Shownotes Transcript
The missing child is Lucia Blix, nine years old. Please, let her come back home safely. Thursdays. The kidnappers plundered meticulously. If money is what it takes to get her back, we're going to pay it. The secrets they hide. You can't talk about this. You can't write about it. Are the clues. The mother's hiding something, I know it. To find her. Tell me where she is. The Stolen Girl. New episodes Thursdays. Stream on Hulu.
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Warning. The following podcast is not suitable for all audiences. We go into great detail with every case that we cover and do our best to bring viewers even deeper into the stories by utilizing disturbing audio and sound effects. Trigger warnings from the stories we cover may include violence, rape, murder, and offenses against children. This podcast is not for everyone. You have been warned.
The third leading cause of death for women in America is unintentional accidents. A car crash, an overdose, a fall. Tragic mistakes that can happen to anyone at any time. Often there isn't anyone to blame but fate itself. But when you look at Native American women,
The third leading cause of death is something much more disheartening, something that is preventable. Yet it keeps happening, again and again and again, as the world watches on in silence. Murder.
And today we are going to tell you the stories of Ashlyn Mike and Emily Pike, two women who became a part of this statistic. But sadly, it doesn't even feel right to call them women because they were just little girls. Ashlyn was 11 and Emily 14. The two should still be here, painting their nails, playing with their beloved pets, whispering secrets to their friends at sleepovers. But instead, they are dead.
and their communities are in mourning. Ashland's death in 2017 sparked changes in the way native law enforcement and state law enforcement work today. But Emily's death in early 2025 proved that those changes aren't nearly enough.
Today's story will show you the failures in the justice system, both before and after their murders. But it's also a story about residential schools, generational trauma, jurisdictional laws, and two communities who refuse to give up.
It's the story of a murderer on the loose and the Apache tribe who will stop at nothing to bring them justice. Because as of writing this, Emily Pike's killer is still out there and we need to find them. So this is the story of Ashlyn Mike and Emily Pike. I'm Courtney Browen. And I'm Colin Browen. And you're listening to Murder in America. ♪♪
Set Bataille is a sacred site. A craggy mountain of rocks that jut up into the sky like an explosion. It's a famous mountain on Navajo land just outside of Shiprock, New Mexico. On either side of the rock formation, the desert stretches on and on. Set Bataille, with its height of 1500 feet, can be seen from as far as 40 miles away.
It's a domineering figure in the landscape. To Navajo photographer Pamela Peters, "It is a silent witness to our history, our traditions, our spirituality. It is like a secure relative that's welcoming us home." Colonizers dubbed Setbatai "Shiprock" because it looked to them like a massive frigate sailing across the desert. But to the local Navajo, it looked like something else entirely.
The name Setbataille translates roughly to "rock with wings", with the word "bataille" meaning something akin to feathers. The legend varies depending on who you ask, but according to the Native Memory Project, the Navajo people arrived from another world on the wings of a huge bird that landed in Shiprock and was turned to stone.
That bird introduced them to Dineta, their traditional homeland on this earth, which was their third world. Navajo people call themselves Diné, which is their word for their people. Some elders say that Diné stands for "surface people" or "people between the sky and Mother Earth." Others say it simply translates to "the people." Shiprock, or Sepetai, is where some believe that the Diné became of this world.
It's their birthplace, a symbol of their belonging here, and the connection of their people to one another and this beautiful land." All of Ashlyn Mike's life, she was raised beneath the towering peaks of Set B'tai. It seems like there couldn't be a more fitting place for a Diné girl to grow up, protected under the peak of a sacred site, warming herself in the sun and nourishing herself with the earth of her native land.
Ashlyn was born on November 13th, 2004 to Gary Pike and Pamela Foster, and her mother described the day of her birth so vividly, saying, "The day Ashlyn was born, I looked into her small, hazy eyes and shed tears of joy. I could have sworn she smiled back at me as I cuddled her in the crook of my arms. In that instant, I realized that the sparkle in her eyes was my guiding light."
On what would have been Ashlyn's 20th birthday, her mom wrote in remembrance of her, "It was on a beautiful autumn sunset, the leaves of the trees clinging onto the branches and the sun casting its last golden rays through the hospital window. The sun ray lit up our room, telling me another star was born, and what a special gift you would be." And by all accounts, Ashlyn was a special gift indeed.
One thing that struck me while researching and reading about this bright little girl is how so many people described her as elegant. It's honestly one of the last words that come to mind when I think of children, but according to her mom, as soon as she could hold utensils, she ate slowly and intentionally, quote, "like a dainty princess."
In an interview with the Farmington Daily Times, her principal, Abina McNeely, described her as having, quote, this quiet elegance about her, end quote.
When people speak of Ashlyn, they almost always mention that she was a creative at heart. She played the xylophone and the piano with impeccable skill, as if she were destined to play from her birth. When she wasn't playing instruments, she was drawing. She won several awards for her drawings at school and in the community and even received one just a few weeks before her death. One of her drawings, which we will post on our Instagram and Patreon, shows the beauty of her native homeland.
It's clear how much of an inspiration the environment was for her budding mind. Now, for most of her childhood, her parents weren't together. But by all accounts, she grew up feeling the love of both of her parents, along with her brother and sister, Ian and Gracelyn. Her mother, Pamela, lived on a farm in Redlands, California, where Ashlyn would visit often. She reportedly adored playing with the animals and taking care of them, treating the dogs, cats, and chickens like they were her beloved friends.
but her siblings above all were her most beloved friends. After her death, her nine-year-old brother Ian recalled that she used to help him fall asleep by running her fingers through his hair. Just
Just two years older than him, she took on the role of his comforter and supporter. And on May 2nd, 2016, Ian tried to return the favor by being his sister's protector. It started out just like any other day. The three kids Ian, Gracelyn, and Ashlyn got ready to go to Ojo Amarillo Elementary School in Fruitland, New Mexico.
