to hear that and immediately jump to judgments.
4:05
Oh absolutely, they think, well where were the parents? Why
4:08
was she by herself?
4:09
Speaker 2: And that is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the cultural
4:12
and the physical geography here. I mean in these Naha clusters,
4:17
extended families live right on top of each other, but
4:20
in a good way. You have aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins
4:25
all living within shouting distance or you know, just a
4:27
short walk away. It's a communal way of life.
4:30
Speaker 1: It's a village.
4:31
Speaker 2: It is a village. And for a child to walk
4:33
from an ant's house to her own house is not
4:35
some act of negligence. It is the absolute fabric of
4:39
daily life. It is as normal as breathing.
4:41
Speaker 1: She knew the route, She's probably walked it hundreds of times.
4:44
Speaker 2: One hundred times exactly. She is comfortable in her environment,
4:47
this is her home. So four one five pm she
4:50
heads out. The sun is starting to get a little lower,
4:52
you know, that golden hour in the desert.
4:54
Speaker 1: But she doesn't make it home.
4:55
Speaker 2: She doesn't. And this is the next really critical point
4:58
in the timeline. The family realizes this almost immediately, by
5:02
six point zero pm the report is filed.
5:05
Speaker 1: Wow, that is incredibly fast. That's what less than two
5:08
hours from the time she left.
5:10
Speaker 2: It is so fast and it just completely dismantles another
5:14
one of those horrible stereotypes we often have to fight
5:16
against in these cases, this idea that maybe there's neglect
5:20
or that the families aren't paying close attention. Yeah, this
5:22
family knew her routine, they knew her pace, they knew
5:27
how long that walk should take. And when she wasn't there,
5:30
they didn't just assume she was off playing somewhere. They
5:33
didn't say, oh, let's wait till the morning. They knew
5:35
it was. And this is the police phrasing out of character,
5:39
and they hit the panic button immediately.
5:41
Speaker 1: So the alarm is raised on the even of January fifteenth.
5:44
What happens when that.
5:45
Speaker 2: Paul goes out, Well, the machinery of the state starts
5:49
to turn. And this is where we really start to
5:52
see the difference between twenty twenty six and say twenty
5:55
sixteen or even twenty twenty. Early the next morning, Friday,
5:58
January sixteenth, the Arizona Department of Public Safety issues a
6:02
turquoise alert.
6:03
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack that turqoise alert. Everybody knows what an
6:06
amber alert is. My phone buzzes, I see a license
6:08
plate number. What is the Turquoise alert and why is
6:11
there a separate system.
6:12
Speaker 2: This is a massive deep dive point. The Turquoise alert
6:15
was fully implemented in Arizona just last year, in twenty
6:18
twenty five. It's a direct response to the m MIP
6:22
crisis missing and murdered Indigenous people. Okay, See, the Amber
6:26
alert is a fantastic tool, but it has really rigid criteria.
6:31
To trigger an Amber alert, you usually need a confirmed
6:34
abduction and this is the key of vehicle description.
6:37
Speaker 1: Right, look for a white four f one fifty with
6:39
this license plate exactly.
6:40
Speaker 2: But what happens in so many of these cases on
6:42
tribal lands is a child or a woman goes missing
6:45
and there is no vehicle description. Maybe they were just
6:48
walking like Molly. Maybe they were taken by someone they
6:50
knew and no one saw a car.
6:52
Speaker 1: So under the old rules, those cases just they didn't qualify.
6:56
Speaker 2: They fell into a silence gap, a deadly silence gap.
6:59
They didn't meet the criteria for an Amber alert.
7:01
Speaker 1: So the Turquoise alert is designed to fix that loophole.
7:04
Speaker 2: It's designed to close it. It allows the authorities to
7:08
use the exact same technology the phone blasts the highway
7:11
signs the media urgency, but it's specifically for missing Indigenous
7:16
persons where there's a clear indication of danger, even if
7:19
they don't have a license plate number to go on.
7:21
Speaker 1: And it crosses jurisdictional lines, which I imagine is huge.
7:23
Speaker 2: It's everything. Yeah, it facilitates that rapid info dissemination across
7:28
tribal and state lines, which historically was just this huge,
7:32
frustrating barrier.
7:33
Speaker 1: Okay, so the alert goes out Friday morning. This isn't
7:35
just a digital notification, right, We're talking boots on the ground.
