Navajo woman’s boyfriend sentenced to life in prison for her murder

PHOENIX (AP) — After family members of a murdered Navajo woman described their grief in federal court, the judge on Monday sentenced her boyfriend to life in prison for first-degree murder in a case that has become emblematic of what authorities call an epidemic of missing and murdered Native women.

Five years after Jaime Yazzie was killed, family and friends applauded as they left the downtown Phoenix courthouse after U.S. District Court Judge Douglas L. Rayas sentenced Tre C. James.

Yazzie was 32 and the mother of three sons when she disappeared in the summer of 2019 from her community of Pinon on the Navajo Nation. Despite a highly publicized search, her remains were not found until November 2021 on the nearby Hopi reservation in northeastern Arizona.

James was convicted last fall of the fatal shooting of Yazzie. The jury also found James guilty of multiple counts of domestic violence against three former partners.

Yazzie’s three sons, now 18, 14 and 10, and other family members attended the sentencing Monday, along with several dozen supporters. About a dozen other supporters remained outside to protest on the sidewalk, chanting slogans and beating drums.

“No sentence will ever balance the scales,” Yazzie’s mother, Ethelene Denny, told the judge before the announcement. Denny detailed the pain the family has endured from the moment Yazzie disappeared, through the desperate two-and-a-half-year search and the ultimate shock and grief when her remains were found.

Federal prosecutors also played a previously recorded video statement from Yazzie’s father, James Yazzie, who has since died.

“This is not right,” said Yazzie, the eldest, who was visibly ill and had difficulty speaking, in the video. “Taking my daughter and the mother of my grandchildren. It hits me right in the heart.”

“Today’s sentence underscores that Jamie Yazzie has not been forgotten by the FBI or our federal and tribal partners,” FBI Phoenix Special Agent Jose A. Perez said in a statement. “Our office is committed to combating the violence that Arizona’s Native American communities face every day, and we will continue our efforts to protect families, support victims, and ensure justice is served in every case we pursue.”

Yazzie’s case gained attention through the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women grassroots movement, which draws attention to widespread violence against Indigenous women and girls in the United States and Canada.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs calls violence against Native women a crisis.

Women in American Indian and Alaska Native communities have long suffered high rates of assault, kidnapping, and murder. A 2016 study by the National Institute of Justice found that more than four in five (84%) American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime, including 56% who experienced sexual violence.

— By ANITA SNOW Associated Press