The school, which is attended by an almost entirely native population, reportedly only has around 300 students in kindergarten through sixth grade. It's the kind of school where everyone knows everyone and the children have a feeling of safety. That day, Gary Mike, Ashland's father, remembers hugging her and saying he loved her. As she walked out of the door that morning, he
He had no idea that it would be his very last time speaking with his starry-eyed, talented 11-year-old daughter. After school, the children were dropped off at a bus stop that was a mere quarter mile away from their homes. And again, this is on a reservation.
The place that the Mikes had called home for centuries. So no one had any reason to worry. Even further, Ashlyn wouldn't be getting off the bus alone. She was surrounded by cousins, friends, and her two siblings. But as dainty and elegant as Ashlyn was described as being, she was still a kid, and she wanted to play. After getting off the bus that day, she and her little brother Ian reportedly began playing in a canal near the bus stop.
In the week prior, the area had received about three times more rain than normal, so the canal was flowing and the desert plants were erupting in a carpet of vivid green along the water. While Ashlyn and Ian were playing, her older sister Gracelyn and some of her cousins continued walking home. After all, the kids were essentially playing in their own backyard.
and it wasn't unusual for the youngest to lag behind a bit on their way back home. But then something unusual happened, something that changed everything in an instant.
A beat-up maroon van approached Gracelyn and her cousins. The man, Tom Begay Jr., rolled down the window and smiled at the kids. He was in his late 20s, a fellow Diné, but the children didn't think they had ever seen him before. But strangely enough, he asked them if they wanted to go see a movie. Finding this odd, Gracelyn firmly told him no. So then, he asked if the kids needed a ride home instead.
But again, Graceland told him no. The walk home was something they had done every day for years. They didn't need a ride, so the man rolled up his window in a huff and drove away, kicking up dust behind him. The kids thought the encounter was odd, but it wasn't completely unusual for people on the reservation to treat one another like family, even if they hadn't met before. Bram Biele, a Diné living in another community, told the Albuquerque Journal, In Navajo culture, there's this concept of kinship.
Essentially, you treat every child, elder, and person as if they're a part of your direct family.
So, from here, Gracelyn and the cousins continued to walk on. Meanwhile, Ashlyn and Ian were playing in the canal alongside the road. But somehow, in the midst of their roughhousing, Ashlyn hurt her foot, and Tom Begay was eager to prey on that. Seeing Ashlyn on the side of the road, he pulled up to the kids asking if they needed a ride home, and Ashlyn, not wanting to limp a quarter mile back on her injured foot, agreed.
But her 9-year-old brother Ian immediately had alarm bells ringing in his head. He had a bad feeling about the man, about this stranger. But the idea of letting his big sister go on alone overrode his fear. So when Ashlyn hopped into the passenger seat, Ian got into the back.
his little heart pounding. From there, the van took off down the road and for a minute, everything was normal. That is until the van turned in the opposite direction of their home. At that moment, Ian's little heart started beating out of his chest and same for Ashlyn. Terror coursed through both of the children as the man began driving them further and further away from their community, out into the sprawling desert.
According to Ian, Ashlyn began asking the man to turn around. He was crying in the back seat and Ashlyn was panicking in the passenger seat. But even in the midst of her panic, she reached back and held Ian's little hand.
trying to comfort him. And despite their pleas, the van continued speeding through the winding desert roads with no one else in sight for miles. Ashlyn squeezed her brother's hand as they continued to head towards Set B'tai, the origin of their people on Earth, the monolith that had watched over the Mike children as they grew up.
For their entire lives, Set B'tai stood above them, and now they were driving closer and closer to it, unsure of what awaited them there. And I can't help but wonder what was going through their minds. As they drove through the desert, they could see out for miles and miles. It's likely that during this whole drive, the kids could see their homes, their community, stretching further and further away, separating them from civilization.
Finally, they crested over a hill a few miles south of Sainte-Bataille. They were on an incredibly remote dirt road. It's hard to understand just how remote until you visit a desert community just like this. The highways in these areas are remote enough. But if you take a turn down one, two, three, four dirt roads, all stretching for miles and miles, other people can seem like they're another world away, despite being able to see them. That's what happened in this case.
Around the kids, there was nothing but cows, horses, and houses close enough to see, but too far to get help from. After cresting the hill, Tom stopped the vehicle. He told Ashlyn to get out and ordered Ian to stay in the back and be quiet until he got back.
Ashlyn squeezed her brother's hand one last time and did as she was told, crying as she stepped out. And horrifically, from here, Tom would later say that he went to the back of a van and retrieved a tire iron, hiding it under his jacket so that the kids wouldn't see and become scared.
However, Ian's account speaks very differently of what he saw next. According to him, he saw Tom grab a curved bar of metal and he had it in his hands as he ordered Ashlyn to go, so in reality he wasn't hiding the weapon at all.
He was using it to intimidate these innocent children. And from the back of the car, Ian watched as Tom and Ashlyn disappeared over a nearby hill beneath the shadow of Sette Bataille.
For the next hour, all he could do was sit there in agony, hoping with everything in him that soon enough he would see his big sister walk back towards the car. But eventually, as he saw movement over the hill, all he saw was Tom. Ashlyn was nowhere in sight. Tom then got into the van and started driving. Ian looked out the window, hoping to see his sister somewhere along the landscape, but he couldn't see her.
