The Murder of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind

The Red River of the North (Rivière Rouge du Nord) or “The Red” as it is often referred to, originates at the junction of the Bois de Sioux and Otter Tail Rivers, flowing along the border of North Dakota and Minnesota and emptying into Lake Winnipeg in Canada. The Red is approximately 550 miles long; about 395 miles are in the United States and about 158 miles in Canada.

The Red River (source: fargomoorhead.org)

It is a popular destination for fishing, kayaking, swimming and sunbathing during the summer months. People spend long, lazy days on the riverbank, immersing themselves in the peaceful surroundings. By night, thousands of stars light up the vast, dark sky, making it a stargazer’s paradise.

However, the gentle, meandering water is not without its secrets. While feelings of joy and tranquillity are prevalent, so are pain and despair.

On a blissful summer day in late August 2017, a pair of kayakers were out on the Red, happily paddling through the calm waters, when they spotted a suspicious looking object caught on a log several meters away. As they maneuvered themselves closer, it became clear that their discovery was far more sinister than they ever could have imagined. Now floating alongside their kayaks, tightly wrapped in plastic and duct tape, was a body.

Life Just Beginning

Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind was excited to start her life. At 22, she was living with her parents and brother in a basement apartment in Fargo, ND. 2017 was going to be Savanna’s year - she was moving into her own apartment with her boyfriend, Ashton Matheny, and in September, they would be welcoming their first child. She had recently gotten a job as a nursing assistant, hoping to fully qualify as a nurse specializing in elder care.

Savanna and her boyfriend, Ashton Matheny (source: thesun.co.uk)

Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind (source: twincities.com)

Savanna was close with her family, as well as a member of the Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe. Although she was moving out, there was no doubt that she and her family would maintain a strong bond.

The Upstairs Neighbors

The apartment above the Greywinds’ (Apt. #5) was occupied by Brooke Crews (38) and William Hoehn (32). The two began dating in 2014, moving into the Fargo apartment building in May 2016. The couple were known for their explosive fights, which shook the ceilings of the apartments below. Not long after they moved in, Hoehn pleaded guilty to assaulting Crews when he threw her in the bathtub. The court ordered that he have no contact with Crews, but six months later, police responding to a disturbance report found Hoehn in the apartment. He was charged with violating the no-contact order.

Crews and Hoehn each had several run-ins with the law before they met. Both had had a long string of partners before meeting each other. With these respective partners, Crews had as many as seven children, and Hoehn had two children. Neither had any contact with their kids from previous relationships. Crews in particular had been sued repeatedly for not paying child support.

Savanna and her family did not know the couple well, only seeing them around the apartment building in passing.

According to Crews, in January 2017, she told Hoehn she was pregnant after he threatened to leave her. Hoehn later found out that Crews had lied to him about her pregnancy. Enraged, he ambiguously told her to “produce a baby” or he would leave her.

William Hoehn and Brooke Crews (source: Associated Press)

A Regular Day

There was nothing outstanding about August 19, 2017. August in North Dakota is warm, with temperatures in the mid eighties. Savanna, eight months pregnant by that point, was feeling the heat. It was a Saturday, and she did not have much planned for the day. Brooke Crews had asked Savanna to model a dress she had made, offering her $20. Savanna agreed, not thinking much of it. She was a kind and generous person, rarely passing up an opportunity to help others.

At 1:24pm, Savanna texted her mother and boyfriend, letting them know about her plans to help Crews. She ordered a pizza for lunch to share with the family, but by the time it arrived, she had to leave if she was going to be on time to Crews’s apartment. The pizza sat cooling on the counter top. She figured she'd just have some when she was done. But she never came back.

Savanna Vanishes

Norberta Greywind, Savanna's mother, replied to Savanna's text message about helping Crews, but never heard back. Ashton did not hear back either. Norberta continued to text her daughter throughout the afternoon, but never received a reply. It wasn't like Savanna, who usually replied to messages promptly.

At the Greywind apartment, the (now cold) pizza sat untouched. Savanna's purse was also in the kitchen. Her car was parked in its usual spot. She was supposed to give her brother a ride to work, but she never showed up, so Norberta took him instead.

