193. The Baby Stealer - Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind
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Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. I'm the husband. All right, we're going to kind of hop right into things this week. Peyton is not feeling very good. She did just go to the bathroom and throw up. I'm not pregnant. She's not pregnant, but she is here, kind of. And I wish I could do the story for her, but I know that would not be enjoyable. If anyone cares, it was a bagel.

Last night it was spaghetti. And she said she needs to chew her food a little bit better. A little TMI, but if you can handle true crime, you can handle a little bit of throw up. Do you have a 10 seconds? Yes, I do have a 10 seconds. I know exactly what I'm saying for my 10 seconds. Do you? So I'm doing a marathon. Oh. I'm doing a marathon. February 4th. Last second decision. I've never run a marathon. I've probably never run more than five or six miles in my life. I haven't run for like two years.

Anyways, I started my training or whatever you want to call it. And yeah, I've been doing just a few miles here and there trying to build back up. It's hard. I'm not going to lie, but I'm committed to doing this. It was kind of a last second thing. I've always wanted to do a marathon. I think it's good to just do hard things every once in a while.

I want to see what my body can do. My goal is to finish the marathon without walking, just running the whole time. If that's 15-minute miles, so be it. But I'm hoping it's not that. Yeah, I don't have a time goal or anything. I'll probably say where it's at as we get closer, just in case something happens, I back out or...

I don't know what I'm saying, but I'll probably say where it's at if it gets or when it gets closer to the day. So if you happen to be in the area, it'd actually be kind of cool. You can come. You can come cheer me on as I'm torturing myself for 26.2 miles and Peyton will not be doing it with me. Peyton might do a 5k though. Correct or no? Maybe if they let me ride my bike. Okay. Yeah, it's actually, I don't know.

We'll see what happens. I'm excited. I'm excited and not excited at the same time. So I'll keep everyone updated. I'm probably going to post updates on Instagram and social media.

If you're curious and want to see any updates, I have no idea what I'm doing. I've just been kind of looking stuff up online and figuring it out as I go. And don't say, hey, this is too short a time because he knows. Yeah, I've had a lot of people, a lot of people say, you can't do it. You need to do a half marathon first. You only have two months to train. It's all a mentality. I am convinced it's all a mentality. I just have to believe that I can do it and do it.

I can do it. So hope everyone supports me. That is my 10 seconds. A little long this week. Garrett's feeling a little delulu. I'm freaking ready to go. And also hope that Peyton feels better soon. You know what? I'm still here. You're still here, baby. Doing great. Garrett was like, it's fine. We can just figure something else out. I said, no, I'm here for the people. I said, babe, I can sit here and read.

No, he did not say that. I can do it. I can do it. No, I can't do it. I'm sorry. One of these days I will. I know everyone asks. Also, before we jump into it, if you want bonus content, ad-free content, we have Patreon and Apple subscribers. Everything's ad-free. There's bonus episodes. And yeah, that's us. So let's get into this and...

Happy marathon. Our sources for this episode are Searching for Savannah, The Murder of One Native American Woman and the Violence Against the Many by Mona Gable, The National Indigenous Women's Resource Center, CBS News, AETV, TwinCities.com, KX News, Grand Forks Herald, People.com, New York Daily News, Medium.com, Oxygen.com, The Washington Post, and Inform.com. Trigger warning, this episode includes discussions of assault on a pregnant person and a fetal abduction, so please listen with care.

What? A fetal abduction? I didn't even know that was... Okay. Oh, it's a thing. That's insane. Yes. So according to a study done by the Indian Law Resource Center, four out of five indigenous women experience some sort of traumatic violence in their lifetime. That statistic is staggering, I know, but it gets worse. Did you know that indigenous American women are also murdered 10 times?

10 times more than the national average. And you know who's often committing these offenses? Non-native people. But this is just one facet of a much larger, more endemic issue stemming back centuries.

Because not only are these crimes happening at an obscene rate, they're rarely being reported on or even archived in national databases. As Native American researchers Abigail Echo Hawk and Anita Lucchesi mentioned in a 2018 report, Indigenous women who are missing or murdered disappear not just once, but three times. In life, in the media, and then in the data.

