Wilma Acosta, an unenrolled Pascua Yaqui woman living in Portland, went missing in November of last year. Her body was found in the Willamette River in January 2024. The Portland Police Bureau said she was suicidal. Her family insists she was not. Communication between Acosta’s family and the Portland Police Bureau illustrates some of the challenges in missing and murdered Indigenous people cases. Luna Reyna, Northwest bureau chief at Underscore News, wrote about this case and joins us to talk about it.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Wilma Acosta, an unenrolled Pascua Yaqui woman living in Portland, went missing in November of last year. Her body was found in the Willamette River a little over a month later. Luna Reyna wrote about Acosta’s case recently. Reyna is the Northwest bureau chief at Underscore Native News and ICT. She says that communication between Acosta’s family and the Portland Police Bureau illustrates some of the challenges in missing and murdered Indigenous people cases. She joins us now. Luna, it’s great to have you on the show.
Luna Reyna: Yeah, hi. Thanks for having me.
Miller: Can you tell us about Wilma Acosta? Who was she?
Reyna: Sure. According to Wilma’s mother and brother, Wilma was a caring, funny, ambitious young woman. Wilma was a comedy and horror film fan. She and her brother Michael would go to movies together. She loved to cook. In fact, she cooked a big meal for her friends the weekend she went missing … and just like all of us in our twenties, she was beginning to make her way in life. She had dreams of traveling to Paris and plans for a vacation a few weeks after she went missing.
She moved to Portland from California for a new job with Kaiser Permanente. She was creating a life for herself there. She bought a new Jeep and a Dalmatian puppy she was excited about. Her family just spoke about what a joy she was. And I guess they spoke daily with her, too. So from what they knew, she was happy with the direction of her life.
Miller: What have you been able to find out about what happened to her on November 26, 2023?
Reyna: According to the police report, Wilma and two of her friends went out to Dixie Tavern on November 25, and her friends left her at the bar in the early hours of November 26. About 20 minutes later, Wilma leaves, and those are the only verifiable facts.
There is some video footage of Wilma after leaving the bar, but I haven’t seen that, and police and the family are not in agreement about what it shows.
Miller: The police say that she was suicidal. What did they base that on?
Reyna: After receiving the second half of the case file, it became clear that they spoke with Manny Luna a few times, and he later told them that Wilma had attempted suicide in the past.
Miller: This was somebody that she had spent time with?
Reyna: Yeah, this was one of the friends that was with her the night she went missing, one of her friends that was at Dixie Tavern with her.
Miller: Her family took issue with that description, that she was suicidal. Why?
Reyna: Well, they didn’t, and still don’t believe that she was suicidal. They felt that once the police heard that she may have been suicidal, they didn’t pursue any other possibilities. So they’re pretty at odds about that from the beginning.
Miller: This is a key point here. I mean, what difference did that designation – the police saying that they believed she had been suicidal – make in the investigation?
Reyna: I can’t say definitively what difference this made in Wilma’s case, but it does fit a pattern identified in a 2020 report by the Oregon State Police, aimed at addressing gaps in police investigations of missing and murdered Indigenous people. The study was informed by community listening sessions with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, University of Oregon, Many Nations Longhouse, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon State University Native American Longhouse Eena Haws and the Burns Paiute Tribe. OSP heard consistently from Native people during these listening sessions that suicides are not often investigated, that police often assume missing Native people are suicides rather than possibly murders.
Miller: There’s another piece of this, which is that when police asked the public for help in Acosta’s case, they said that she may have been suicidal. What did you learn from experts about sharing that information with the public?
Reyna: This is really important. Mike Benner, the public information manager for the Portland Police Bureau, said that they shared that information with hopes of getting the public to take the case seriously. In practice, according to experts, this has the opposite effect. Making this information public can lead to the stigmatization of the missing person as well as prompt fatigue and empathy, or reduce compassion for the missing person. And this is according to Pamela End of Horn, who’s the national suicide prevention consultant for Indian Health Services Suicide Prevention and Care Program.
I also spoke with Jason Renaud, who’s the board secretary of the Mental Health Association of Portland, who said that sharing this information publicly is harmful to people’s long-term recovery as well. And after learning about this, I checked with PPB, and they have no procedural document that addresses what to share publicly when a missing person may be experiencing a mental health crisis. Benner and his team speak with detectives together, and they decide what information to disseminate publicly.
Miller: Acosta’s family came to Portland to help search for her. What did they do?
Reyna: They did a lot. Acosta’s mother and father traveled to Portland in search of her on November 27, the day after she disappeared, and her brother came a few days later. A cousin of Wilma’s father found out they were in town, so they put together a dinner to organize what to do next to find their daughter with local Native community members. Together, the group brainstormed the best way to search for her. They created flyers. They spoke with Wilma’s friends, they spoke with employees at Dixie Tavern, where she went missing. They spoke with unhoused people in the area. They searched for video footage. In fact, they got the video footage from Dixie Tavern before the police attempted to get the video footage. They also attempted to get footage from the Burnside Bridge. Wilma’s mother says she’s still waiting on that footage from the police.