It got to 4pm and Norberta was worried. Why hadn't Savanna been in contact? What was going on upstairs? She went and knocked on the door, and when Crews answered, she told Norberta that Savanna had left around 2:45pm.

Norberta knew that her daughter wouldn't have just walked off after leaving Crews's apartment. Her feet had been swollen and painful recently from the pregnancy. If she was going anywhere, she would have taken her purse and she would have been driving.

Furthermore, Norberta did not trust the couple living upstairs. Their constant fights unnerved her. A couple of weeks ago, Crews had come to their apartment and asked Savanna if she wanted to come smoke weed with her. Savanna had declined.

The apartment building where Savanna and her family lived (source: twincities.com)

At 4:30pm, Norberta couldn’t take it anymore. She reported her daughter missing to the Fargo PD. Police officers arrived at the apartment building at 5pm. After speaking to Norberta, they made their way upstairs to apartment 5, Savanna’s last known whereabouts. They searched the apartment twice on August 19 and again on the 20th. The searches turned up nothing.

It sounds as though they were somewhat careless and unconcerned - Norberta would later tell a reporter she felt as though they were not taking her daughter’s disappearance seriously, and that they just didn’t care.

A Secret in Apartment 5

Crews and Hoehn were the only suspects in Savanna’s disappearance, but the police were not getting any information of value from them. This changed, however, when they stopped by the roofing company where Hoehn worked. They began questioning Hoehn’s workmates and it quickly became clear that Hoehn and Crews were not being honest. Multiple employees at the roofing company told authorities that Hoehn had a new baby at home. But there had been no sign of a baby during the searches of the apartment. The grim reality of what had happened began to set in.

The reports of Hoehn and Crews’s new baby were enough to grant the police a warrant to once again search their apartment, which they did on August 24. This time, they were in luck; Crews was in the apartment and there, on the bed, lay a healthy baby girl.

Police arrested Crews right there and then; Hoehn was arrested at work.

Three days after the baby was found, Savanna Greywind’s body was discovered by kayakers just across the border from Fargo in Moorhead, Minnesota.

A DNA test on the baby girl confirmed she was Savanna’s and she was taken to live with her father.

A Brutal Murder and Violent Birth

On December 11, 2017, Crews pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit kidnapping and lying to police. She wept throughout her testimony, expressing remorse for the heinous crime, and apologizing for the pain she had caused Savanna’s family.

Brooke Crews in court with her lawyer in December 2017 (source: twincities.com)

"There is no excuse. There is no rationalization. There is nothing," Crews said during a prepared statement. “My actions devastated a family and shocked the community that I called home.”

Crews revealed that Savanna had come to her apartment on August 19, under the pretense of modeling a dress for her. What followed was the most horrific, terrifying ordeal one could possibly imagine.

Pretty much as soon as Savanna arrived, Crews started an argument with her. The two ended up fighting in the bathroom, where Crews pushed Savanna, causing her to hit her head on the sink and fall unconscious.

Crews went into the kitchen and retrieved a knife. On returning to the bathroom, she proceeded to haphazardly cut into Savanna’s abdomen and pulled the baby out of the younger woman’s womb. Savanna was drifting in and out of consciousness due to the loss of blood.

While Crews was cleaning up the blood from the bathroom floor, Hoehn returned home to find Crews holding the newborn. “This is our baby,” she said to Hoehn, “this is our family”. Hoehn asked if Savanna was dead, to which Crews replied, “I don’t know. Please help me.” According to Crews, Hoehn left the bathroom and came back with a rope, which he tightened around Savanna’s neck until she was no longer breathing. He then said, “If she wasn’t dead before, she is now.”

The two stashed the body in a closet in the bathroom and finished cleaning the blood from the bathroom floor.

The Following Days

What is baffling to me about this case is the ineptitude of the police during their searches. It’s clear that Crews and Hoehn were not exactly criminal masterminds. Hoehn would later testify that each time the apartment was searched, he was in bed, the baby under the blanket next to him. The two must have done a very thorough job of cleaning up, given that the murder likely occurred between 2pm and 3pm, and the police arrived to search the apartment at 5pm. How were all three searches so poorly executed that they missed the baby and Savanna’s body each time?