Then, after driving for several minutes, Tom suddenly stopped the van and ordered Ian to get out. Ian did as he was told. He then watched as the red van disappeared.
leaving him all alone in the vast desert as the sun crept towards the horizon. Now back at Ashlyn's home, her family had already been desperately looking for her and Ian. When their big sister Gracelyn got home and her siblings didn't arrive by 4pm, she knew that something was wrong. Now her father was at work at the time so she decided to call her mother in Redlands, California. For reference, that's an 11 hour drive away.
about 680 miles. So when her mother got the call, she thought it was just her daughter checking in, but that's not at all how this phone call would go. When Pamela answered, Gracelyn told her about the red van that had approached her earlier that day, and she was terrified that it had something to do with Ashlyn and Ian not returning home. And the instant she said it,
Pamela knew that her daughter was right. She knew right then that her children had been kidnapped and she wasn't going to waste a second of time. Immediately, Pamela hung up the phone and called the Navajo Nation Police Department.
Now, this is where we have to touch on some jurisdictional issues. Issues that will carry over into our discussion about Emily Pike. Tribal lands are sovereign, they have their own justice system and teams of law enforcement to protect their land, yet their ability to press charges and conduct proceedings is
is limited to small misdemeanor cases. If a major crime, like murder or kidnapping, takes place on tribal lands, the FBI or the Bureau of Indian Affairs must step in to run the investigation. Then, it's the U.S. Attorney's Office that presses charges and handles the incarceration. If that sounds incredibly complicated, it's because it is.
And as complicated as the pipeline of jurisdiction is, the reasoning for it is even more so. It wasn't until 1995 that the final residential school closed in the United States. Residential schools were designated places by the federal government with the express purpose of helping to "assimilate" native children into the Anglo-Christian culture.
The kids weren't allowed to speak their tongues, practice their religions, or celebrate any cultural events. They weren't allowed to be themselves, and they were forced to become someone new. This was a 100 year travesty that nearly destroyed the rich and beautiful cultures of various tribes across the United States and Canada.
And that's a whole rabbit hole that we could go down, especially in Canada where at some of these schools nowadays they are unearthing mass graves of children that were never reported. I feel like we've only discovered the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the abuse and suffering that was perpetrated at these schools.
And it's important to know that that is one of the many reasons why tribal nations don't want to be exclusively under the jurisdiction of state law enforcement. The mistrust and generational trauma runs incredibly deep.
And this judicial sovereignty, in many ways, protects the native peoples and allows them to police their own land and people in a way that aligns with their culture and beliefs. At the same time, there's a big problem when severe cases are passed off to the US government. The US Government Accountability Office reported in 2010 that the US Attorney's Office declined to prosecute two-thirds of sexual assault cases referred to it by tribal governments.
Two thirds. Let that number and statistic sink in for a second. That means that for every three women, children, or men that were sexually assaulted, only one would have a fighting chance of receiving justice. And even then, their ability to testify and fight is limited by the remoteness of some tribal lands and resources.
Unfortunately, that same remoteness creates other issues, like the problem that Pamela Foster had encountered on May 2nd, shortly after 4pm, when she was frantically asking the Navajo Nation Police Department for help. She told Esquire, quote, They kept putting me on hold and transferring me, telling me that they were short on staff, that there was only one officer on duty at Shiprock.
And sadly, it's likely that there was. Underfunding is one of the most chronic issues on native land. Jim Walters, an Amber Alert coordinator who worked with the Navajo Nation extensively, told the Department of Justice in 2006 that this underfunding led to most 911 operators on tribal land
being forced to take notes on legal pads, not on a computer, not into a system, by hand, using mobile radios as their only connection to those calling. So this low funding leaves native communities underprotected. There are high turnover rates due to the significantly lower pay in tribal law enforcement than state.
which results in long periods of time with no one protecting their communities. Walters told Esquire, "Fort Peck on the Sioux Reservation in Montana hasn't had a police chief in five or six years." So Pamela not being able to reach an officer on the day that her daughter and son disappeared
wasn't out of the ordinary, but it was crushing. She was 11 hours away from her missing children, hearing from police over the phone that they would try and find her kids, but that they were so short staffed it was going to take some time. I can't imagine how infuriating that must be. Frustrated, Pamela decided to turn to Facebook
posting about her missing kids and spoke to Gary Mike, the children's father, about a strategy. Her post on Facebook detailed what Gracelyn had told her about the red van and within a half hour of her posting, locals sprang into action, forming their own search teams on the hunt for the missing children in the red van.
Meanwhile, Gary, the children's father, drove to the Shiprock Police Department and was finally able to file a missing persons report for his children. By then, it was 6:53pm. Ashlyn and Ian had already been missing for close to three hours, and her parents had been trying to get a response for just as long. But the family had worked fast. The community had worked fast.
However, law enforcement did not. Now, at this point, a missing persons report had been filed for both children, but an Amber Alert had not been sent out, despite officers having a description of the red van from Grace Lynn. Every minute without this Amber Alert was crushing for the family. They felt that as the second slipped by, their chances of recovering Ian and Ashlyn were slipping away with it.
But at 7:10pm, a couple was driving through the reservation on Navajo Route 13, also known as Red Rock Highway, when they spotted something that stopped their hearts. Now we aren't sure if the couple were a part of the Navajo Nation or not, or if they were even aware of the missing children, but regardless, they immediately stopped their car. Because along this desolate road, they saw a young child, wandering all alone in the dark.
It was 9 year old Ian. When the car pulled up alongside Ian, he was visibly terrified and crying. According to the LA Times, he repeatedly said "A man in a red van is chasing me." Now from here, the couple tried to call 911, but because of the remoteness of the area, they were unable to get service.
