Family of murdered Navajo woman still seeks justice as boyfriend awaits trial

Marilene James read her family’s victim impact statement, which spelled out why she believed Tre James should remain in custody until his trial for the murder of her niece, Jamie Yazzie.

Tre James was arrested Aug. 4 and charged with two counts alleging that he shot and killed his girlfriend, Jamie Yazzie, 31, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He was also charged with six other counts alleging that he committed acts of domestic violence against three victims between 2018 and 2021, incidents that involved suffocation, strangling, kidnapping and assault with a dangerous weapon.

Yazzie's disappearance in June 2019 sent her family and friends on a long and often frustrating journey through the legal system. They had to fight for any bit of news about the investigation and eventually took it upon themselves to help find Yazzie and, eventually, her killer.

It's a familiar story among the hundreds of Indigenous families searching for loved ones, whose efforts are tracked by activists working on behalf of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives.

Yazzie's family obtained pro bono representation by Darlene Gomez of Gomez and Associates in Albuquerque, and with her help, the family was able to navigate the legal system as they dealt with the disappearance of Yazzie and then the search for the person who killed her.

Tre James was arrested on Aug. 4 and five days later his pretrial hearing took place at the Flagstaff District Court. Magistrate Judge Camille D. Bibles presided over the hearing and ordered that Tre James be detained, agreeing that he is a danger to the community and, based on the evidence, that he was a flight risk.

Marilene James said she read the victim's statement on behalf of her sister, Ethelene Denny, who is Yazzie’s mom. The statement said Tre James should remain in custody until his trial because he is a danger to their family and the Navajo Nation.

“He has shown by his actions over the last three years that he is dangerous, and my daughter was not his only victim,” Marilene read. “He has hurt three other women as well. Tre has taken our precious loved one, Jamie Lynette Yazzie. She was a beloved daughter, mother, sister, granddaughter, niece, and aunt.”

Yazzie was a young mother of three boys and worked as a nurse's assistant in the pediatric center of the Pinon Health Center on the Navajo Nation. Within the statement given during the hearing, the family spoke of how beloved Yazzie was in the small community of Pinon, and how much of a help she was to her family.

Her remains were found in November 2021 on the Hopi Reservation, but it would take three months before authorities confirmed that the remains were hers. The information was released to the media first, before her family, according to Gomez.

“I often hear from others in the community that she is a kind and helpful person,” said Mary K. James, Yazzie’s grandmother. “I noticed that Jamie changed when she met Tre. I saw that something bad was going on.”

Mary K. James went to say that after Yazzie went missing, a woman had come up to her to tell her they had been a victim of Tre James. Others had also reached out to tell her how dangerous he was. It seemed to the family like the whole community knew how dangerous of a person Yazzie’s alleged killer was.

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The investigation

Yazzie was last seen on June 30, 2019, by others in Pinon. Her boyfriend, Tre James, was said to be the last person to see her alive. Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Dustin Blazer Drace stated in an affidavit that Tre James shot and killed Yazzie between June 30 and July 5, 2019, in Pinon.

“The victim was killed by a gunshot wound to the back of her head,” wrote Drace. “The victim’s blood was identified in the bedroom of Tre James. Spent shell casings were found there as well.”

Witnesses who last saw the couple said they had been arguing about Tre James cheating on Yazzie. The witnesses left the house where Tre James and Yazzie were staying, records show. The next day, Tre James appeared to have stopped trying to contact Yazzie, whose phone was either turned off or left unanswered. She failed to show up for work.

In the affidavit, Drace wrote that, in the days after July 1, the suspect spent several days at his aunt’s, where family told authorities he was acting strange. His sister saw him with a handgun and he was “aggressive, nervous and paranoid,” Drace wrote.

On July 5, 2019, Denny reported Yazzie missing to the Chinle Police Department after not hearing from her or seeing her. Denny had been taking care of Yazzie’s children and found it unusual that she wasn’t checking in as she normally would.

Denny’s calls to her daughter went straight to voicemail, and she was told by Yazzie’s employer that her daughter hadn’t been to work. One of Yazzie's co-workers had also gone to the authorities.