Which is why today I want to share a case that brings awareness to this issue. So this is the story of 22-year-old Savannah LaFontaine Graywind. So let's turn the clocks back to August 9th, 1995 in Belcourt, North Dakota. More specifically, the Turtle Mountain Reservation, home to the Chippewa.

a tribe composed of the Ojibwe and Métis peoples. Amongst the lush rolling hills, shimmering lakes, and wetlands, this is where Norberta Greywind had her first child, a little girl named Savannah.

But upon birth, Savannah became a member of her father Joe's tribe, the Spirit Lake tribe, and spent much of her childhood growing up on the Spirit Lake Reservation about an hour and a half away. All this goes to say Savannah was deeply rooted in a few indigenous American cultures.

Those around her primarily spoke the Dakota dialect as she was passed down stories and wisdom from her elders. And as the Gray Wind family grew in size over the years, Norberta and Joe worked at a Sioux manufacturing plant to make ends meet. As the oldest of the children, Savannah was often the caretaker when her siblings came home from school and her parents were still at work.

But it was a role that she played nicely. She was deeply dedicated to her family and dreamed of having her own one day. A prospect that was looking more like a reality in 2011 when she met the person that she wanted to spend forever with.

Savannah was a sophomore in high school when she met a freshman named Ashton Matheny, another member of the Spirit Lake tribe. While Savannah's parents were strict about dating, the two could only see each other at school. They grew to like Ashton over time and began to approve of the relationship. But in 2015, Savannah got an opportunity that would change the course of her life.

After graduating high school, she became a certified nursing assistant and found a great job in Fargo, North Dakota, about two and a half hours south of where she was living, working at a senior living facility. But Savannah didn't move alone. Her parents and three siblings went along with her. Yeah, so she gets this opportunity and the whole family moves. Where together, they all shared a basement apartment in a quiet working class neighborhood of Fargo.

Ashton stayed up north on the Spirit Lake Reservation, but he and Savannah saw each other frequently. So they decided long distance date, it's going to be fine. And he had plans for him to one day move to Fargo where they could get their own apartment together. Then in January 2017, Savannah realized that day would have to come sooner than planned because she was now pregnant with Ashton's baby.

The 21-year-old Savannah and 20-year-old Ashton were actually over the moon. Their little girl was due on September 20th. Ashton also planned to propose to Savannah as soon as they found an apartment together that summer. So everything they had planned as teenage lovers was falling into place, yes. But as Savannah's due date inched closer, it became harder and harder for her to be apart from Ashton, the father of her baby.

By July of 2017, Savannah was seven months pregnant, beginning her third trimester and still searching for a place that she and Ashton could call their own. Her constantly transforming body was starting to take a toll on her emotionally as she complained through Facebook that she no longer recognized herself and was having a hard time dealing with the mood swings, which...

Yeah. The couple bickered over the phone and text sometimes, typically about money and how they would scrape together enough to care for their new baby. Savannah even mentioned going back to school to get her nursing degree. Remember, she was just a nursing assistant at the time. Come August, the couple had picked out a first name for their daughter, Haisley, but were still trying to settle on a middle name for her. On the other hand, Savannah said,

On August 9th, Savannah celebrated her 22nd birthday while pregnant. Only there was little fanfare. With her parents working and her siblings busy with their own lives, Savannah didn't even do as much as post about her birthday on Facebook, which many found strange considering she had such a strong online presence. I mean, she's posting about her life. Which is so funny because Facebook did used to be the place where you'd post about your birthday. Everyone would write happy birthday on your wall.

But the truth was Savannah was feeling many of the pregnancy woes as a first time mother often does. She was experiencing loneliness, insecurities, vulnerabilities, plus the mysterious pains that seemed to indicate labor could come at any moment.

