Man connected to Alicia Navarro case arrested on child sexual abuse charges

A man who’d been living with a missing Arizona teenager when she turned up in Montana earlier this year was arrested Monday on child sexual abuse charges related to material found on his cellphone, authorities said.

The development was announced Tuesday in a press release from the the Montana Attorney General’s Office.

It was unknown if Edmund Davis, 36, is considered a suspect in the disappearance of Alicia Navarro. Authorities in Montana referred questions to law enforcement in Arizona, who said the investigation into the teenager’s disappearance is ongoing.

Police seized Davis’ cellphone in July when they served a search warrant at an apartment in Havre, Montana.

The warrant was served three days after Navarro walked into the local police department July 23 and asked to be taken off a missing person’s list because she’d turned 18 and wanted to begin her life as an adult.

How long was Arizona teen Alicia Navarro missing?

It was the first time Navarro, who was diagnosed on the autism spectrum, had been heard from since she disappeared from her family home in Glendale on Sept. 15, 2019, just days before her 15th birthday.

Davis was later identified as Navarro’s boyfriend, according to charging documents. It’s unclear how long they’d been living together or where else the teen had been during her disappearance.

Prosecutors say Davis was seen throwing a cellphone in the kitchen trash when police served the search warrant and Navarro answered the door.

A warrant was obtained later to search the device, which contained multiple images that were considered child sexual abuse material, according to charging documents.

What are the charges against Edmund Davis?

Prosecutors filed two counts of sexual abuse of children against Davis last week and kept the charges under seal until his arrest in Chinook, about 22 miles east of Havre in northern Montana.

He was being held in the Hill County Detention Center on a $1 million bond.

Davis faces a possible life sentence because of how young the children in the images are.

The case was investigated by the Havre and Glendale police department and the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation.

Glendale police declined to answer questions Tuesday on the investigation into Navarro’s disappearance, including what additional information authorities had gathered during the residence search in Havre and in follow-up interviews.

Where is Alicia Navarro now?

Trent Steele, a private investigator who assisted Navarro’s mother in the search for her daughter through the Miami-based nonprofit Anti-Predator Project, said investigators continue to look at the circumstances of the teenager’s disappearance.

More charges in the case are possible, Steele said, adding that Navarro was “in a safe place” without disclosing the particulars.

“The decision was to charge him with the most obvious crimes, the most serious crimes and the ones that we can probably make stick without having to retraumatize anybody,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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