On the day before Thanksgiving 2020, a 39-year-old woman named Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis sent a text message. She was walking east on Fire Trail Road on the Tulalip Reservation in Washington State, headed toward a church where someone had agreed to pick her up and drive her to Oso — a small town about thirty miles away, where she had family she trusted and a place that felt like solid ground.
The text said she was almost there.
She never arrived. And for the next five years, her sisters would fight with everything they had to make sure the world knew her name.
This week on Vanished Voices, we tell Mary’s story in full — who she was, what happened on Fire Trail Road, the investigation that followed, and the discovery that finally brought her home. This post is a companion to that episode, expanding on some of the key threads we cover and pointing you toward resources if you want to go deeper.
Who Was Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis?
Mary was a member of the Tulalip Tribes of Washington State — a federally recognized sovereign nation descended from the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skykomish, and other allied Coast Salish peoples who had lived along the shores of Puget Sound for thousands of years before the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott reduced their ancestral territory to a 22,000-acre reservation north of Everett.
She was one of four sisters — Sara, Nona, Gerry, and Mary — and by all accounts she was the kind of person who lit up the people around her. Sixteen nieces and nephews called her their aunt. She read to them. She picked blackberries with them. She did a pitch-perfect impression of Scrat from Ice Age that made everyone in the room laugh.
Her life had not been easy. When the Davis girls were young, the state of Washington removed them from their birth parents and separated them into different foster placements. Mary and her sister Nona were placed with a non-Native family where both women later alleged they were sexually abused. Years later, they sued the state of Washington and child protective services. Each received a $400,000 settlement — a legal acknowledgment that the system had failed them catastrophically.
According to Nona, that money was later taken from Mary by her estranged husband, who she alleged moved the funds into an account and left Mary with nothing.
By November 2020, Mary and her husband were estranged. She was trying to get to Oso. She was almost there.
What Happened on Fire Trail Road
On November 25th, 2020, three people reported seeing Mary walking east on Fire Trail Road. Investigators confirmed she was heading toward a church where she planned to meet her ride. She sent a text saying she was almost there.
She never arrived at the church. She never arrived in Oso.
Phone records later suggested she may have been transported toward the Oso area — but she never made it to her destination. Whatever happened, happened somewhere between that last text and wherever she was going. In a place with no witnesses. On a road that gave nothing away.
Her estranged husband did not report her missing for fourteen days. When he finally made contact with authorities on December 9th, 2020, he did not want to call police himself — he contacted Mary’s family and asked them to file the report. According to her sisters, he subsequently hired a lawyer, changed his phone number, and relocated to southern California. He later disputed aspects of that timeline, stating his number had been changed prior to Mary’s disappearance and that his move to California was for family reasons.
In 2021, Tulalip Tribal Police Detective David Sallee told People magazine that the husband was considered a person of interest. The FBI has never publicly named him as a suspect. No charges have ever been filed.
The Jurisdictional Problem
One of the most important — and most infuriating — elements of Mary’s case is the jurisdictional complexity that slowed the investigation from the very beginning.
Mary disappeared from the Tulalip Reservation, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Tulalip Tribal Police. But if she was taken off the reservation, the investigation could shift to Marysville Police. If the perpetrator crossed state lines, the FBI would become the lead agency. Three separate jurisdictions. Three separate agencies. Three separate chains of command — each with their own resources, their own priorities, and their own definition of whose responsibility this was.
This is not a problem unique to Mary’s case. It is a structural feature of how law enforcement operates on and around tribal lands in the United States, and it disproportionately affects Indigenous women and their families. The patchwork of overlapping jurisdictions means that critical time is lost, evidence goes uncollected, and families are left navigating a system that was never designed with them in mind.
Indigenous rights attorney Gabriel Galanda, who attended the two-year memorial for Mary in Seattle, put it plainly — calling on the Department of Justice, the FBI, and every level of government involved to work across jurisdictional lines and give the family the truth they deserved.
They are still waiting.