Still, Savannah looked towards the positive. She and Ashton had finally found an apartment. He was set to move down to Fargo at the end of August. They could finally start putting together Haisley's nursery, start nesting, and becoming the little family that she'd been dreaming about. So come Saturday, August 19th, Ashton's arrival was inching closer, with his move-in date set for September 1st. But that day, Savannah had a lot on her plate to distract her.

still playing the family caretaker savannah drove her 18 year old sister kayla to work she mentioned during the car ride that she and ashton had settled on a middle name for their daughter hazley joe this is after her father okay she also confessed to her sister that she was absolutely terrified of giving birth and was dreading that part of the process i don't blame her i'd be terrified too after she got home savannah spent some time tidying up

the house as the following day her mother was throwing her a baby shower. She had only a few hours until she had to drive her brother, 16-year-old Casey, to his job at the local car wash.

At around 1.20 p.m., she ordered herself a pizza when close to the same time there was a knock on the apartment door. Good old pizza. Savannah opened it to find her 38-year-old neighbor from upstairs, a woman named Brooke Cruz. Brooke and Savannah had little interaction in the past, but Brooke told her she had a favor to ask. So basically, the neighbors at the door saying, hey, I have a favor. Yeah.

She was working on a sewing project and needed a model for a dress that she was hemming. So would Savannah be willing to come upstairs to her apartment and try it on? It would only take a minute or two and she'd pay her $20. So Savannah looked at her watch and agreed. She had a few minutes to spare before her pizza arrived. She told Brooke she'd be right up.

Then Savannah texted her mother saying, hey, I've ordered some pizza. She apparently then told another family member, maybe her brother, that she was going upstairs to help the neighbor out with something. But an hour later, at around 2.30 p.m.,

Savannah still wasn't back. Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? So Norberta sends Savannah's brother Casey upstairs to check on her. He's got to get a ride to work after all, like it's time for him to go to work. He knocks on the door of the neighbor, but no one answers. Then he puts his ear to the door and is pretty sure he hears the rattling of a loud sewing machine inside. So Casey goes back downstairs and this time he gets his dad who's now home.

Now, Joe goes upstairs and knocks a lot more frustrated than Casey just did. And this time, Brooke, the neighbor, answers. She says she's so sorry they still aren't done. So could she borrow her for just a little bit longer? Wait, is she alive in there? Well...

Brooke is saying she is. So Brooke just came to the door. Brooke just came to the door. He can't see his daughter. And I assume she's like blocking half the door or blocking the door or something. You can assume what you want. I'm assuming it. So fine. Joe thinks Norberta can take Casey to work. He's like, okay, we'll just, we'll just figure something else out. And she does. But when she comes back around 3.40 PM and there's still no sign of her pregnant daughter, Savannah, she gets worried because

Now she goes and knocks on Brooke's door. So this is the third family member to go knock on the neighbor's door. Dude, we got to bust that door down. And this time Brooke answers and says, Savannah? Oh, she left a little while ago. Isn't she home? Oh my God. So Norberta goes back to their apartment, looks around and is like, no, she's not here. There's no Savannah. But her car keys and wallet are still there. I would be. Well, it's just strange. I don't know.

The whole thing is strange. I just feel like I'd be raging at Brooke. Like, where are the freaks, my daughter?

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So Norberta's thinking, okay, something has to be going on. Her daughter wouldn't just up and leave, especially not with her car. A, she's eight months pregnant. Where is she wandering off to on swollen feet? True. And B, she just ordered a pizza. If she was planning to go out somewhere, why would she order food and then not eat it? And I know she wants her pizza. So Norberta's first instinct is to call boyfriend Ashton. Did Savannah tell him anything? Say where she might be going? And he says, no, he hasn't heard from her since...

During their last conversation, he says she got mad at him for getting too drunk the night before. Still, Ashton hops in his car immediately and begins making the trek down to Fargo. Because like Savannah's parents, he's

of he's getting seriously concerned yeah even if they did get into a fight it wasn't anything that serious she's also eight months pregnant like she's she's not going anywhere right now no certainly not serious enough for her to storm off and not say anything to anybody that's not happening so norberta's next call is obviously to the police her pregnant daughter is missing and

So when Officer Sam Bowman shows up, Norberta gives him the step-by-step of what had happened. She says she scoured the neighborhood, even went to Brooke's door, but despite the answer Brooke gave her, she's convinced something strange had happened up there. So Officer Bowman checks in for himself. He goes upstairs to apartment five, and Brooke

happily lets him in. Although by this point, she isn't alone. Her live-in boyfriend, 32-year-old William Hohen, is now back from work, sitting on their bed, drinking a beer, and playing video games. When Bowman asks if he can take a look around, Brooke tells him, sure, go right ahead. Yeah, sure. We've had about an hour...