So instead, they loaded the sobbing child into their car and they rushed him back to the Shiprock Police Station branch of the Navajo Nation Police. Once there, Ian struggled to explain what had happened.
His aunt, Darryl Foster Joe, told the LA Times, quote, he was so tired and just crying and crying for his sister. It was really hard to get any information out of him, end quote. But when law enforcement did get the information out of him, it was devastating. He told them all about what he had seen, about the tire iron, about his sister being taken, and how she never came back.
He told them that the man was Navajo, one of their own, and luckily soon after this, his father promptly arrived to comfort him.
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Outside, the search was ramping up, at least for the family and friends of Ashlyn and Ian. They had made an informal command post at the chapter house of the reservation, where Rick Nez, the president, helped organize search parties. However, the involvement of tribal and state law enforcement left much to be desired. At 8pm, four hours after the two children had gone missing, and a full hour after the missing persons report had been filed,
Pamela's cousin, Maybelline Buck, called the Farmington Police Department, part of the New Mexico State Police. She told them, "My cousin just posted on Facebook that her kids were kidnapped. I was just calling to see if the Navajo PD alerted you guys. Apparently, they found my nephew. He escaped from the van, but they still have my niece." And she was shocked by the response. The dispatcher told her that the Farmington Police Department didn't know a single thing about the missing children.
Exasperated, she told them it was urgent and needed to be looked at. Half an hour later, she called back again to see if they had gotten involved. This time, a different dispatcher answered. When she explained the situation, they asked her, "Did you report this to reservation police yet?" Imagine how frustrated the children's family was.
essentially doing the job of multiple police departments. Because, unfortunately, the police departments were incapable of working together, Maybelline rushed to the Farmington Police Department to speak to them in person.
There, she discovered something even more shocking. According to her, there was a search team ready to go. She told the LA Times, "They said, 'We have everybody on standby here. We're just waiting to hear an okay from the Navajo Nation since it's a jurisdiction issue.' She told me, 'They couldn't really do anything and time was just ticking.'" And just imagine for a moment if the two children that were missing didn't have a loving family to search for them.
to call the police department repeatedly and to go in person and push for the police to locate them. What would have happened? That's something we'll explore a little later.
Because tragically, the numbers of missing indigenous people and the sparse information available about them speaks for themselves. But while Maybelline was urging the Farmington Police Department to help in the search, the kid's father, Gary Mike, was conducting a search of his own. And he was going solely on his nine-year-old son's memory of where they went.
Ian had been so panicked, so heartbroken, that his recollection of events was patchy at best. And to make it even more difficult, darkness had fallen over the sacred landscape, making it even harder to remember where they were. But Ian did remember that the car was driving towards Set Bataille, their sacred landmark. He also remembered that there had been horses in front of where they stopped,
cows to the right of them, and houses on the distant right. So Gary Mike drove down the isolated farming and access roads with nothing but his headlights and the lights of his phone to search for his baby girl.
At 9:07 PM, five hours after Ashlyn went missing, the Navajo Nation police requested an Amber Alert from the FBI. But that was a mistake. Amber Alerts must be issued by the State Police Department, not the FBI, meaning that the Navajo Nation had reached out to the wrong people.
Farmington had been called multiple times and asked why no Amber Alert was issued, but they didn't have an answer. Sometime after midnight, an FBI agent reviewed the request for the Amber Alert from the Navajo Nation Police Department and realized the mistake that had been made. They contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who, in turn, contacted state police to get an Amber Alert issued.
At 2:30am, many members of the search party for Ashland had finally fallen asleep, trying to get a few hours of rest before the sun rose and the search continued. But then suddenly, they were jolted awake. The Amber Alert was finally screeching through the reservation and beyond. But it was a full 8 hours after the missing persons report had been issued. 10 hours after law enforcement and family had gotten a description of the vehicle that had kidnapped the children. In other words, it was
It was far too late. - And unbeknownst to everyone, Ashlyn was already dead. The morning of May 3rd, 2016, search parties were in full swing in the area that Ian recalled being brought to. Just 24 hours before,
Ashlyn had been enjoying her time in her fifth grade classroom. She was likely, as she was every day, looking forward to her music classes. She dreamt of being a music teacher someday and passing on her love of the arts to kids the same way it had been passed on to her. But she never got the chance because just after 11:00 AM, a group of searchers on ATVs discovered Ashlyn's body. She was naked.
lying in the desert at the base of a tiny hill. And by taking one single glance at her, it was obvious how she had been killed, because her head had been bashed in. It was a devastating sight, one that no one would ever be able to forget. When Ashlyn's family heard the news, they were devastated beyond belief. Her mother stated, quote,
It's the day my world shattered into a million pieces. I had to become a warrior mom. I had to be brave and fight for my daughter who was gone too soon." Ashland's father, Gary Mike, told the Albuquerque Journal, "There are so many people out in the world with hearts. The person who took the life of my child had no heart."
But luckily, as her body was found, law enforcement was already closing in on who their killer was.
based on the description of the vehicle. Now mind you, this is a description that they had from the very beginning, from the moment that Gracelyn told her mom about Ashlyn and Ian's disappearance. Sadly, Ashlyn was likely still alive when Gracelyn disclosed the information about the van, yet it wasn't until the next day that police were using that to find her.
Early in the morning, Tom Begay Jr. visited his friend, Rufus Dickey. Rufus had a soft spot for Tom and his brother, Sean, who had essentially crumbled after the death of their parents in 2014. Their parents had been loyal attendees of the Native American church, which combined indigenous beliefs with native beliefs. Rufus had taken it upon himself to check on Tom and Sean after the death of their parents and discovered them living in filth.