7:38
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a full scale mobilization. You have the Navajo
7:40
Nation Police they're leading the charge. But because of the
7:43
nature of the disappearance of a child, you have the
7:47
FBI Phoenix Field Office stepping in almost immediately, and others too. Yeah,
7:52
the US Marshalls are there. The Cocino County Sheriff's Office
7:55
sends in their search.
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Speaker 1: And rescue teams, and that bringing all the tech.
7:58
Speaker 2: They are swarming the area. We've got drones overhead mapping
8:01
everything out, ground penetrating tools, canine units. They are combing
8:05
through those arroyos. I mentioned every inch of that terrain.
8:08
Speaker 1: But despite all that speed, and I want to stress again,
8:11
this was a fast response. It ends in tragedy.
8:15
Speaker 2: It does. The search concludes at eight thirty am on Friday,
8:19
January sixteenth, So let's.
8:20
Speaker 1: Do the math on that. She leaves at four point
8:22
one point five pm Thursday, she's found at eight thirty
8:26
am Friday. That's what roughly sixteen seventeen hours.
8:30
Speaker 2: It's less than a day under seventeen hours from the
8:32
moment she disappeared. Mollie was found deceased in a field
8:36
within the coal mine neighborhood.
8:38
Speaker 1: And that detail about the location within the neighborhood that
8:41
really stands out to me.
8:43
Speaker 2: It's the detail that just chills you to the bone.
8:45
She wasn't found miles and miles away, lost out in
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the deep desert. She was found remarkably close to her
8:50
she was last seen.
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Speaker 1: So what does that proximity tell you as an investigator.
8:54
Speaker 2: It tells a story. It strongly suggests she was intercepted.
8:58
It suggests the danger wasn't so distant threat, it was immediate.
9:02
It was local, and it happened right there and what
9:04
should have been the safe zone between family houses.
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Speaker 1: Which brings us to today's news. Section two decoding the
9:10
investigation because finding her was the end of the search,
9:14
but it was really just the beginning of the case, right.
9:16
Speaker 2: And for the last week, since Friday the sixteenth, there's
9:19
been a heavy official silence. The authorities lockdown information to
9:24
protect the integrity of the crime scene and the investigations
9:26
standard procedure totally. But today, January twenty second, the damn broke.
9:31
We got that announcement of the twenty five thousand dollars reward.
9:34
Speaker 1: And this is where I want to really lean on
9:36
your expertise. We read the press release. The FBI is
9:39
offering this money for information leading to the arrest and conviction.
9:43
Why is that specific phrasing so important?
9:46
Speaker 2: That phrase is everything? Look, as of right now, the
9:49
autopsy results have not been released to the public. We
9:51
don't officially know the cause of death. But that phrase
9:54
arresting conviction, that is a signal fire.
9:57
Speaker 1: How so what is it signaling?
9:59
Speaker 2: Well, if the authorities thought this was a tragic accident,
10:02
you know, if they thought she fell into an arroyo
10:04
or got lost and succumbed to hypothermia, you don't offer
10:08
a bounty for a conviction, right, there's no one to
10:11
convict exactly. You don't mobilize the homicide division. By using
10:15
that very specific legal language. The FBI is telling the public,
10:20
and more importantly, they're telling the perpetrator, we know this
10:24
wasn't an accident. We know someone did this, and we
10:27
are actively hunting for them.
10:28
Speaker 1: Yes, so they are one hundred percent treating this as
10:31
a homicide, even if they haven't used the word murder
10:33
on camera yet.
10:34
Speaker 2: Precisely, they are signaling an active suspicious death investigation. It
10:39
is a homicide case until proven otherwise.
10:42
Speaker 1: And alongside the reward, they released her victim profile again,
10:45
and they didn't just say, you know, call us if
10:47
you know anything. They gave very very specific details about
10:51
her and what she was wearing.
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Speaker 2: They're trying to trigger a memory. Witness recollection is such
10:55
a fragile thing, right If I just asked you, hey,
10:57
did you see a kid walking around last Thursday? Hm hmm,
11:00
You'll probably say I don't know, maybe I see kids
11:03
all the time. But the FBI released this. Mollie was
11:05
four foot five, fifty to sixty pounds, brown eyes and
11:10
long brown hair, worn in French braids and clothes. The
11:13
clothes are so specific, a red jacket, blue jeans and
11:17
cowboy boots.
11:18
Speaker 1: Why do those particular details matter so much.
