Content warning: this story contains details about suspected sexual violence against women.
On a cold afternoon in January 2023, Tanya Ulrich opened her door to see a Juneau police officer. He told her that her sister, Isabelle Sam, was found dead in a van outside of a local grocery store.
“I asked if we can go and see her really quick, make sure that it is her – because I didn’t, I didn’t want to believe it,” Ulrich said. “And they said that you can’t come see her.”
Ulrich wouldn’t get to see her sister’s body for more than a week.
“I called again the next day at the morgue, and they said they were already sending her up to Anchorage for the autopsy,” she said.
The state medical examiner in Anchorage found the cause of death was an overdose from fentanyl and alcohol. Sam’s death was classified as an accident. The police said there wasn’t enough evidence to make a case against anyone.
Now, two years later, her family still has questions about the circumstances surrounding her death. After seeing the police report, they worry she may have been the victim of a crime.
This family’s story isn’t uncommon. Alaska Native families often carry the burden of unanswered questions when their loved ones die of unnatural causes.
For Sam’s family, questions began to surface almost immediately, when authorities released her body.
“We didn’t get to see her until the day we had her funeral over in Sitka, and that’s when we realized that she had some bruises on her – on her face,” Ulrich said. “It really, really upset me and her kids.”
The state medical examiner’s report on Sam’s death says Sam had “contusions” on her face and neck, but those injuries didn’t cause her death. Later, the family saw autopsy photos and Ulrich said there were also bruises all over her body.
Isabelle Sam’s death is similar to that of many Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, or MMIP, cases where the family’s suspicions go unresolved because authorities don’t have enough evidence to investigate further, or make arrests.
Sam was Lingít – Kaagwaantaan from Sitka. She was a mother and a grandmother. She had been unhoused and struggling with addiction for some time. Ulrich said Sam experienced domestic violence from partners in the past, and she was always worried about her.
Ulrich said her sister loved going berry picking and playing softball. She said Sam always made things fun.
“You could really just see her out on the dance floor, like dancing away,” she said. “Doesn’t really matter which song. She was just fun-loving.”
Ulrich lost another sibling shortly after Sam’s death, and she was juggling multiple jobs and a child with special needs. But she couldn’t stop thinking about her sister. This past February, she requested the police report from the investigation into Sam’s death.
In the report were details that made her feel even more uneasy. For example, there were two men with Sam in the van when she died – and one of them told police the other was acting guilty. When police saw her body, she was partially undressed.
The medical examiner ordered a sexual assault examination. The nurse who filed the report said there were signs of sexual assault after death on Sam’s body. But a doctor with the medical examiner’s office told police he wasn’t sure of that.
Though the medical examiner’s report determined Sam’s death was accidental, Ulrich says she sees enough suspicious details in the reports that she thinks a crime took place around her sister’s death. She’s read them over and over again.
“I keep getting confused,” Ulrich said. “That’s why I keep rereading everything, seeing if I missed anything. Or, like, maybe it’ll make more sense. I put it down. Every time I look at it, like, there’s stuff that contradicts stuff, there’s stuff that don’t make sense.”
Juneau Deputy Police Chief Krag Campbell said the investigating officer for Sam’s case followed normal procedure, and that there wasn’t enough evidence in this case to proceed with any charges related to her death.
Campbell said the medical examiner determines the official cause of death and that influences how an investigation will proceed.
“We’re looking at them to say, like, is this suspicious in nature?” he said.
Unless there is unmistakable evidence of a crime, he said.
“Outside of seeing a – during an investigation – seeing an obvious sign of something that would cause death, or someone saying, ‘I saw so-and-so kill them,’ you know, that type of stuff,” he said.
In this case, the medical examiner’s office wouldn’t confirm to JPD that there were definite signs of assault on Sam’s body, despite contusions on her face and neck, and trauma to other areas of her body.
Campbell confirmed that her case was taken to the prosecutor, but there wasn’t enough evidence to take it to trial.
Now, Isabelle Sam’s family doesn’t know what to do with their questions.
“That is unfortunately too common of an experience where families have followed every end that they can. They’ve done everything that they can,” said Aqpik Charlene Apok, founder of Data for Indigenous Justice.
Apok’s nonprofit collects and publishes data about missing and murdered Indigenous people. Her database is different from what state authorities report. It includes cases that have been officially closed – ruled as suicides and accidents – where families think there is more to the story.
Apok said deaths like Sam’s often go without prosecution, even when the family thinks they should be taken to court.
“We may not be seeing eye to eye, from family to prosecution or family and law enforcement,” she said.
Apok said families often still have questions after authorities close their loved one’s case.
“And that’s why we have awareness about this issue,” Apok said. “That’s why we’re trying to have systemic change. That’s why we’re trying to see patterns like that, so that we can identify, then, where is that gap? What is happening?”
The legal system may not be able to answer all of the questions Isabelle Sam’s family has about what happened in the last hours of her life. But there are structural disparities that affect Alaska Native people – stemming from generations of colonial violence – that could have contributed to her death in that van.
In 2022, Alaska Native people died from overdoses at more than three times the rate of white people in Alaska.
Alaska Native people make up nearly half of the state’s unhoused population, while only making up 16% of the state’s population as a whole.
Apok said families shouldn’t be left to question the circumstances around their loved one’s death. But many still do.
“I call them survivor families,” she said. “They shouldn’t have to burden as much as they are, to carry it forward.”
And for Tanya Ulrich, the loss is still fresh. She read a message from Sam’s daughter, who lives in Sitka, that said what a good mom Sam was, how she always looked out for her kids.
“‘She made sure her kids were always safe and okay,’” Ulrich read. “‘She took care of us the best that she could.’”
Copyright 2025 KTOO