Essentially, the two were struggling so much mentally and financially that they were eating nothing but breakfast cereal. Rufus told the Las Cruces Sun News: "They were lost without their parents. I didn't have much food in my fridge, but what I had I gave to them." From then on, the community and the church took in the boys, trying to guide them in the right direction.
Rufus encouraged Tom to avoid drugs, though he got a charge in 2015 for DWI and was arrested for possessing synthetic marijuana three weeks before the murder of Ashlyn Mike. The morning that Ashlyn's body was found, Tom had stopped by Rufus' to talk before he drove to Farmington to pick up a friend. While there, Rufus brought up the Amber Alert.
mentioning that Tom's car matched the description. Reportedly, Tom laughed and said that he hadn't even thought about it. Then from there, he got into the matching van and left. However, Rufus wasn't the only one who had noticed. Just outside of Farmington, FBI agents pulled Tom over because his vehicle matched. They even took pictures of him and the vehicle, but at that point,
There was nothing to prove that he was their suspect. In fact, by then Ashland's body hadn't even been found yet. So as a result, the FBI agents were forced to let Tom go. But then came more tips. Calls flooded the FBI about Tom's car matching the description. Some people even recalled seeing his car in the area on the day of Ashland's abduction and death. So from here, agent showed her little brother Ian
a photo of Tom and a lineup, as well as a photo of his vehicle. And immediately, Ian knew that he was the person who had kidnapped him and his sister. He was also able to identify his car. But once they got this confirmation, no one knew where Tom was. Unbeknownst to them, he was at a sweat lodge ceremony with his local church, along with his friend, Rufus Dickey.
The service began at noon and went on for several hours. Every ceremony is different, and sweat lodges and ceremonies are a central part of many indigenous cultures. However, the general idea and the importance of these remain the same. They're a time for connection, to release impurities in the mind, spirit, and body, and to cleanse yourself anew. Often, sweat lodge sessions involve chanting, song, and deep camaraderie.
People share their worries and stress with village elders in the dark room full of steam and heat. In some Navajo communities, people use peyote,
a cactus containing mescaline, a psychoactive compound. Peyote has been traditionally used in spiritual and medicinal contexts by indigenous tribes for over 5,000 years, which has allowed it to be used legally on tribal land in the modern day. We don't know if peyote was used in the ceremony on that day, but what is known is that much of the ceremony revolved around Ashland. Rufus Dickey told the Las Cruces Sun there were tears.
The sweat ceremony was so emotional. They sang and prayed for Ashlyn's safe return as a group, but they all had no idea that her killer was sitting beside them, taking part in this sacred ceremony, hiding a horrible secret within himself.
That is until late into the evening, when above the singing, voices could be heard outside, demanding that everyone come out. In the midst of the ceremony, everyone was forced to emerge. Steam poured out of the sweat lodge as they lifted the door and came out, one by one. The sight that awaited them was like something out of a horrible movie. From their peaceful spiritual retreat,
they emerged into a world where guns were pointed at them. Blacked out SUVs flashed red and blue, closing off any entrance or exit. When the agents spotted Tom, they demanded that he raise his hands, step forward, and get on his knees. And from there, he was arrested for the kidnapping and murder of Ashlyn Mike. Everyone watching was completely shocked.
Tom's friend, Rufus Dickey, told the Las Cruces Sun News, "I trusted him with my family. I trusted him with my daughter, and he betrayed me. I knew him in the sunshine. I didn't know him at home behind closed doors." Rufus had called Tom his brother, and Tom had the audacity to pray for Ashlyn's return right beside him.
it didn't take long for tom to admit what he had done at least in part he admitted to kidnapping the children boldly he told the fbi that he had taken them because he wanted to have sexual intercourse with ashland keep in mind ashland was 11. and just for anybody out there that might be confused just to be completely clear that is not sexual intercourse
That is rape. He kidnapped Ashlyn and her brother because he wanted to rape an innocent 11 year old girl in front of a monument that was sacred to his people. Now, the reason he took Ian is because he didn't want him running off and telling his family that Ashlyn got into a car with a random man.
so he let him come along. Once out in the desert, Tom admitted that he stopped the car and took a tire iron with him, urging Ashlyn to go behind a hill where her brother couldn't see. He then ordered the young girl to strip naked.
Tom had no problem admitting that throughout the entire ordeal, she was sobbing and begging him to just take her home. But he didn't care. Initially, he stated that he had just digitally penetrated her. When she began to scream and cry too loudly, he claimed he hit her twice on the head with the tire iron.
However, later faced with the autopsy results, he had no choice but to tell the truth. In reality, Tom hadn't just digitally penetrated her. Tom had raped Ashlyn vaginally and anally. Then after the brutal assault, he hit her in the head and left. Tom stated that when he left the scene, Ashlyn was still moving and breathing. So he left her there to die in the desert.
on her ancestral land with no remorse. On May 6th, Ashlyn's funeral was held at the Farmington Civic Center Auditorium. There were over 3,000 people in attendance. At the funeral, Ashlyn's mother delivered the eulogy. How do I begin a farewell when I still can't believe you're gone? How do I say goodbye to a part of my soul
Ashlyn's white casket was adorned with pink, purple, yellow, and white flowers, as vibrant in color as she had been in life. Most people at the funeral wore yellow, which had been Ashlyn's favorite color for most of her childhood. According to Gary Mike, in recent weeks, her new color had been royal blue. However, he wasn't sure if it was going to stick. He told Esquire, "...and yellow is nice, too."
