10 years later: A missing woman’s family says they’re hopeful despite a decade without answers
By Pepper Purpura
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TAMA, Iowa (KCCI) — An arrest in northwest Iowa is sparking hope for the loved ones of a missing Meskwaki woman’s family after a decade without answers.
Thursday marked 10 years since 41-year-old Rita Papakee was last seen near the Meskwaki Casino in Tama. The Meskwaki Nation Police Department said it spent five days searching a new, potential area of interest in 2024, but the case remains unsolved.
For the past decade, Papakee’s mother, Iris Roberts, has raised Papakee’s four children and watched some of them become parents without her daughter. She said without answers to what happened to Papakee, she struggles to grieve her properly.
“I just want closure,” Roberts said. “Whoever or whatever they did, I wish they would step up and say, this is what happened.”
Days before the 10th anniversary of Papakee’s disappearance, Roberts said she has hope because of an arrest in another missing Iowan’s case.
Thomas Duane Popp was arrested Saturday and charged with first-degree murder for the death of 18-year-old Terri McCauley. The arrest comes more than 40 years after McCauley went missing in 1983.
Like Papakee, McCauley was Indigenous; she’s an Omaha Tribe of Nebraska citizen. Their cases are two of thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women across the United States.
Tricia Rivers with Great Plains Action Society worked with both families to raise awareness of Papakee and McCauley through the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives movement.
“We work with a lot of (Missing or Murdered Indigenous relatives) families that have been negatively impacted by this crisis,” Rivers said. “This has been happening to us, as indigenous nations, for centuries, and it has morphed into a system or institution.”
The U.S. Department of the Interior said American Indian and Alaska Native people are at a disproportionate risk of experiencing violence, murder, or going missing.
A 2016 National Institute of Justice study found more than four in five Indigenous women will experience violence in their life. In 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also found Indigenous women experienced the second-highest rate of homicide. Data from the National Crime Information Center shows 5,798 indigenous women were reported missing in 2023. 1,631 of those cases remained open by the end of that year.
Roberts and Papakee’s other loved ones regularly participate in the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives awareness events, where they connect with other families who are experiencing similar tragedies. It’s part of why they’ve been able to continue demanding justice for a decade.
“The fact that we’ve been able to find community and find support, and raise awareness for her case, it means a great deal,” Papakee’s cousin, Oliviah Walker, said.
It’s also shown the family how long justice can sometimes take as it did in McCauley’s case.
“If they can find somebody that did that to (McCauley), maybe there’s still hope that there will be a breakthrough, and we’ll find out what happened to (Papakee),” Roberts said.
The Meskwaki Nation continues to offer a $100,000 reward for any information that could solve Papakee’s case. Tips can be called into the Meskwaki police.
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