858: How to Tell a Dumb American Story

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Speaker 1 A quick warning, there are curse words that are un-beeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org.

Speaker 4 Sarah Crane Murdoch's been on our show before. She reports on indigenous communities out west.
Back in 2023, she got a call from a man in Montana, Kevin Howard.

Speaker 4 He said his daughter Micah had been killed in a hit-and-run. Local police were dragging their feet.
He thought the driver might get away with it. The driver was white.

Speaker 4 Micah was native, a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation.

Speaker 4 Lots of Native people are killed in hit and runs.

Speaker 4 And the drivers are rarely brought to justice.

Speaker 4 And Sierra thought she might be able to document why by diving into Micah's case, because Micah's parents had recordings of nearly all their interactions with law enforcement.

Speaker 4 Micah's parents did some other things, too. They were very strategic.

Speaker 4 They did some extraordinary things other families had not tried to make sure Micah's case was one that the authorities could not ignore. That story and how it unfolded.

Speaker 4 And what it's like to be a couple making that happen. That's going to be our whole show today.

Speaker 4 From WBEZ Chicago, Cis American Life, I'm Ira Glass. And with that, I hand it over to Sierra.

Speaker 5 Micah's family lives on the Flathead Indian Reservation. It's in a valley surrounded by big, toothy mountains.
Micah was 22 years old the night she was killed. She'd been out with her younger brother.

Speaker 5 They'd gone to a bar to buy cigarettes. On their way home, Micah couldn't find her phone and thought she'd left it at the bar.
She told her brother to let her out of the car.

Speaker 5 She'd go back to the bar to get it and then she'd walk home. Hours later, around 4 a.m., a tribal police officer found her body on the side of the road, Highway 93.

Speaker 5 The officer, a friend of Kevin's, drove to his house and woke him up.

Speaker 2 You know, they told us Micah was deceased and then right away I was like, well, did you guys get him? And they were like, yeah, it was some tweaker from Butte.

Speaker 2 And in my mind, I was like, just like happy that they apprehend, you know.

Speaker 2 So, and I just, you know, I gave the cops a hug and I was like, thank you guys or whatever, you know, I'm glad that you guys were there.

Speaker 5 Later that day, Kevin and his wife, Carissa Heavy Runner, Micah's mother, took a cross and a teddy bear to the roadside where she'd been found.

Speaker 5 When they got there, Investigators from Montana Highway Patrol were flying a drone, photographing the scene. One of them was named Wayne Bieber.
He asked Kevin and Carissa if they had Micah's phone.

Speaker 5 It had actually been in her brother's car that night, slipped between her seat and the console. Bieber said he needed it.
Carissa couldn't understand why.

Speaker 2 He was adamant about following us home to get it. And, you know, I repeated, she did not have her phone on her.
It was in her brother's car. Why do you need it? What's it gonna,

Speaker 2 you know, show or whatever? And then he said, we need to look at all aspects.

Speaker 2 I was torn, fought with myself, and I thought I was helping. And so

Speaker 2 I gave him the phone up here at our house. When you're handing it to him, I was like, oh, Micah's just freaking, just pissed off right now.
Like, she would not like this at all.

Speaker 2 And I like said that out loud. Shouldn't have done it, but in a joking manner, I guess.
But I really did feel that way. Like, Micah was like, no, no, don't give a damn.

Speaker 5 Yeah, well, you tell me more about that.

Speaker 2 Like if you knew Micah, probably the most stubborn person I'd know, like she would just fight tooth and nail over the dumbest thing to the bitter end.

Speaker 5 Micah was constantly challenging her parents, but not in a get-in-trouble kind of way. They were close.

Speaker 5 Back when she was a teenager, when she realized marijuana eased her anxiety, instead of lying to them, she crafted a PowerPoint presentation about its medical benefits. She wrote poetry.

Speaker 5 She was really into philosophy, especially the Tao. Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself was the title of the book she was reading when she died.
Also, she was loud.