In a half, two hours to clean up. So go ahead and look around. He passes William, gives him a little nod, looks around the tiny apartment, goes into the bathroom, and there's no sign of Savannah. Certainly no sign of any struggle or foul play. So he goes back downstairs to the Greywinds and says, look, I just checked around the place. Your daughter's not there and nothing seems suspicious.

But Norberta, her mom, isn't buying it. She just has that mother's instinct. She feels certain that they have their daughter tied up there somewhere. He says, look, just because your daughter didn't follow her schedule today doesn't mean she was the victim of a crime. Let's just give this some time. Obviously, Officer Bowman doesn't know about the stats that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, or maybe he would have handled things a little differently. So he packs it up and says, hey, I'll come by and check on everyone later.

Also, I feel like we're in like early 2000s, right? 2017. Oh, this is 2017? Yeah. Oh, okay. I figured we were early 2000s. It was like, oh, well, everything's probably fine. No, this is 2017. I feel like the last five years, everyone's a lot more aware of crimes and how weird people are. It could happen to anyone. Like there's some just insane people out there. Yeah.

So he packs it up, says he'll check in later. And now we cut to 1030 p.m. that night. Bowman is called back to the apartment complex on a disturbance call. This time when he pulls up, he sees about 25 of Savannah's family and friends standing in front of the building.

Apparently, they've been taking turns going up to apartment five and harassing Brooke and William about Savannah. So they're just going up one after the other saying, where's our daughter? Where's our friend? Where's our sister? What did you do? So Bowman and his partner go upstairs to check in on the couple once more. And this time, they hear what sounds like furniture being moved around the apartment. So they knock. And now when Brooke answers, she's not as calm and forthcoming as before. She's

pissed. And she says something like, what do I have to do to prove to you that I don't know where that girl is? Now, I know we're in like a pretty heavy part of this story, but I want to segue to tell you a little bit more about Brooke and William, the upstairs couple. The 38-year-old Brooke was unemployed, but had been living in the apartment since May of 2016 with her boyfriend, William, who worked as a roofer. But before meeting William, Brooke didn't

exactly have it easy. She was in and out of Florida foster homes for most of her early life and had her first child when she was only 14 years old. Her second came when she was 16 years old, this time with a different guy. And while it's unclear what happened to Brooke's first two kids, I do know that she met William Hohen on a bus back in 2012. By that point, she was trying to turn her life around studying psychology at Minnesota State University, but this was after having five

Five more children through different men. So seven children in total. All through different men? All through different men and none of which she kept in touch with. So she was just having kids but not having them as a part of her life. And where are the kids at in this story?

It's unclear. Like no one, no one really knows where they went. Because she's only 38. There's got to be kids somewhere. Well, this is even before that. This is back in 2012. What the freak? So William, well, he had his own set of baggage. He'd also fathered two different kids with two different women. And he'd been found guilty of abusing his three-month-old son the same year that he met Brooke. So I know you're still going, but it's frustrating because you think that

The police would be like. Okay. Let's look at their. Let's look at their records. Let's see. Brooks pass. Let's see Williams pass. And if this stuff starts coming up. It's like. Okay. That's. A pregnant woman goes missing. This girl's had seven kids. Not that like. Having that many kids. Means anything. Williams abused a three month old. And served time in prison for it. Yeah. Now. Red flags all over the place. Yes. Also like.

A three month old? Yeah, no, I don't know. Still, Brooke was head over heels for him. And I don't know how. And happy to wait for his release from prison. So it wasn't until 2014 that the couple officially began dating. Three years earlier. And by the time of Savannah's disappearance, the police knew the couple well. So how you just said, why haven't they looked into him? They knew. They knew these people. They'd fought constantly. And at one point, there had been a protection order after William physically assaulted Brooke. Okay.

There was also a warrant out for William's arrest for failing to pay an overdue fine. What police didn't yet know was earlier that year, Brooke had found out that William was cheating on her and she lied to him, telling him she was pregnant just to win him back.