On August 20, after the police had searched the apartment for the third time with no luck, Hoehn hollowed out a dresser and stashed Savanna’s body in it. In the early hours of August 21, Crews and Hoehn put the dresser in their Jeep and drove to a bridge, hauling the dresser over the side into the Red River. Savanna was found nearly 6 days later; her body was not in the dresser. It is unclear whether the dresser was ever found.

The Sentencing of Crews and Hoehn

During her testimony, Crews confirmed that while Hoehn had demanded that she ‘produce a baby’, he did not know of her plan to murder Savanna and claim her baby as her own. While Crews testified that Hoehn had strangled Savanna, this was disputed by a fellow inmate of Crews’s, who testified that Crews had told her she had strangled Savanna. It is unknown whether Savannah ultimately died of blood loss or strangulation; the autopsy only listed her cause of death as "homicidal violence".

On February 2, 2018, Crews was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole.

On September 4, 2018, Hoehn pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and lying to police. He was also charged with conspiracy to commit murder, to which he pleaded not guilty. He was tried and acquitted of this charge on September 28, 2018. He was originally sentenced to life in prison, but the sentence was overturned by the North Dakota Supreme Court. In October 2019, he was re-sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Aftermath

The baby was named Haisley Jo, picked by the expecting couple before Savanna was murdered. She remained remarkably healthy through the horrific ordeal.

Savanna’s daughter, Haisley Jo, will be three in 2020 (source: inforum.com)

Ashton and Haisley Jo (source: people.com)

At just 22, Ashton had to grow up quickly, dealing with the loss of his long-term girlfriend and becoming a father. He admitted it was extremely difficult coming to terms with having a baby but no Savanna, but he and his daughter are inseparable. Ashton is not alone either; he has his family and Savanna’s family to help guide him through parenthood. Like Savanna, he is also a member of the Spirit Sioux Lake Tribe.

Haisley Jo will be 4 years old in August 2021. Ashton described her as a calm, happy baby who is always smiling.

Savanna’s Act

As a result of Savanna’s murder, former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp introduced Savanna’s Act in the United States Senate in October 2017. The bill was cosponsored by Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

The bill “aims to improve tribal access to federal crime information databases and create standardized protocols for responding to cases of missing and murdered Native American women”.

Update: As of Sept. 21, 2020, Savanna’s Act has passed the U.S. House of Representatives.

On Oct. 10, 2020 Savannah’s Act was signed into law by President Trump.

Republican Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota and chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, co-sponsored the bill. His statement:

“Savanna’s Act addresses a tragic issue in Indian Country and helps establish better law enforcement practices to track, solve and prevent these crimes against Native Americans. We appreciate our House colleagues for passing the bill today and sending it on to the president to become law. At the same time, we continue working to advance more legislation like this to strengthen public safety in tribal communities and ensure victims of crime receive support and justice."

The Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

Savanna’s parents, Norberta LaFontaine-Greywind and Joe Greywind (source: bemidjipioneer.com

Every year in the United States and Canada, Indigenous women experience violent assault, including sexual violence, at a far higher rate than any other racial group.

In the United States, indigenous women are twice as likely to go missing than white American women, even though they make up a far smaller percentage of the population. In many parts of the country, indigenous women are 10 times more likely to be murdered compared with the rest of the population.

In Canada, the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women has been formally described as a national crisis and “Canadian genocide”. Statistics showed that between 1980 and 2012, Indigenous women and girls made up 16% of all female homicides, while only making up 4% of the female population.

The reasons Indigenous women are subject to violence at such a high rate are widespread. At the heart of the crimes against them are racism and sexism. Indigenous people are still largely excluded from mainstream American and Canadian society.

Crimes against Indigenous people are underreported, and when they are reported, are often insufficiently investigated. In other words, non-Natives commit crimes against Indigenous women because they know there is a high chance they will get away with it.

Women of the Red River

On August 1, 2019, a Nibi (water) walk along the 550-mile Red River took place over two weeks to bring awareness to the tragedy of missing and murdered Indigenous women. As of August 1, 134 bodies of Indigenous women have been found in the Red. Nibi walks are described as “Indigenous-led, extended ceremonies to pray for the water. Every step is taken in prayer and gratitude for water, our life giving force.”