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Speaker 2: Because distinct visuals stick in our subconscious A bright red
11:25
jacket against the muted tones of the desert earth that
11:28
stands out.
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Speaker 1: It's a pop of color.
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Speaker 2: It's a pop of color. Cowboy boots on a little girl.
11:33
That's a specific silhouette, a specific image. They are hoping
11:37
that someone who is just driving through coal Mine, or
11:39
someone who glanced out their window at that time, might
11:42
have seen a flash of red and.
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Speaker 1: They might not have even processed it at the time.
11:45
Speaker 2: Not at all, but hearing red jacket a week later
11:49
might just snap that little puzzle piece into place. It's
11:52
about creating an anchor for a memory that someone doesn't
11:54
even know they have.
11:55
Speaker 1: Now, let's talk about the money itself. Twenty five thousand dollars.
11:58
That's a significant amount of money for anyone. But I imagine,
12:01
especially in a rural community like this one, what's the
12:04
strategy behind the cash.
12:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not just about appealing to greed, it's about
12:08
overcoming fear. We have to be really honest about small
12:12
town dynamics. Coal Mine is a place where everybody.
12:15
Speaker 1: Knows everybody, which implies that the killer could be could
12:19
be someone everybody knows.
12:20
Speaker 2: That is the terrifying reality of these cases. And if
12:23
you saw something suspicious, I mean, maybe you saw your
12:26
neighbor's truck where it shouldn't have been, or you saw
12:28
a cousin acting really strange that night, you might be
12:31
terrified to speak up.
12:32
Speaker 1: Of course, you have to live there, You.
12:34
Speaker 2: Have to live there. You fear retaliation, you fear being ostracized,
12:38
being labeled to snitch. Your family has to live there.
12:41
Speaker 1: So the money is like an Eskate Hatch, an incentive
12:45
to overcome that.
12:46
Speaker 2: In a sense. Yeah, it's a powerful incentive that can
12:49
outweigh the fear of social or even physical retaliation. But
12:54
was just as important as the money is the promise
12:57
of anonymity. Right, the FBI is pushing one eight hundred
13:00
call FBI so hard. They're saying, look, you don't have
13:03
to walk into the local tribal police station where your
13:06
neighbor's cousin might be working the front desk and see you.
13:08
You can call this faceless federal number give the tip.
13:13
You can still be eligible for the reward, and no
13:15
one in coal mine ever ever has to know it
13:18
was you.
13:18
Speaker 1: It's a tool specifically designed to break that code of
13:21
silence exactly.
13:23
Speaker 2: And they keep emphasizing that no detail is too small.
13:27
You know, a car that seemed out of place, a
13:29
person who was acting jittery at the gas station in
13:31
Tuba City later that night. So often the thing that
13:35
breaks a homicide case isn't some smoking gun confession. It's
13:38
a tiny, weird detail that only makes sense when an
13:41
investigator adds it to the other pieces of evidence they
13:44
already have.
13:45
Speaker 1: This all brings us to section three, which I think
13:47
is probably the most confusing part of this for the
13:49
average person watching from the outside.
13:51
Speaker 2: Jurisdiction, the jurisdictional maze.
13:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, we keep mentioning the Navajo Nation police and the FBI.
13:57
Usually when a crime happens in a town, the local police.
14:00
Why is the Federal Bureau of Investigation the lead agency
14:03
on the tragic death of an eight year old girl
14:05
in rural Arizona.
14:07
Speaker 2: This is where we have to put on our history
14:08
hats for a minute. And this takes us all the
14:10
way back to eighteen eighty five.
14:12
Speaker 1: Eighteen eighty five, that is, that's archaic. That can't be right.
14:15
Speaker 2: It is we are talking about the major crimes Act.
14:18
This is a federal law passed in the nineteenth century
14:21
that still dictates the reality of justice in Indian country today.
14:25
Speaker 1: Okay, give us the breakdown.
14:26
Speaker 2: What does it say? The Major Crimes Act essentially says
14:29
that for certain specified major crimes, and this includes murder, manslaughter,
14:35
sexual assault, arts, and a whole list, if they are
14:39
committed by or against Native Americans on reservation land, the
14:43
federal government has jurisdiction.
14:45
Speaker 1: So it completely bypasses the state level. The State of
14:47
Arizona police have no say here.
