Days before Thanksgiving in 2020, family members of Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis received a call from her husband: She had gone missing.
The husband asked the family members to report her disappearance to police, but according to family members, he left the state and changed his telephone number.
Johnson-Davis, 39, a member of the Tulalip Tribe near Seattle, Wash., was last seen on Firetrail Road on the Tulalip Reservation in Washington State on Nov. 25, 2020, according to the FBI. Nearly four years on, there is little information on her whereabouts.
Frustrated at the progress of the investigation, her sisters Gerry Davis and Nona Blouin set out to investigate her disappearance on their own. Their efforts are captured in Missing From Fire Trail Road, a documentary released on Friday, Nov. 1.
“I do have dreams about her every once in a while but I don’t think she’s gone,” Davis tells producers as she chokes up about her sister. “And I do wish she’d come home.”
Chris Sutter, Tulalip Tribal Chief of Police, tells producers investigators are treating Johnson-Davis’ disappearance as an abduction-homicide case.
“I know she’s been stolen,” says Deborah Parker, former vice chairwoman of the Tulalip Tribe and an executive producer of the documentary. “There’s just something terribly wrong. She deserves for people to fight for her.”
Lynette (left), Nona Blouin (center), and Gerry Davis.
FilmRise
Johnson-Davis is one of thousands of missing Native women whose disappearance remains unsolved. Four out of every five Native women are victims of violence, according to statistics from the United States Department of Justice. More than 50% of Native women are victims of sexual violence.
Native women are also more susceptible to violence from non-Native men, per the 2023 DoJ report.
“We’ve learned through doing research that some of the men in jail would say: ‘You can go rape an Indian woman and you won’t get caught,'” says Parker, whose native name is Cicayalc̓aʔ.
Scene from Missing From the Fire Trail Road.
FilmRise
As a child, Johnson-Davis was removed from her family’s home and put in the foster home of a non-native family, her sister Blouin says.
Blouin and Johnson-Davis were put in the same home, where she alleges the sisters were sexually abused.
“Poor Mary…she did unspeakable things for that man,” Blouin says of her sister.
Johnson-Davis fell into a path of addiction, she says. But the sisters won a lawsuit against child protective services and the state of Washington, each receiving $400,000 for the psychological damage they endured.
“Her husband stole her money, her settlement that we had received from the state,” Blouin alleges. “He put it into an account … [and] didn’t leave her nothing. And then he moved to California.”
Johnson-Davis’ husband is not named in the documentary and our team was unable to reach him. Tulalip Tribal Police Det. David Sallee previously told us that he was a person of interest in her disappearance. Chief Sutter tells producers that he is aware of allegations of abuse against the husband, but says authorities do not have enough to detain him.
Johnson-Davis’ sisters and cousin also consider the possibility that she was killed by someone who was providing her with drugs. They suspect she may have been targeted because of the settlement she won, but without sufficient evidence pointing to either of these theories, her family remains without answers.
Deborah Parker, whose native name is Cicayalc̓aʔ (left); and aunt.
FilmRise
The documentary explores how Johnson-Davis’ story that hits home for every Native woman: Either they are victims themselves, or they are sisters, mothers, aunts and nieces of the victims.
In the search for answers for Johnson-Davis’ family, Parker also speaks of her own aunt, who was raped and beaten beyond recognition by a group of men.
In the film, Parker stops her car where her aunt’s alleged assault took place.
“Every time I drive by, I just think of how afraid she must’ve been,” Parker says. “And although she lived another day, she never lived again.”
Missing From Fire Trail Road, directed by Sabrina Van Tassel, will be available for purchase on Amazon Prime Video, GooglePlay, AppleTV and Microsoft Movies starting Friday, Nov.1.
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