Ashlyn was at such an exciting age at the time of her death. She was making new friends, finding new hobbies, and evolving herself as a preteen with her own sense of independence and autonomy. But she never got the chance to see if blue would stay her favorite color, or if she would be able to learn that new piece of music she had been practicing, or if she would be able to cook spaghetti, her favorite meal, as well as her parents someday.
Ashlyn is forever 11 years old and rightfully that infuriates her parents who no more could have been done to protect their daughter. Following Ashlyn's murder, Pamela and Gary began to push hard for a review of how Amber Alerts are handled on reservations. Because of jurisdictional issues, Native children were not being protected.
And Pamela Foster, in particular, wanted a way for Amber Alerts to be issued across the entire nation without struggling with the gatekeeping of various states. And luckily, on March 29th, 2017, her hard work paid off. Senator John McCain introduced the Ashland-Mike Amber Alert, an Indian country act.
This law would provide tribes with government funding and training to integrate tribal AMBER Alerts with state AMBER Alerts and to allow tribal police to activate alerts across their entire reservation, even if it crossed state lines. It was the very first step towards healing and justice for the family. Then, on August 1st, 2017, the next big step came.
At trial, Tom, who had pleaded not guilty at pre-trial, finally changed his plea to guilty. Ashland's family members in the audience began to sob. The judge asked Gary Mike if he had anything he wanted to say to the man who raped and murdered his daughter. In tears, Gary responded that he couldn't say anything. Later, in an interview with local station KRQE, he stated: Words cannot describe what I'm feeling, what we're all feeling.
Tom was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. As of the publishing of this episode, he is incarcerated at USP Terre Haute in Indiana, far away from the community that he betrayed.
If you love Murder in America, you love mysteries, you love true crime, you love murder stories and the unknown, then I have a new show for you. It's called The Conspiracy Files, and it's hosted by me, Colin Brown, from Murder in America and The Paranormal Files. On The Conspiracy Files, we explore everything from bizarre deaths to freak paranormal events, pedophile rings...
government corruption, ritual sacrifice. No topic is untouched on this show. Everything that we talk about on the conspiracy files is backed up with fact. I release reference sheets with every single episode that we do. So you guys know everything we're talking about is confirmed to have happened and be real. It's a completely different type of show than anything else you've ever seen about conspiracy theories. Instead of a bunch of conjecture and theories,
We're presenting you people with facts, telling you the story, walking you through the story just as detailed as we do with Murder in America, and then letting the listener decide what they think. Anyways, you should definitely give it a listen. It's called The Conspiracy Files. The links are in the description of this show, and you can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And now let's get back to our story.
Ashlyn Mike's case put a huge spotlight on the reform needed when it comes to the disappearance and murders of indigenous women and children. But there is still so much further for us to go. As it currently stands, according to the Department of Justice, Native American women on reservations are 10 times more likely to be murdered than women of other ethnicities anywhere in the U.S.
And that's not even counting the indigenous women and children who have never been found.
Now, our next story is about a girl who disappeared that was found. However, how she was found is, sadly, what propelled her name into the national spotlight. Emily Pike was a 14-year-old girl born into the San Carlos Apache tribe in Arizona. And as you'll learn, Emily Pike is one of many, many girls from the same area that have vanished.
Thanks to her family's quest for fairness and reform, she may not be the only one to capture national attention.
Emily was born on May 16, 2010 and was raised on the San Carlos Apache Reservation. From a young age, her parents were separated. According to Arizona Central News, she was raised in a bit of a revolving door situation. At times, she lived with her brother, her mother, her grandmother, aunts, and other relatives at a home in Paradon. A relative disclosed that the house wasn't always happy and that it was often crowded and frenetic.
From a young age, Emily allegedly struggled with mental health issues. It's sadly the hand she was dealt, but that's not all she was. Emily was also a vibrant and beautiful young girl. Her aunt, Carolyn Pike Bender, told 12 News, quote, "Emily, I mean, we loved her.
She was excitement to us. She liked butterflies. She liked anything that sparkled. She liked all the stars. Just everything. She was just a girl." And that line struck me. She was just a girl. Really, she was. And so often the media forgets that.
Particularly when looking at young girls of color, young girls with mental health issues, or young girls with disciplinary problems. At times in the media, they become the problems they were facing, which isn't the case. Now Emily struggled with her mental health and discipline according to several sources, but that doesn't make her any less deserving of love. Because from the sound of things, she knew how to truly love.
Emily adored K-pop, pink, and art. Her social media pages were full of art she created. Her family distinctly remembered what a firm respect and love of life that Emily had.
When she lost her kitten as a young girl, it was the most devastating thing she had ever experienced. She immediately begged her relatives to take other cats in so she could care for them. It was just the kind of person she was. Despite any hurt she was feeling, she wanted to comfort others. And that carried on with her when she was sent to a group home. In 2022, when Emily was 11 years old,
She was removed from her home by the San Carlos Apache Tribe Social Services. Sources like Arizona Central News have speculated that this was because of some mental health issues she was experiencing. But from there, she was taken to a group home in Mesa, Arizona, about two hours away from her home on the reservation.
And this is where things get a little messy. Now, the group home that Emily was placed in has faced intense threats due to this case, which we will explore shortly. On Google, the establishment is now listed as closed. However, their website is still up, and often, businesses will close their Google Business page if they're getting an overwhelming amount of negative reviews. Which is exactly what happened when the name of this facility was leaked to the public.