Now, William knew Brooke had gotten her tubes tied and was no longer able to reproduce, but he seemed to believe that she had gotten the procedure reversed. I know exactly where this is going. For months, Brooke kept embellishing the lie, sending him sonograms and heartbeat scans she'd found on the internet. But come August 2017, William figured out the truth. There was no pregnancy. It had been a lie to get him to stick around. She knew that William was finally ready to have his own little family, and she prayed on that.

But according to Brooke, William didn't let it go. She claimed he told her, it's your responsibility to make sure we have a baby. And Brooke took his threats very literal. So now that we have a little context surrounding Brooke and William, which it's a bad context, I'm not going to lie. I think it's justified for the Gray Wins to feel a bit suspicious of their upstairs neighbors. And on August 20th, the day after Savannah goes missing, they're still adamant with police about it.

They're terrified that Savannah might still be somewhere up in the apartment, possibly being held hostage. In fact, a relative of the Gray Wins used to live in Brooke and William's exact apartment before they moved in, which is just a strange coincidence. And they said, look, we know the place inside and out, and there's a faulty panel behind the bathtub. It's more than enough space to hide someone in.

So police returned to the apartment that afternoon. And once again, Brooke and William cooperate. They let them write in and let them look around to check out the panel in the bathroom. And again, there's nothing behind it. Now, by August 22nd, three days since Savannah's been missing, police are starting to agree with the family. Something had likely happened to Savannah in that time that she went upstairs. Thanks, guys. But they aren't convinced.

events that it happened in apartment five they're like maybe she did go to apartment five left and something happened after so they pull out a few other stops to try and find the missing 22 year old they have the fargo fire department patrol the red river nearby they have u.s customs and border protection send helicopters over the area they comb through dumpsters over bike paths and into the dense wooded areas all around fargo only there's no sign of pregnant savannah

But that evening, August 22nd, William Hohen set off some alarm bells. At around 1130 p.m., he and Brooke were pulling out of a Walmart parking lot when he backed into another car. He got out, talked to the driver and said, sure, let me get you my insurance. Then he got back into his car and instead just drove away because the car he was driving wasn't even his.

It was his bosses. What the heck, man? Well, whoever was driving the other vehicle was pretty sharp because they got his plates, called the police, and by 1215 a.m., William was down at the Cass County Jail answering for the hit and run. So not only is he like, hey, there's this weird disappearance going on with your neighbor and you kind of seem to be the last persons that saw her. He's still in cars. He's still in cars and now, well, he might have been lent it, but now is in a hit and run. Yeah.

So I know you're wondering, why is this important? Like, what does it have to do with it? Hold on. Look at these legs. It's hilarious. Well, because this leads police to examine the vehicle, obviously. Yeah, yeah. And what the couple had just purchased at Walmart because it's still there. And can you guess? It's a whole bunch of newborn diapers. Holy crap. Which this is like a giant.

a giant red flag, right? This is nuts. Well, thanks to William's boss, he's out on bail that night and returns to work the next morning. But that day, Wednesday, August 23rd, he does something even more dumb. He tells one of his coworkers that he and Brooke have a newborn baby at home. Between this and the diapers purchase, police now have enough to secure a search warrant for the apartment because they know...

Brooke was not pregnant. There's no way they have a newborn baby. And the following day on August 24th, they break into Brooke and William's place without warning. And this time they find Brooke tending to a newborn baby wrapped in a blanket. Oh my gosh. A baby that only weighs about four pounds, 13 ounces. Oh no. And mind you, looks nothing like Brooke or William.

So Brooke is immediately arrested as William is picked up at work. And right away, Brooke starts spinning a bunch of tales about how the baby came into their possession. Brooke claimed that Savannah had come to her because she was unhappy with her situation. Oh, get out of here, man. She had asked Brooke to help her induce childbirth and take the baby as her own, which everyone who knew Savannah knew she was counting down the seconds until she became a mother. So no one was buying this.

But now that Haisley Joe had been found, because it was in fact Savannah's daughter, it leads to a host of other questions. Like, was the baby in there every time the police checked the apartment? Had they taken her somewhere else for a while? Like, where was the baby? And most importantly, where on earth was Savannah?

