Into Thin Air: What Happened to Selena Not Afraid?

In America, Indigenous women and girls are ten times more likely to go missing than any other race or nationality living within the borders. But within that cold and startling statistic hides one even more alarming for the communities it impacts. 

That stat comes straight out of Big Horn County, Montana—home to the Crow Nation, where Indigenous women face even tougher odds than their peers across the country. Out of the 14,000 Crow Nation members, around 11 are currently missing. As low as that number could seem on the surface, the implications only continue to deepen the longer you look at it. The only other county in Montana that reaches that same number is Yellowstone, which has 12 times the population and has ties to about 27 different indigenous tribes.

Listen to this episode here: https://www.10minutemurder.com/into-thin-air-what-happened-to-selena-not-afraid/

And today’s case shines a chilling light onto those shocking odds stacked against indigenous women, and along the course of its story, has left a family and a community in ruin.

Selena Shelley Faye Not Afraid was born not only a part of her people’s long history, but part of a set. She and her twin sister Zoey were the last and final addition to Jacquelena Big Hair and Leroy Not Afriad’s growing family, making them the youngest of five siblings.

Selena was the kind of person who could light up any room with her smile. She was warm, outgoing, and made friends wherever she went. Her love for life and the outdoors was contagious, and she spread that love equally among the people she cared about and the animals she adored.

From her first horseback ride when she was still only a child, Selena was hooked. By the age of 16, she was living in the Crow Nation with big plans of owning a farm and becoming an Indian Relay Rider. 

That was Selena—she approached life just like she did her favorite sport: no saddle, no stirrups, no protective gear, just pure, unfiltered enthusiasm. And maybe, in a lot of ways, she had more reasons than most to dive in headfirst. By 16, Selena not only had a clear vision for her life, but she’d also been through hardships and losses that many of us might never experience, even in a lifetime.

It started with Selena’s other half, her twin sister Zoey. When the girls were only 11 years old, Zoey struggled with her mental health, so much that she ended up taking her own life. This was a devastating loss for the Not Afraid family and tragically it was only the first.

About 3 years after Zoey died, older brother Preston Bell was shot during a confrontation with the police. He died as a result of his injuries at the age of 24. That was 5 Not Afraid children down to 3 and there was still more to come.

In quick succession, older sister Tristen Grey was struck in a hit and run. She died at the scene only a few months after Preston was killed by the police.

Selena and her older brother RJ were the only surviving children left, but that, almost unbelievably, changed yet again in 2020.

It was New Year’s Eve 2019, just before the Not Afraid family’s world would be flipped upside down again. 16 year-old Selena headed out for a night of partying with friends in Billings, Montana. She didn’t sneak out or anything—she told her parents where she was going, had a ride lined up, and was supposed to be back the next day.

Selena and about 5 other friends ended up staying the night in Billings before piling into a friend’s van and heading back to the reservation. 

So far, so good. It had been one heck of a party and, like many teenagers do, Selena had managed to get away with a bit of underage drinking. The only thing left to do then was to make it home in one piece and call it a night.

But the van that they were in ended up breaking down along the way.

The van driver pulled into a gas station between Billings and Hardin, letting everyone out while he checked what was up, and if there was anything quickly fixable. He got the van running again but knew it was only a matter of time before it broke down for good—and this is where the stories start to differ.

Some versions of this story say that the driver simply explained the situation to everyone and let them know that his mother was on the way in her own car to come and pick them up, while he drove the rest of the way in his temporarily fixed van. Some versions say that he told everyone except Selena and her friend Arlana who had disappeared somewhere in the station.

Regardless of which version is true, the driver then got back into his vehicle and took off towards the reservation, leaving Selena and Arlana behind. Only about 10 minutes after that, his mother then showed up to pick up the girls and couldn’t find them anywhere.

Knowing that she was supposed to be picking up 2 teenage girls who had no other way of getting home, the van driver’s mother searched the gas station and made a jarring discovery. Arlana was sitting in a ditch along the side of the road. Her body was covered in scratch marks, and her shoes were gone.  She was alive, but clearly shaken up, and claimed to have no memory of where she was or how she had gotten there.

Realizing something was wrong, someone called Selena’s family, who immediately got the local authorities involved. A frantic manhunt kicked off, and during the chaos, an eyewitness claimed they saw Selena running into a nearby field.

ATVs, helicopters, drones, dogs and, even Selena’s favorite, horses, were all deployed in a desperate attempt to find her. Selena’s mother, Jackie, took to sleeping in her car for days staring “at the frozen highway where (Selena) had been reported missing…”

New Year’s Day turned into a freezing winter night. Days then turned to weeks, and Selena was nowhere to be found. It was as if she had just vanished into thin air—until the search took a shocking turn. Right there in the field where law enforcement and the community had been searching all along, they found Selena. It took three weeks, and by then, it was tragically too late. The autopsy revealed she had died from exposure and hypothermia. In the end, her death was ruled a tragic accident.

Unsurprisingly, Selena’s family and the whole community were left frustrated and dissatisfied with the investigation's outcome. How could Selena have been in that field the entire time and still been missed? Law enforcement had used dogs, drones, and their own eyes. Volunteers who knew Selena personally had combed through the area.

“I was there, she was not” one of these volunteers allegedly told Selena’s aunt, Cheryl Horn. 

For many, this was the defining moment of Selena’s case. This discovery of her remains in a place that had been so thoroughly searched simply left too many questions.

“Where she was found,” Cheryl Horn later told the press. “I have an eyewitness who walked there more than once… Selena wasn’t stupid. She was very smart. When that happened to her sister and to Preston, we spent all our time telling her about how to be safe. What to do, where to go, who to run to… So the fact they tell me she ran into a field - I don’t believe that.”

Cheryl and Selena’s family continued to put pressure onto the investigators. They wanted to know how it would be possible that Selena had not been discovered, how they claimed to have found no bodily fluids from her decomposing remains in the soil underneath her body, and how her body had left no indentation marks on the surrounding vegetation if she really had been there all this time. 

It was almost like Selena had been placed there just recently.

That is what her family and many in the community believe. They argue that Selena was taken, perhaps even kept alive for a period of time, before she was dumped back in the field where so many were searching. That would explain how she had evaded the technology used in the initial search, and the dogs hadn’t picked up on her scent. That would explain how law enforcement and volunteers had missed her, even when they had seemingly walked over the very same spot that she was later found in.

On the other side of the fence came a cry of conjecture and speculation. That is what the investigators believe is behind all of these theories and questions. To them, Selena was possibly still intoxicated, and made a decision she normally wouldn’t have made if she had been sober. She ran into that field and succumbed to the freezing temperatures at night. That her remains were only discovered three weeks after she’d been reported missing was down to bad luck and unfortunate circumstances.

Are they right? Who can really say without more evidence? Bad luck seemed to follow the Not Afraid children, and tore a family apart in the process. On the other hand, maybe when we take statistics into account, this case could go in an entirely different direction, especially when we know that the 3rd highest cause of death for female members of indigenous tribes in Montana is murder.

For now, who’s to say? It looks like we won’t get any more answers on this case unless new information comes to light. 



https://mmiwusa.org/
https://www.bia.gov/service/mmu/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-people-crisis