People took to TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter to celebrate that the facility was closed based on this Google business page. But we think it's important to mention here that that isn't a fact. What is fact, however, is that there are professional investigations into the facility happening as we record this podcast, including investigations being performed by both state and tribal agencies. We don't know if the facility is truly open or if it's closed, but
But, in the case that it is open, we aren't going to disclose the name in order to protect the safety of any kids that might still be there. At the core of this story, we have to remember that we need to protect those that are the most vulnerable. That happens through legal action, community outreach, and reform. It doesn't happen through threatening a place where those kids live, exposing their address on a silver platter to anyone, especially when the person who killed Emily Pike is
is still out there. But the group home where Emily lived off and on for two years reportedly had 10 beds. There were no phones allowed in the facility, though people living there were allowed off campus for approved trips as long as it was disclosed exactly where they were going and when they would be home.
Chelsea, the pseudonym of one of Emily's friends who lived at the facility, told ABC 15 that Emily came to the facility to get better resources for her mental health. She said that it was challenging for her to get them on a reservation. Now, Chelsea and Emily were close, and living in that group home was challenging, so they tried to help steer each other in the right direction. Now, nothing we've read about this group home paints it in a positive light.
But there is some misleading information. The media quickly jumped on the fact that the group home had reported 30 missing people in the last three years alone. And that seems like a staggering amount, especially since they only had 10 beds there. But group homes like the one that Emily was at are required to report people missing anytime they leave without permission. To put this into perspective,
By the time Emily disappeared, she had already been reported missing from the group home three times, one being on September 11th, 2023. - Emily and another child ran away from the group home. Though the report claimed that there were cameras in the hallways in the office, the two preteens weren't seen leaving on either.
The night prior, one of the two kids had a secret cell phone confiscated, which is part of what the staff claimed likely led to the girls running away. However, they claimed something entirely different.
Because of the girls ages, who said what isn't publicly known. It is known that one of the girls told police they didn't want to go back to the group home because they make them work by scrubbing walls, baseboards, window seals and scrubbing the grout on their hands and knees. One of the girls added that she would run away again if police took her back and that she would rather go to jail or live with her grandma.
And I can't say for certain, but what happened 9 days later makes me believe that it was most likely Emily who said she would run away again.
Because, early in the afternoon, she was reported missing. She told the officer who found her that she didn't want to go back because it makes her uncomfortable when the staff gets into arguments with other kids. Once more, Emily was returned to the home. To me, this is the part of the story that the public should be focusing on. There was a reason Emily didn't want to be in the home. Whether that's because of mistreatment from the staff or her own needs not aligning with the program,
We don't know. Regardless, it's clear that she was uncomfortable and in need of help. She should have been listened to and protected.
On Halloween of 2023, Emily disappeared and was reported missing, but she returned soon after nightfall on her own accord. Now it seems that in 2024 she may have been back in the company of her family on the reservation, but sometime in late 2024 she returned back to the group home in Mesa and she was there until January of 2025, but soon enough her story would come to a tragic end.
On January 27th, 2025, at 6.30 p.m., the group home manager learned that Emily Pike was missing. And at 8.19 p.m.,
A Mesa police officer arrived to interview the staff about her disappearance. Her friend Chelsea told Fox 10 in Phoenix that Emily left the home because she wanted to visit a boy she met while she was taking guitar lessons. While a local church group was visiting, Emily snuck out of a window in her room by pushing out the screen, and from there, she disappeared into the cold January desert night.
Once it was realized that Emily was missing, her family wasn't immediately notified. Instead, her case manager was alerted and she only spoke with Emily's mother and other relatives over a week after she had disappeared. Imagine finding out that your daughter has been missing for over a week and by the time you learn about her disappearance, you're already so far behind that it makes it nearly impossible to catch up.
In response, Emily's family immediately scrambled to make up for that lost time. They canvassed nearby communities, posted relentlessly on Facebook, and they spoke with law enforcement on the daily. Initially,
It seemed that her disappearance had been largely brushed off because of her history as a runaway. But as the weeks passed and she was still nowhere to be found, the likelihood that she had run away grew slimmer and slimmer. Emily's mother, siblings, aunties, and uncles waited in agony to get even the slightest clue about where she was.
Was she dead? Was she alive? Would they ever see her smiling face again? And eventually, they got their answer in the worst way possible. Soon after Valentine's Day, the Gila County Police Department made a huge mistake. On their Facebook, they accidentally published an internal memo. This memo meant to go out to every member of their department, instead went out to the world. And as such, it was written in cold professional language. It read,
The memo disclosed that remains had been found in Globe, Arizona on Valentine's Day off of Highway 60 near milepost 277. Off the desolate mountainous highway, there is a turnoff with a makeshift hiking trail. On that hiking trail, a group of hikers discovered multiple contractor bags. In the bags, law enforcement discovered remains. In one bag, a head and a torso. In another, legs. The hands and feet of the body were missing.
At the end of the memo, it was suggested that the body likely belonged to 14-year-old Emily Pike. This memo spread like wildfire, including to her family, who were devastated beyond words. They had already been traumatized by being some of the last to learn about her disappearance.
Now they were learning about her horrible death with the entirety of the internet. It wasn't until over a week later on February 27th that her remains were positively identified using her dental records. But Emily's death has now become a symbol for missing and murdered indigenous people, largely due to her family's quest for justice. April Victor, Emily's aunt, stated quote: "Emily was a spark and she definitely sparked the world.
And now the world is on fire because of Emily." #SayHerNameEmilyPike started to trend, a rallying cry used to bring attention not only to her murder but the disappearance and murders of hundreds of indigenous people across America. People have gathered to create memorials in honor of Emily, memorials that are adorned with red handprints, the symbol of MMIP.