While police ramp up the search for the 22-year-old Savannah, Haisley Jo, thankfully safe and healthy, is handed over to social services to confirm the DNA of her parents. But hearing that the police had rescued a premature baby with jet black hair, Ashton and the Greywinds know that little girl belongs to them. Still, Ashton is forced to wait more than three weeks as these tests play out.

undoubtedly the hardest three weeks of his and the Grey Wins' lives because by now the Grey Wins have lost a lot of faith in authorities. They've been telling them for the past five days that something happened in that apartment. And how on earth do you go in there and miss a tiny little newborn baby not once but several times? So

So the Greywinds call on their own community to help locate the final piece of the puzzle. They found the baby, but they need to find missing Savannah. The same day Haisley Joe is found, a friend of the Greywinds goes to Facebook to rally other indigenous Americans in the area for help. I don't understand how you hide a baby in a person and the police have searched it.

I, or even if he, even if they did take her somewhere, I don't know when to see, like what is happening? And like you and the Grey Wins are thinking the exact same thing. So by the following day, tribes all across the Great Plains rushed to Fargo to take on the search for

as their own. And finally, on August 27th, there was a break in the case. At around 545 that evening, two female kayakers were out on the Red River, which cuts through Fargo when they spotted something. Tangled around a log was an object wrapped in trash bags and duct tape, and the two women immediately called local police. And by 820 p.m., the object was fished out of the rapids, and it was a body made nearly unidentifiable from the raging waters.

But after spotting two small tattoos on the deceased's ankle and thigh, there was no denying it. They had found Savannah. During her autopsy, the pathologist discovered bruises on her right buttocks and back of her left arm. She had a rope tied around her neck. And worst of all, along her abdomen were a series of horizontal incisions suggesting that Savannah had endured a crude C-section. Gosh, that's... Oh, that's disgusting. That's...

Evil. Yeah. The pathologist was facing two possible causes of death, asphyxiation and exsanguination, or in other words, bleeding to death. Yeah. While they couldn't definitively say one or the other, one thing was for sure, Savannah had been the victim of a gruesome homicide. How did they get the baby out alive and well? That's also, that's another mystery. Yes. How did that happen? They probably have

I assume they have no training in how to deliver a baby. I don't know how they were able to pull that off. And I think that question itself probably just imagine the pain Savannah was in. Yeah, I can't. Okay, most beauty brands just don't really understand my hair, but Proz does. They have a formula that specifically addresses my hair, which makes sense because it's tailored just for me. You literally get on, you take a quiz, Proz does.

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So on August 28th, Brooke and William were charged with conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and giving false information to police. After finding out that the couple had been visiting travel and airline sites, they were pegged as a flight risk, and as a result, their bail was set to $2 million per person. Which they obviously can't afford. And while Brooke maintained that Savannah had offered up her baby to her, William had...

a different take on how the events unfolded. Do you want to hear what he told police? Oh, I'm sure he threw Brooke under the bus. On that, he says on that Saturday, August 19th, he came home from work at around 2.30 p.m. to hear an odd sound coming from the bathroom. It was the cries of a newborn wrapped in a blanket in the tub, which Brooke showed him proudly while saying, this is our baby, this is our family.

Meanwhile, lying next to the tub was the body of Savannah bleeding out onto the floor. William asked Brooke if their neighbor was alive or dead and Brooke admitted she wasn't sure. But at this point, Savannah's face was so blue that William said it looked like she had eaten a blue candy. According to William, Brooke begged him to help her, but Savannah was already dead. Over time, Brooke admitted to a similar version of events, admitting, yes, she was the one who performed the botched C-section in order to give William the child that he was demanding from her.

But she took it a step further, saying it was William's idea to grab a rope and strangle Savannah. After which she said if she wasn't dead before, she is now. There are so many questions. How did no one hear her screaming? Did she knock her out? Like, you know what I'm saying? Well, Brooke then said they kept Savannah in a bathroom closet while the police searched the apartment.