Five Years of Fighting
In the years after Mary disappeared, her sisters Gerry Davis and Nona Blouin became the most visible and persistent advocates for her case. They organized events, spoke to media, pressured law enforcement for updates, and refused — absolutely refused — to let Mary become another name that faded from the headlines.
In December 2022, the family and advocates gathered at the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center in Seattle for an event called “What Happened to Mary Johnson-Davis? Two Years is Too Long.” More than fifty people attended. No legislators were present. No major television cameras showed up.
Organizer Roxanne White noted the absence out loud. Nona Blouin drew a direct line between the state’s failure to protect Mary in the foster care system and its failure to find her now. And Gerry Davis said the thing that needed to be said without softening:
“If she had white privilege, we would have answers. This would have been solved.”
In 2024, their efforts — and the efforts of Deborah Parker, former Vice Chairwoman of the Tulalip Tribes and a nationally recognized Indigenous rights advocate — culminated in the release of the documentary Missing From Fire Trail Road, directed by Sabrina Van Tassel and distributed on Hulu, Tubi, and Hoopla. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and brought Mary’s story to a national audience, threading her case through the broader crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and featuring voices including Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.
The Law That Mary’s Case Helped Build
While Mary was still missing, something historic happened in Washington State.
On March 31st, 2022, Governor Jay Inslee signed House Bill 1725 into law — creating the first-ever statewide alert system specifically for missing Indigenous people in the United States. Championed by State Representative Debra Lekanoff, a member of the Aleut and Tlingit tribe, the system works similarly to Amber Alerts and Silver Alerts, broadcasting information on highway reader boards, radio, social media, and directly to news outlets when an Indigenous person is reported missing.
Mary disappeared before that system existed. We cannot know what might have been different if it had been in place on November 25th, 2020. But her case — and the relentless advocacy of her family and community — contributed to a law that may one day bring someone else’s sister home.
Found — But Not Like They Hoped
On June 13th, 2025, the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office discovered human skeletal remains in a remote, heavily forested area of North Snohomish County — roughly thirty miles from Fire Trail Road, accessible only by foot or off-road vehicle.
A DNA sample was sent to the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center. A profile was built and run through CODIS — the national DNA database. It matched Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis.
On October 31st, 2025, nearly five years after she disappeared, authorities confirmed the identification. The case was officially classified as a homicide investigation. Cause and manner of death remain undetermined pending further forensic examination. No suspects have been named. No arrests have been made.
Nona and Gerry released a statement. They said they were in disbelief. They said it felt like a dream they wanted to wake up from. They said they finally had closure, and that Mary would be brought home where she was loved and would always be remembered.
They asked for privacy.
After five years of the most public, visible, exhausting fight imaginable — they finally asked for privacy. And they deserved every quiet moment of it.
The Bigger Picture
Mary’s story is devastating on its own. It is also one data point in a crisis that has been building for generations.
In 2016, the National Crime Information Center recorded 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls in the United States. The federal missing persons database logged 116 of those cases. More than four out of five Native women experience violence in their lifetimes. On some reservations, Native women are murdered at more than ten times the national average. Forty percent of all identified sex trafficking victims in the United States are American Indian and Alaska Native women.
These numbers exist because of centuries of policy — forced removal, boarding schools, the destruction of family structures, the creation of jurisdictional gaps that make accountability nearly impossible. The crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women is not a coincidence. It is the predictable outcome of systems that were designed to make Indigenous lives more vulnerable and less visible.
Saying her name is not enough. But it is where we start.
What You Can Do
If you have information about the disappearance and death of Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis: Contact the FBI Seattle Field Office at (206) 622-0460 or submit a tip at tips.fbi.gov. A reward of up to $60,000 remains active for information leading to the identification, arrest, and conviction of those responsible.
If you want to learn more or support the movement:
- National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center — niwrc.org
- Urban Indian Health Institute — uihi.org
- Sovereign Bodies Institute — sovereign bodies MMIW database
- Watch Missing From Fire Trail Road on Hulu, Tubi, or Hoopla
Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis was 39 years old. She was a member of the Tulalip Tribes. She had sixteen nieces and nephews who loved her. She was almost there.
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Resources:
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