14:49
Speaker 2: Almost none. It's not their case. If a murder happens
14:52
in say, downtown Phoenix, it's the Phoenix pde and the
14:55
State of Arizona prosecutors who handle it. If a murder
14:58
happens in coal mine on the Navajon Nation, it instantly
15:01
becomes a federal case.
15:02
Speaker 1: That seems like it would create a massive logistical nightmare.
15:05
Speaker 2: It creates what legal scholars and frankly, tribal police call
15:09
the jurisdictional maze. You have the Navajo Nation police or
15:13
the first responders. They know the people, they know the land,
15:15
they know the culture, right, they're the local experts they are.
15:18
But then you have the FBI flying in from Phoenix
15:21
to take the lead on the investigation because of the
15:24
severity of the potential crime as defined by this eighteen
15:28
eighty five.
15:28
Speaker 1: Law, and historically that handoff between tribal police and the
15:32
FEDS hasn't always been smooth.
15:35
Speaker 2: Not smooth is putting it very very lightly. Historically it
15:38
has been a disaster. In some cases, you've had turf wars,
15:41
you've had critical delays while agencies argued over who is
15:45
in charge. You've had evidence lost in the shuffle between departments.
15:48
Speaker 1: But what are you seeing in Molly's case.
15:51
Speaker 2: In this specific case, it seems like the coordination was
15:54
actually very tight. The public statements are all joint statements.
15:58
It seems the Navajo Nation police secured the scene and
16:01
the FBI Phoenix Field Office was integrated immediately. It looks
16:04
like the partnerships, at least on the surface, are working
16:07
much better than they used to.
16:08
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about the geography itself as a factor
16:11
in this investigation, because unless you've actually driven through the
16:14
Navajo Nation, you cannot comprehend the sheer size of it.
16:17
Speaker 2: It's the largest reservation in the United States. It's over
16:20
twenty seven thousand square miles.
16:22
Speaker 1: Give me a comparison for that. What's that The size of.
16:24
Speaker 2: That is bigger than the entire state of West Virginia. Wow,
16:27
it spans parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Now,
16:31
imagine trying to police the entire state of West Virginia
16:36
with a police force that is a tiny fraction of
16:38
the size of a standard metropolitan police department.
16:41
Speaker 1: That's an impossible task.
16:43
Speaker 2: It's a challenge of physics. It's just simple math. When
16:46
a call comes in from a remote place like coal Mine,
16:49
you have to understand coal Mine is about seventeen or
16:51
eighteen miles from Tuba City, which is the nearest hub.
16:55
Speaker 1: And those aren't highway miles, no, not at all.
16:57
Speaker 2: Those are rural roads, some of them are dirt. Response
17:00
times are dictated by distance and terrain. An officer could
17:03
be an hour away on another call and.
17:05
Speaker 1: Coal Mine itself. We talked about the isolation.
17:08
Speaker 2: It's incredibly isolated. Yeah, low population density. People live there
17:12
because they value that privacy, that connection to the land,
17:15
the space. But for a criminal investigation, it is a
17:19
nightmare because there are no CCTV cameras on the corner
17:22
of every street. There are no ring doorbells on every porch,
17:25
capturing traffic going by. The witnesses in a lot of
17:28
these areas are the sagebrush and the sky.
17:31
Speaker 1: So the FDI is essentially working in a digital evidence
17:34
vacuum compared to a city crime a huge.
17:36
Speaker 2: Acrum, yes, which makes human intelligence. Those witness tips we
17:40
were talking about so much more critical. They're not just important,
17:44
they are everything.
17:45
Speaker 1: We can't talk about this case without zooming out, So
17:47
section four the broader context. Molly Boone is an individual,
17:51
a devastating, tragic loss, but she is also, unfortunately part
17:56
of a pattern.
17:56
Speaker 2: She is a data point in the m MIP crisis
17:59
missing and Indigenous people, or you'll hear the acronym MMIWG
18:04
missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
18:07
Speaker 1: We hear those acronyms a lot now, which is good
18:09
for awareness, but what do the numbers actually tell us?
18:11
Speaker 2: The statistics are just harrowing. Study after study shows that
18:15
Indigenous women and children face violence at rates significantly higher
18:19
than the national average. And while Native children might make
18:22
up a small percentage of the total number of missing
18:25
kids in the US, just because of population size.
18:28
Speaker 1: Their per capita risk is higher.
18:30
Speaker 2: Their risk of going missing or being murdered is elevated.