So when police came into the apartment, she was in there. Savannah's body was in there. The police obviously did the guy look and did not look at all. Yes. So two days later on August 21st, they then placed Savannah in a hollowed out dresser to get her out of the building unnoticed. They then moved the dresser out of the building. Eventually, Brooke pleaded guilty to all three of the charges brought against her. And in January 2018, she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. I

I know I'm going to get a bunch of people who disagree or agree with me, but it's like, it's crazy that someone can do something like that. And yeah, cool. You get life in prison. Great. You never get get out. But I just, I don't know. It seems like there needs to be something more because what she did is just excruciating and horrible. And okay. But life in prison, I don't know. Just, just Garrett's two cents over here. Well, and here's the thing, William, um,

pled not guilty. So he went to trial and they ended up finding him not guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. However, the judge didn't go lightly on William. He still gave him life in prison with the possibility of parole for the other two charges, conspiracy to commit kidnapping and lying to police. Yeah.

However, William later appealed the sentence and had his charges reduced to 20 years behind bars. What? And it's because he wasn't, he didn't kidnap her or take the baby out or anything, but like,

He was obviously complicit. Yeah. However, there are some people that feel William got off fairly easy and he might have had some hand in Savannah's death. Like maybe Savannah was still alive when he got home. For sure. They point to a few details, including the fact that it likely took two people to kill Savannah, who certainly would have put up a fight against Brooke alone.

And since neither Brooke nor William had any injuries after the murder, it's believed they might have worked together to subdue her. There were also indications that Brooke as well as William targeted Savannah specifically because she was indigenous American. According to some sources, the two had made...

many racist statements against the indigenous American community in Fargo. On more than one occasion, they specifically made remarks against the Grey Wins themselves, but I'm not like, I won't get into that. But many believed that Brooke and William had targeted Savannah because they saw her as less than them because of her background. Someone who didn't deserve to have something that they didn't have. A delusion that highlights a much bigger issue, particularly when it comes to getting justice for missing and murdered indigenous people.

And today there's several advocacy groups fighting for more resources and protection for those in the indigenous American community, both on and off the reservations. And the silver lining in Savannah's case, if you can even find something like that, is it did move the needle in some states. Currently places like North Dakota, Montana, and Minnesota now have task forces dedicated to handling the large amount of cases against the Native American community. And in late 2020, a bill called Savannah's Act

was finally passed demanding that the Department of Justice not only increase the response rates of law enforcement, but also put together specific protocols for handling missing and murdered cases against indigenous people. I guess the other silver lining, if you can call it that, like you said, is the baby's alive? Yeah, of course. It could have been worse. They both could have been dead. The baby's alive and I'm...

assume that Ashton's taking care of her and obviously they're going to have their own set of issues they need to work through but I mean at least the baby's alive. It's just I don't think there's anything more cruel. No it's awful. Than

A baby away from the mother. A baby away from the mother. Or the mother away from the baby. Unwillingly, yes. So there's still a lot of work to be done before these bills really see the fruits of their labor, obviously, but it's a step in the right direction. I do, though, want to end on a high note because I'm sure you're wondering, like Garrett just said, what happened to little Haisley Jo?

On September 12th, 2017, a judge finally awarded Ashton custody of their little girl, which was a big win in a long, heartbreaking war. Mainly because the outcome of Haisley Joe's situation was a bit uncertain as well, particularly from someone in the indigenous American community. I'm not sure if you know this, but up until 1978, there were thousands of indigenous American children who'd been taken from their families by church and government agencies under the guise of we're giving them a better life.

it wasn't until congress passed the indian child and welfare act that this started to subside so had this happened say in 1977 who knows where hazely joe would have ended up

There's a good chance it wouldn't have been with her own family. Thankfully, changes like this are signaling progress, and it's still heartbreaking to see how far we as a nation have to go. Fortunately, though, Ashton received custody and after chose to stay in Spirit Lake and raise Haisley Jo there on the reservation. As of this recording, she is a little over six years old.

It's only a matter of time before Haisley Jo fully understands, though, that her mother's tragic death is bringing the world one step closer to the equality that we deserve. And that is the case of Savannah Greywind. All right, you guys, that was our case for this week, and we will see you next time with another episode. I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye.

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