The water tower on the San Carlos Apache Reservation is adorned with a beautiful portrait of Emily, smiling down on the reservation where her body should be resting with peace. But tragically, it's not.
As of the publishing of this episode, people are still desperately searching for Emily's hands and arms. Twyla Cassidor told ABC 15, quote, "In our Apache culture, you have to be whole when you go into the next life. We have to find her and just help her travel into her journey."
As a native person, it completes you." For Emily to be at peace in her next life, in the eyes of her people and traditions, her whole body must be buried on tribal land. So not only has the person who murdered her taken her life, but he has taken the peaceful vision of her in the afterlife from her family. And to make their grief even worse,
her murderer is still out there. It is so important that we all rally together and keep her name alive until that person is behind bars. And according to a retired FBI agent, Jim Eagleson, it seems as if putting that person behind bars could lead to justice for many others. Here is what he told Phoenix Station KPHO.
Somebody who committed this kind of murder, do we believe this was their first time killing? Probably not, I would say. And they probably are older. Just the fact that they'd have to have the means to get out there, some form of transportation. With a staggering number of missing Native women and girls, it would not be surprising if this person had other victims.
Working in the world of true crime, we have always been well aware of the crisis of murdered and missing indigenous people. In researching the disappearance and murder of 13-year-old Emily Pike, we were forced to really look at the roadblocks to getting justice for these people for the first time. And we wanted to find cases similar to Emily's. Perhaps girls her age who had gone missing from the same area or the area where her body was found.
But what we found instead was, for lack of a better term, a disorganized mess. We looked at the tribal areas around Globe and Mesa. On tribal police and community Facebook pages, we literally found dozens of cases recently posted asking for the public's help.
Wanting more information on these lost kids, some of them as young as 11 years old, we looked on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's website, which is usually a go-to for the status of missing children. But these cases weren't there. At first, we thought we were entering information wrong, that maybe there was a different database because these disappearances happened on tribal land.
So from there, we went on to the Bureau of Indian Affairs website, which has an entire missing person section.
supposedly listing all of the missing individuals from tribal communities. But what we found there was the same. None of the cases that were posted locally had been posted nationally. Then we looked at the county and city police department pages, and again, there was not a single mention of these missing children. And had we really looked at the statistics before this deep dive, we may have not been so surprised.
In 2016, the National Crime Information Center reported 5,712 cases of missing American and Alaskan Native women and girls. Yet the U.S. Department of Justice only had 116 of these cases listed on their website. That's less than a tenth of the missing women and girls.
In this episode we've covered jurisdictional issues, but this is the most egregious representation of it all. How many native children, women, two spirits, and men need to go missing before anyone finds a way to change how these cases are presented to the public? Before the media and law treats these innocent people with the same care as a rich person living in a city?
Emily Pike's family feels the same way. Her mother posts almost daily about other missing children, teens, and adults in the area, praying for their families. She knows more than anyone what it's like to have a loved one missing. But of all the missing people that she posts about, I hadn't heard of a single one of these cases. We would be remiss not to mention just a few of the names that we found of missing people in the Mesa and Globe area.
There's 13-year-old Aurora Torres, who went missing from the Gila River community on March 25th, 2025. Raina B. Pratt, also from the Gila River community, who was last seen at 8 a.m. on March 26th, 2025.
There's 16-year-old Amber Pinto, missing from the Navajo Nation since December 14th, 2022. Berlina Parker, missing from Albuquerque, New Mexico since September 27th, 2024. There's Kayla Kamasi, Kiara Yazzie, Liana Bennett, Marquesha DeClay, all under the age of 20 years old.
with so little public information available that it's hard to know exactly when and where they went missing. - This is a crisis in so many ways. And it's so important that we tell these stories. If Emily Pike's family can find the light by bringing these cases out of the darkness, then we owe them all that same respect. So in honor of Emily Pike and Ashlyn Mike,
we will be making a donation to the Not Our Native Daughters, an indigenous-run, survivor-run organization dedicated to addressing the problem of missing, murdered, and exploited indigenous women and girls. They aim to empower indigenous communities by advocating for justice and providing support to the families affected.
Hey everybody, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Murder in America. I have been a voice on the internet advocating for, you know, America to really acknowledge what we did in the past, especially to the indigenous people. On my YouTube channel, I've done whole documentaries about indigenous burial mounds that have been completely destroyed to build roads. I'm from South Dakota, so I've seen a lot of this stuff firsthand.
And we had a very corrupt attorney general in South Dakota who rehomed kids with sexual predators. That's a whole different thing to talk about on another day. But I feel this issue in my soul. I know Courtney does too. So anything we can do to try help, we are going to try. And we're gonna continue raising the alarm, hopefully spreading some awareness of this major problem. And we both just hope and pray that there is resolution coming in this case.
If you guys want to help support the show, you can join us on Patreon. If you don't like the ads in the show and you want to get early access to every episode, you can get that through our Patreon. In addition, we have bonus episodes of the show. So if you've never signed up for Patreon, you can sign up to become a member.
and instantly get access to over 100 full-length bonus episodes of Murder in America. Bonus episodes that feature both Courtney and I with the music, the editing, everything that we do here on the main feed, just exclusively for our Patreon members. And we can't thank everybody who has joined us on Patreon enough because they have helped to make this show
possible also do not forget to follow us on instagram at murder in america please leave us a five-star review on spotify or apple podcasts we really want to boost those reviews thank you to everybody who has already done all that but yeah this is such a tragic case and we're just hoping that there's resolution soon and if that happens we will be sure to give you guys a major update anyways y'all thank you for tuning in have a great rest of your weekend and i'll catch y'all on the next one