Three days after Yazzie was reported missing, investigators went to the last place she was reported to have been, which was the house where they were staying. The blue house where the couple was staying has since burned down.

“During the consent search, investigators found a spent 9mm casing, a spent .22 casing, a red-colored substance that appeared to be blood on the floor, and white colored substance that appeared to be a cleaning agent on the floor,” wrote Drace.

Through multiple interviews with the suspect's family, it became clear Tre James was involved with another woman at the same time he was dating Yazzie. The victim’s family painted the relationship between Yazzie and Tre James as tumultuous and the suspect as dangerous.

Tre James was also charged with committing acts of domestic violence against three victims between 2018 and 2021. The reports said the victims reported incidents involving suffocation, strangling, kidnapping and assault with a dangerous weapon.

“All of James’s charges involve violence against Navajo women and took place on the Navajo Nation,” Gomez pointed out.

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The family finds legal help

Gomez, an attorney who took on the case pro bono in August 2019, has always been honest about the oversights made by authorities when it came to the investigation. She also pointed out the lack of communication with the family, and the inability for authorities to recognize her role in this case.

Despite multiple attempts to contact and coordinate communications about the case, she said the FBI seemed to stonewall the firm and refused to return messages. Her office received a phone call from the family’s victim advocate notifying her of the trial, but Gomez was unable to obtain copies of James’s charging documents and was not made aware of an upcoming press release being published by the DOJ or FBI, said Gomez.

"Jamie’s mother was told of Tre being arrested, they didn't tell her what he was arrested for or charges he was being arraigned with,” said Gomez. “We had to find out through a press release that went to the media before it went to the family. That was extremely painful because Marilene James had to call different TV stations and newspapers to find that press release. We felt it was very disrespectful that we didn't get the press release when the press got it.”

Gomez said James was not interviewed after authorities discovered the “red substance,” which appeared to be blood, inside his grandmother's house, where the couple were last seen together.

“The first time law enforcement had any contact with James following Yazzie’s disappearance took place on an unrelated call to which Chinle PD responded in July of 2019,” said Gomez in a press release she sent out after the DOJ press release. “Even at that time, law enforcement did not interview James about Yazzie’s disappearance. James’s first interview by law enforcement didn’t take place until January 2022, two months after Yazzie’s remains were discovered.”

Even after members of Tre James's family told investigators that James was acting “aggressive, nervous, and paranoid” in the days immediately following Yazzie’s disappearance, authorities did not interview him until more than a year later.

The family of Jamie Yazzie had spent countless hours searching for her. They put up billboards asking for help finding her and then asking for help in finding the killer.

Gomez said even when remains were found in November, authorities did not notify the family, leaving them to continue searching for her in December.

“If law enforcement agencies and the Department of Justice really cared so much about Native American lives, why didn’t they do even a one-mile spoke search of the area surrounding James’s home?" asked Gomez. “Why was he allowed to roam free for nearly two years, victimizing three other women in the interim, before he was arrested for Jamie’s murder? These are questions investigating agencies have yet to answer.”

The family is still waiting for the remains of Yazzie to be returned so they can give her a proper burial. Her remains were transferred to the FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, in January 2022 for forensic analysis and 3D replication.

"They wanted to ensure no evidence was going to be lost," said Gomez of what she was told by authorities. "They wanted to ensure that it was kept for any evidence purposes."

Gomez recently received the Robert H. LaFollette Pro Bono Award for her extensive activism and legal work on behalf of primary and secondary victims of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives public health crisis. Currently, she is representing 15 MMIWR families, 11 of them Navajo, and the others Pueblo of Laguna and Pueblo of Jemez. All are pro bono cases.

When Gomez was given the award during her ceremony, she asked Marilene James to address the audience about why it's important to have attorneys represent families pro bono.

"The work I do is about the family, it's not about myself," said Gomez. "Marilene's statement is about how important it is to have an attorney pro bono, and what it means to her and her family, and how it's affected the outcome of the case."

Arlyssa Becenti covers Indigenous affairs for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send ideas and tips to arlyssa.becenti@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Family of murdered Navajo woman want killer to face justice