18:33
It's disproportionately high.
18:34
Speaker 1: And that risk is directly tied to everything we've just
18:37
been discussing, the rural isolation, the jurisdictional confusion.
18:41
Speaker 2: Absolutely, predators know this. They're not stupid. They know where
18:44
the gaps in the system are. They know that if
18:46
they commit a crime and a remote part of the reservation,
18:48
the police might be an hour away. They know that
18:51
this confusion between federal and tribal authority can buy them
18:54
precious time to get away.
18:55
Speaker 1: However, I want to look at a slightly different angle here.
18:58
We so often cover these stories and the theme is
19:01
always systemic failure. The police didn't come, the report wasn't
19:05
taken seriously, nobody seemed to care.
19:07
Speaker 2: Right. That is the historical narrative, and it is a
19:09
brutally true narrative for thousands of families. We've talked about
19:13
missing White woman syndrome before, where the media and law
19:16
enforcement poor resources into one case while completely ignoring indigenous victims.
19:21
Speaker 1: But here, in this case.
19:23
Speaker 2: Here we saw a shift, and I think it is
19:25
really important to acknowledge it when we see it. The
19:27
response to Molly's disappearance was by all accounts swift.
19:31
Speaker 1: The family reported it at six or zero pm, and
19:34
the system didn't blow them off. They didn't tell them
19:36
to wait twenty four hours.
19:37
Speaker 2: No, not at all. They took it with the utmost
19:39
seriousness from minute one. The turquoise alert went out the
19:43
very next morning, the FBI was on the ground almost instantly.
19:47
The reward was posted within a week. This represents a
19:50
massive and immediate investment of resources.
19:53
Speaker 1: So it was a system actually getting better mechanically.
19:56
Speaker 2: Yes, I think it is. The now O Nation has
19:58
its own m MIR task for now, the Missing and
20:01
Murdered Indigenous Relatives task for us. In the twenty twenty
20:04
six fiscal year, they specifically allocated millions of dollars to
20:07
these efforts. The system is finally trying to build the
20:09
infrastructure to respond to these crises.
20:12
Speaker 1: But and this is the butt that just breaks your heart.
20:14
Speaker 2: It wasn't enough. The system worked perfectly on paper, the
20:18
family report, the alert, to the multi agency search, the
20:21
federal reward, it was textbook. But Molly was already gone.
20:25
Speaker 1: That brings us to the community sentiment. What is the
20:28
feeling on the ground in coal mine right now?
20:30
Speaker 2: It's heavy, It's just a heavy, sorrowful weight. I've been
20:33
reading the community boards, the public statements from local leaders.
20:37
There is grief, obviously, this profound grief, But underneath it
20:42
there is also this deep simmering frustration, this feeling of
20:46
not again.
20:46
Speaker 1: It must retraumatize the entire community.
20:49
Speaker 2: It does every single time this happens. It rips open
20:52
the wounds of every other unsolved case from the last
20:55
thirty years, and it fundamentally changes the behavior of the community.
20:58
Parents are terrified. Of course, there were new discussions happening
21:02
right now on social media and in community meetings about safety,
21:05
about supervision, about community watchfulness. People are asking this really
21:09
heartbreaking question, is it still safe for our kids to
21:12
walk to their ants house?
21:14
Speaker 1: And that question just asking it fundamentally changes the culture.
21:19
If you can't walk to your ant's house, the community
21:21
isn't the same place it was exactly.
21:22
Speaker 2: It erodes that fundamental trust and freedom that defines life there.
21:26
And we also have to acknowledge the other factors that
21:29
contribute to this vulnerability. The economic hardship in some areas,
21:33
the issues with substance abuse that plague so many rural communities,
21:36
not just tribal ones, poverty, creates environments where violence confess.
21:41
Speaker 1: Okay, Section five, let's pivot to the practical. This is
21:44
an active investigation. The person or people who did this
21:47
are still out there. How can our listeners, how can
21:50
the public help?
21:51
Speaker 2: This is where we need actionable intelligence. If you were
21:54
in the region, if you were anywhere near coal mine,
21:56
Tuba City, or the surrounding areas, on or around jail,
22:00
you're fifteenth.
22:00
Speaker 1: Give us that contact information again very clearly.
22:03
Speaker 2: It's one eight hundred and two two two five five
22:05
three two four, or you can go online to tips
22:08
dot FBI dot gov.