The volunteers that they connected with through that first initial meeting searched along the banks of the Willamette River on kayaks. They also started a social media awareness campaign for her, which garnered attention from other people working to raise awareness about the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous people. And together, they organized a march in December that followed the Willamette River waterfront through downtown Portland to Portland Police’s Central Precinct and City Hall.
Miller: What was communication like between Portland Police and Acosta’s family?
Reyna: According to the family and volunteers I spoke with, there was not a lot of communication. From the police missing person announcement that claimed that Wilma was suicidal in opposition to the family’s beliefs and desires to today, when the family is still waiting on video from the police, the volunteers were out combing Willamette River for Wilma when they spotted something that they believed looked what they called “human-shaped,” and the police didn’t respond for several days.
It wasn’t until after the family organized the March for Wilma that garnered some media attention that the police invited the family to come view video footage that they’d collected. But every member and every volunteer I spoke with said the communication with the police was horrible, and there was no effort to keep the family informed.
Miller: As you noted, it wasn’t until after you published your story that you got from the police a part of their report saying that one of their witnesses had told them that Acosta had attempted suicide in the past. Do you know if the police shared that information with her family?
Reyna: After I got the second half of the case file, I spoke with Wilma’s mother and, no, she had not been informed of any of that information.
Miller: You mentioned a report on missing and murdered Native American women from a couple of years ago – from 2020 – from Oregon State Police. I want to read more of what it said. They wrote this: “When a crime or missing persons reports was made, participants reported, based on their experience, that they did not expect police to act; expect to be believed or to be taken seriously; always know where to report; expect prosecutors to prosecute offenders (Tribal or non-Tribal members); receive communication or follow up from police; or get the opportunity for involvement in plea negotiations from prosecutors.”
Again, that report is from about four years ago. Does that reflect the Acosta family’s experience?
Reyna: Oh, yeah, that’s absolutely what I’ve heard from them. The Portland Police didn’t ask the family about Wilma before sharing information about potential “suicidal ideations,” as they put it. The family felt that their belief that Wilma may have been the victim of a crime was brushed off and never considered. And from what’s been shared in the case file and what the family has shared, there were no other interviews with anyone other than Wilma’s two friends that she went to the bar with that night. According to her case file, the Portland Police didn’t interview the men you see her speaking with at the bar that night.
Wilma’s case was closed May 21. And when I spoke to her mother last week, she’d still not been informed by the Portland Police that her daughter’s case was even closed.
Miller: That same report suggested providing “education for Oregon’s law enforcement officers covering cultural awareness, the history of Native Americans in Oregon and the complexities between Tribal and state law.” Has that happened?
Reyna: That’s happened to some extent. I talked about this in part two of the series, actually. As a direct result of the 2022 OSP Report, another state bill in 2022 directed the Oregon Department of Public Safety, Standards and Training to submit a proposal outlining new training for officers in investigation and reporting cases involving missing and murdered Indigenous People.
The bill didn’t pass, but Dr. Staci Yutzie, the deputy director of that program – the Training Division and DPSST – examined the Savannah’s Act, reviewed the 2022 report connected with Cedar Wilkie [Gillette], the MMIP coordinator in Oregon, and together they created a training called “Criminal Jurisdiction Related to Tribal Lands and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons.”
This training includes a section on missing and murdered Indigenous people that also goes over Tribal sovereignty. The new training was implemented in the basic police academy in February of 2023. And according to Yutzie, all officers who have attended basic academy since February 2023 – so about 660 new officers as of May of this year – have received the training. But officers who have already completed basic training and were employed before February 2023, they’re not required to take this new training. So I definitely hope that this training becomes a mandatory requirement for all officers, especially detectives who will be handling missing persons cases – instead of just new officers.
And maybe it would make a difference in cases like Wilma’s, but the evidence points to Wilma’s case being a suicide. But it’s also important for detectives to consider the circumstances and rate of missing Indigenous women, as well as the general distrust of police by Native people as outlined in the 2020 report. Cultural awareness and communication are two important recommendations of that report and it could begin to mend that relationship, and people would be more inclined to believe the findings of an investigation, I think.
Miller: Wilma Acosta’s body was eventually found, as I noted, a little over a month after she went missing, in the Willamette River. What did the medical examiner say about the cause of death?
Reyna: The medical examiner’s report said the cause of death was drowning and the manner of death was suicide.
Miller: How is Wilma Acosta’s family doing these days?
Reyna: I’m really grateful to Wilma’s mom and brother for being so open and speaking to me as many times as they did. These conversations weren’t easy for them, I’m sure. This is a horrific situation, and the despair that I imagine they feel cannot be put into words.
I spoke with Wilma’s mother again recently to let her know about the casefile and that I’d be updating the story, and it’s clear that she won’t rest until she’s had answers about what happened to Wilma. And the video from Burnside Bridge where Wilma may have gone into the water still hasn’t been shared with the family, and she still hasn’t received Wilma’s cell phone. I’ve submitted records requests for that footage as well.
Miller: Luna, thanks very much.
Reyna: Thank you.
Miller: Luna Reyna is the Northwest bureau chief at Underscore Native News and ICT.
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