The murder of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash

No physical evidence ever identified Aquash's killers; the second autopsy in March 1976 recovered a .32-caliber bullet too damaged to be matched to a gun, and the gun itself, by Looking Cloud's account, was buried under a bridge. The case was solved by witnesses who stopped being silent. The Eighth Circuit, affirming Looking Cloud's conviction in 2005, said the investigation made little headway until agents began talking to him in the mid-1990s. Around 2000 the former wife of an AIM leader began her own inquiry, interviewing Theda Clarke and Looking Cloud, who became emotional; at trial the defense said she was paid by the government and had recorded conversations. A Denver woman at whose house Aquash had been staying, a former girlfriend of Graham's who was in the house that night, and a woman whose home at Allen the group visited all eventually testified, with inconsistencies the defense exploited, about Aquash being led out with her hands tied, the phone call from Rapid City naming her as an informant, and the stop at Allen where, prosecutors said, the gun was obtained. In a videotaped interview Looking Cloud described the drive from Denver and said Graham fired the shot. A federal grand jury indicted both men in early 2003; Denver police arrested Looking Cloud in March 2003 and Graham was arrested in Vancouver that December. At Looking Cloud's trial in Rapid City in February 2004, before Chief Judge Lawrence Piersol, prosecutors argued that AIM members killed Aquash because they believed she was an informant; the jury took seven hours to convict. Graham's federal case collapsed on jurisdiction, because the Major Crimes Act reaches only Indians as defined by U.S. law, so Attorney General Marty Jackley obtained a state indictment in September 2009 and Canada consented to the state prosecution. Looking Cloud, by then serving life, testified in December 2010 that he stood nearby as Graham shot her; the jury convicted Graham of felony murder and acquitted him of premeditated murder. Jackley said afterwards that the investigation remained open.