22:10
Speaker 1: And I just really want to stress the anonymity part again.
22:13
Speaker 2: Please, it is so important. If you're listening to this
22:16
right now and you know something, even something small, but
22:20
you are scared, maybe you're scared of the person involved,
22:23
or you're just scared of getting entangled with the legal system,
22:26
you do not have to give your name.
22:28
Speaker 1: The tip is the important thing.
22:30
Speaker 2: The tip is everything. The FBI doesn't need to know
22:33
who you are, They just need to know what you know,
22:36
and that reward.
22:37
Speaker 1: We've talked about it as a tool, but it's also
22:39
a symbol, isn't it.
22:40
Speaker 2: It absolutely is putting twenty five thousand dollars on the
22:43
table is the government's way of publicly stating this matters.
22:47
It validates the life of this child. It says that
22:50
justice for Molly Boon is a priority for the United
22:53
States government, And honestly, seeing that level of valuation and
22:57
urgency placed on an Indigenous life is a signific again
23:00
shift from what we might have seen twenty or even
23:02
ten years ago.
23:03
Speaker 1: So let's try to wrap this up. We've covered a
23:04
lot of really heavy ground today.
23:06
Speaker 2: We have.
23:07
Speaker 1: It's been tough to summarize for everyone listening. Molly Boone,
23:11
a bright, loved eight year old girl, vanished during a
23:14
routine walk in her own community. She was found deceased
23:17
less than seventeen hours later, tragically close to home.
23:20
Speaker 2: The investigation is now clearly escalated with a major federal reward,
23:25
and the very specific language the FBI is using arrest
23:28
and conviction tells us that they are one hundred percent
23:31
treating this as a homicide.
23:32
Speaker 1: And while the systemic response things like the Turquoise alert,
23:36
the rapid multi agency mobilization was robust.
23:40
Speaker 2: And by the book, the outcome still highlights this ongoing,
23:43
terrifying vulnerability of Indigenous.
23:45
Speaker 1: Children that really is the bottom line. I want to
23:47
leave everyone with a final thought to chew on, and
23:50
I'd love your take on this to close us out.
23:52
Speaker 2: Go ahead.
23:52
Speaker 1: We've spent this whole deep dive analyzing the response, and
23:56
by all accounts, as you said, the response was text book.
23:59
It was it was coordinated, it was well funded, and
24:02
yet we're still mourning a child.
24:05
Speaker 2: It's the haunting paradox of this case.
24:07
Speaker 1: So my question is this, if the best case scenario
24:11
for a law enforcement response still results in a tragedy,
24:15
what are we missing? What's the real problem we're not
24:19
talking about?
24:20
Speaker 2: That is the provocative question, isn't it? And it's the
24:22
right one. I think. For the last decade, the fight
24:25
has been for better reaction. We wanted better alert systems,
24:28
we wanted faster police cars, we wanted clearer jurisdiction, and
24:32
we're starting to get some of those things. But reaction
24:35
is by its very definition too late. Reaction happens after
24:39
the abduction, it happens after the violence has already occurred.
24:42
Speaker 1: So the entire focus has to shift, it.
24:44
Speaker 2: Has to Yeah, the whole conversation needs to move from
24:47
how do we find them faster? To how do we
24:49
prevent them from being taken in the first place. What
24:52
are the deeper structural changes that are needed within these communities.
24:55
We're talking about things that don't seem like crime fighting,
24:58
but they are like what economic development, housing security, mental
25:02
health and addiction resources, Simple things like street lighting on
25:05
those NHA roads, safe community centers for kids. How do
25:09
we build communities that are so strong and so resourced
25:12
that a predator simply doesn't have the opportunity or the
25:15
audacity to strike.
25:17
Speaker 1: We can't police our way out of this crisis, No,
25:19
you can't.
25:20
Speaker 2: We need to build a world where the turquoise alert
25:23
becomes unnecessary, a world where it gathers dust because we
25:27
never have to use it again.
25:28
Speaker 1: That is a heavy, but I think a very necessary
25:30
thought to end on. Thank you for listening to this
25:32
deep dive. We know this was a difficult one, but
25:35
understanding the machinery behind the tragedy is I hope, the
25:38
first step toward that kind of change.
25:40
Speaker 2: Check the sources for yourselves, read the official reports, think
25:43
critically about what we discussed.
25:44
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time. Stay curious,