Federal and local law enforcement are asking Whatcom County residents for help finding a man convicted of felony assault who fled the area before his sentencing in early 2023 and has been missing ever since. The FBI's Seattle Field Office confirmed this week that it is assisting the Bellingham Police Department in the search for Devariae Montrel Conley, 32, who goes by the nicknames "Trella" and "Dominic."
Conley was convicted at trial in Whatcom County Superior Court in late February 2023 of second-degree assault and witness tampering, following an initial arrest on a domestic violence felony assault charge in April 2020. He disappeared before his sentencing hearing and has not been apprehended since. A warrant for his arrest was issued shortly after he failed to appear, and a separate charge of Failure to Appear was filed in Whatcom County Superior Court on February 28, 2023.
The Underlying Case
Court records describe a pattern of violence that began with Conley's 2020 arrest in Bellingham. He was accused of throwing his girlfriend against a wall and placing her in a headlock. The initial arrest came during a period when the county's courts and law enforcement were managing significant backlogs related to the pandemic, which extended the time between arrest and trial for many cases. Conley remained out of custody during the intervening years as his case moved through the system.
While awaiting trial on that charge, he was arrested again on additional assault and burglary allegations after arriving at a third party's home, apparently searching for the same victim. That second arrest added to the case against him but also illustrated the persistence of the alleged behavior across an extended period. The trial eventually concluded with guilty verdicts on the assault and witness tampering counts, the latter charge indicating that the prosecution alleged Conley had attempted to interfere with the case or the victim's participation in it.
Conley was free pending sentencing when he left the area, a common arrangement in cases where a defendant has appeared reliably throughout the trial phase. In 2024, more than a year after his disappearance, the person he originally assaulted in 2020 alleged that Conley confronted and threatened him at a gas station in Bellingham's York neighborhood before leaving the scene. That incident, if accurate, would mean Conley returned to Bellingham at some point after fleeing sentencing, an unusually bold move for a fugitive with an active warrant. It added urgency to the existing search and drew the FBI more formally into the investigation.
The FBI's involvement signals that investigators believe Conley has traveled across state lines, which brings federal jurisdiction into play under statutes that govern interstate flight to avoid prosecution. Agencies involved in multi-state fugitive searches typically use the FBI's national databases, informant networks, and coordination with local law enforcement in other jurisdictions to track subjects who move frequently and rely on a distributed network of acquaintances to avoid detection.
Description and Known Connections
Conley is a Black man in his early 30s, born December 11, 1993. He is 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs approximately 130 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. He has a cloud design and writing tattooed on his chest extending between both shoulders, writing on the inside of his lower left arm, and an image resembling the DC Shoes logo on his upper right arm. Those tattoos are potentially identifying features that would be visible in warm weather or in certain social settings, and law enforcement has included them in public descriptions precisely because they may help members of the public make a positive identification.
The FBI says Conley has ties to Bellingham and Puyallup in Washington, as well as Tucson, Arizona; Aurora, Colorado; and the Los Angeles area, including Torrance and Bakersfield, California. Investigators believe he may be using those connections to move between locations and avoid detection. A fugitive with contacts spread across multiple states in different regions of the country is significantly harder to locate than one who remains in a single place, and the geographic spread of Conley's known ties, from the Pacific Northwest to the Southwest to Southern California, covers a large area of the western United States.
The three-year gap since his disappearance means Conley has had time to establish routines and relationships in whatever location or locations he has settled in, potentially including employment, housing, and social connections that make him harder to distinguish from any other resident. Law enforcement investigations of long-term fugitives often rely on community tips when electronic surveillance and database searches have been exhausted.
How to Help
Anyone with information about Conley's current location is asked to contact the Bellingham Police Department at 360-778-8611 or the FBI's toll-free tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324). Tips can also be submitted online at tips.fbi.gov. The public is reminded not to approach Conley if sighted and to contact law enforcement instead. That caution is standard in fugitive cases and reflects the unpredictability of individuals who have demonstrated a willingness to use violence and who know they face consequences if found.
Law enforcement has not disclosed whether there is a reward for information leading to Conley's arrest. The FBI typically coordinates reward offers through its field offices when they are available, and the Seattle Field Office contact information is available through the FBI's main website. Tipsters can ask about reward availability when they call.
For Bellingham and Whatcom County residents, the case is a reminder that felony warrants do not expire and that fugitives who flee sentencing can remain the subject of active federal-level investigation for years. Domestic violence cases in particular carry long institutional memory in the Whatcom County justice system, where advocates and prosecutors have worked to improve accountability and victim support over the past decade. The Whatcom County Prosecutor's Office and Bellingham Police Department have both kept the case open through the three years since Conley's disappearance, and the decision to issue a joint public appeal with the FBI suggests investigators believe community information is now the most likely path to locating him.
