A Juneau court declared a woman who has been missing for six years legally dead Tuesday, at the request of her family.
Her case was never solved. They sought the death declaration in the hopes of getting a chance to ask police about their investigation in front of an official audience, but that didn’t happen.
Tracy Lynn Day’s family hasn’t heard from her since Valentine’s Day 2019.
Six years later, in a Juneau courtroom, Judge Peggy McCoy presided over a jury of six through the proceedings to declare Day legally dead.
“You’ve been called in as jurors today for a presumptive death hearing to consider the circumstances of the disappearance of Tracy Lynn Day and to determine whether she should be presumed dead,” McCoy told jurors.
Day’s daughter Kaelyn Schneider petitioned for the declaration. She said the death declaration would help her family settle her estate but that’s not the main reason she came to the courthouse. She came in the hopes of getting answers from the Juneau Police Department and the justice system.
Over the last few years, Schneider has been using social media to bring attention to her mother’s case by connecting it to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples’ cases nationwide.
Day was Lingít and experiencing homelessness when she went missing. But Schneider said Day stayed in contact with her regularly.
“We just wanted to tell her story in a legal setting and make JPD answer our questions,” she said to KTOO after the hearing. “That’s what this was about.”
In the courtroom, Judge Peggy McCoy called Juneau police Detective Frank Dolan to the stand. He wasn’t the detective who originally investigated the case. The investigating detective is no longer with JPD. A spokesperson for the department said in an email that no officer is currently assigned to this case, but if there is new information, a detective will be assigned.
McCoy asked Dolan questions about his knowledge of the case, and he summarized the evidence in the files. He said there was no evidence of Day leaving Juneau or of anyone seeing her after February 2019, and he testified that he doesn’t believe she is still alive based on the evidence he read.
Schneider and her family planned to also ask Dolan questions themselves. But Judge McCoy said that in a death declaration hearing, only the judge and jury are able to question witnesses.
“All we’re trying to establish today is there’s no reason to believe that she’s still alive,” she told Schneider.
McCoy also asked Schneider and other members of Day’s family about the last time they spoke to her and if they believe she is dead. They all said they haven’t seen or spoken with her since that Valentine’s Day, and they believe her to be dead.
Later, Schneider said she had been preparing to give the court testimony and ask questions about parts of the case she doesn’t understand.
“I had all these questions that I was gonna ask,” she said later to KTOO. “I stayed up all night. I’ve been working on this for weeks.”
Schneider said police have denied her requests to access the police files about her mother’s case. JPD’s spokesperson said the department’s policy is that they don’t share police reports in open cases.
The family also wants to know if the case is still open or if the declaration will affect its status. Juneau police say that missing persons cases stay open until the person is found, and Day’s legal status as dead or alive does not change the case’s status.
