ON APRIL 18, 2020, at 9:14 a.m., three officers with the Randall County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the home of Jaclyn Spydell in Amarillo. When they entered, they were greeted with an overpowering smell of garbage, urine, and dog feces. “I noticed my duty boots would stick to the floor as I would walk back and forth down the hallway,” officer Blake Wilson wrote in his report. “My boots did not stick on other portions of the floors, like in the living room.”
“There were portions of the residence where it appeared well kept, like the living room,” Wilson wrote. “Other portions of the residence, including the master bedroom and office area, where it was unkempt and disorganized.”
Officers had received a 911 call for an unconscious 16-year-old girl who wasn’t breathing. Once inside, they found the body of Emily Grace Spydell lying on the floor of her bedroom, surrounded by pillows and blankets. She wore black pants and a long-sleeve pink shirt with the word “LOVE” written on it. She was cold to the touch, and her eyes were open, glassed over, and unreactive to light. At 9:19 a.m. she was declared dead by an emergency medical technician after a cardiac monitor showed no cardiac activity.
Emily Grace Spydell was born Grace Veronica Felisita Arevalo on June 6, 2003, at the Oklahoma University Hospital in Oklahoma City. Both Norene Starr, Grace’s biological grandmother, and Marnita Guerrero, Grace’s birth mother, are members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, which function as one nation. While Grace
