A 36-year-old man residing in Montana, Edmund Davis, has been charged with two felony counts of child sexual abuse based on images discovered on his phone. Davis was arrested in Chinook, Montana, and is currently held in the Hill County Detention Center under a $1 million bond set by state District Court Judge Kaydee Snipes Ruiz. Authorities have clarified that Davis’s arrest is not directly linked to the disappearance of Alicia Navarro, a teenager who vanished from Arizona four years ago.
Alicia Navarro’s disappearance led to a large-scale search effort, involving the FBI, after she left a note behind and went missing days before her 15th birthday. In an unexpected turn of events, Navarro reemerged almost four years later, at the age of 19, when she walked into the Havre, Montana, police station and requested removal from the missing persons list.
Jessica Nuñez, Navarro’s mother, had previously speculated that her daughter, who was diagnosed with autism, might have been enticed away by someone she met online. When Navarro disappeared in 2019, she took only her laptop and cell phone. The circumstances surrounding her journey from Glendale, Arizona, to northern Montana, nearly 1,400 miles away, remain unexplained.
Edmund Davis has not yet appeared in court for the charges, and no hearing dates have been scheduled. He currently has no attorney on record, and attempts to reach him via listed telephone numbers have gone unanswered.
In July, Davis was detained and questioned by the police, who also conducted a search of the Montana apartment where he had been living with Navarro. During the search, officers observed Davis discarding his cellphone in a trash can and attempting to conceal it with other items, as stated in a law enforcement affidavit. Subsequently, dozens of images depicting suspected child sex abuse were discovered on Davis’s phone, with the charges specifying involvement with prepubescent girls, infants, and toddlers.
At the time, law enforcement did not provide additional information about Davis, but neighbors indicated that he had been residing with Navarro for at least a year. A young woman resembling Navarro, who did not provide her name and expressed a desire for privacy, was contacted at the Havre apartment by an Associated Press reporter. The couple vacated the apartment shortly after media reports disclosed Navarro’s whereabouts.
Regarding the investigation into Navarro’s disappearance, including any developments stemming from the residence search in Havre and subsequent interviews, the Glendale Police Department declined to provide details or answer questions on Tuesday. Navarro, being 18 years old at the time of her reappearance, had the legal discretion to determine whether she would return home.