Speaker 2 You could hear her, like, probably even in the garage, just laughing, and her laugh was just so loud. Like, her sound just echoed.

Speaker 2 Or if she was mad, just like, haha, like, you know, just had to let that energy out and

Speaker 6 just

Speaker 2 things like that. She would do.
Run into our room, fart, run away, just laughing all the way. She was like that.

Speaker 5 A week after Micah's death, Kevin got a text from a friend. The driver who killed Micah wasn't in jail, like he'd been told.
Her name was Sunny White. She was 28 years old.

Speaker 5 Police were looking for her. Not because she'd killed Micah, but because she'd allegedly just kidnapped her two kids.
There was a police alert out for her.

Speaker 2 And it had like the names of the kids and all that. She had a four-year-old daughter named Arian

Speaker 2 and I believe a two-year-old son named Nation.

Speaker 5 Arian and Nation.

Speaker 5 Carissa also got a text from a friend around the same time.

Speaker 2 She said that a tribal police officer pulled over a woman, non-native, and she had said, I came here to kill Anden. I remember I was a speechless after that.

Speaker 2 It was just like, you know, like thinking, could it have been a hate crime? You know, could she have driven by, turned around, came back and hit her and thought, oh, I'm not going to get caught.

Speaker 2 Like, we were always warned as kids, like, yeah, watch out, like Nazis and stuff, they'll intentionally just. That's how they get away with killing Indians.

Speaker 2 They just run them over on the side of the road. And so to me, it was like, holy shit, this is real.
This is is what happened. You know, she was murdered.

Speaker 5 Carissa and Kevin had so many questions. First, why wasn't Sunny White in jail? Hours after she hit and killed Micah, Sunny had been arrested for child endangerment, not vehicular homicide.

Speaker 5 They'd learned she spent seven days in jail and then was released. The charges dropped.
Also, what happened to that investigator from the Montana Highway Patrol, Wayne Bieber, who took Micah's phone?

Speaker 5 He'd promised to call, but he never did.

Speaker 5 Carissa and Kevin started blowing up his phone. They called every day for a week.
Nothing.

Speaker 5 Then a friend dialed him from her phone, a number he didn't recognize, and he picked up.

Speaker 7 Can I ask who was calling again one more time? Sorry about that.

Speaker 8 Carissa Heavy Runner, the mother of Micah Westwolf. You gave me your number when we were putting a cross on the side of the road and

Speaker 8 there was you and another trooper there.

Speaker 2 yep

Speaker 7 um

Speaker 7 so i haven't gotten i've been to be honest with you i've been running around with my head cut off the last couple weeks trying to get caught up on a bunch of other stuff um have you talked to anybody else as far as things go no because i don't know who else to talk to

Speaker 7 um I've had some other things coming up with work that I've been trying to get taken care of.

Speaker 5 Bieber tells Carissa he's applied for some warrants and then then keeps talking about how busy he is.

Speaker 2 Just

Speaker 8 how come she's not in jail still?

Speaker 7 So it's one of those things. She was put in jail.
We still have to finish up with the rest of our investigation.

Speaker 7 And that includes waiting for toxicology stuff to come back along with trying to

Speaker 7 get everything in line that may be associated with evidence for that.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 7 I will try and get back to you as soon as I can, but to be honest with you,

Speaker 7 every time I try and seem to do something lately, it ends up going to poop. And I end up not going in the direction that I wanted to go for the day to try and get some stuff done.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 5 How confident did you feel in the investigation at that point?

Speaker 2 Not confident at all.

Speaker 2 He told us on the phone. Oh, everything I touched turns to poo.

Speaker 2 Everything I touch.

Speaker 2 I'm just thinking, like,

Speaker 2 that's not what you want to hear. Like, it'd be funny if it was, I guess.
This is who's investigating our daughter's case.

Speaker 2 This is who we're supposed to, you know, rely on to give us information and who we're supposed to trust. Like, this guy is inept.

Speaker 5 I asked Montana Highway Patrol several times for an interview with Wayne Bieber,

Speaker 5 but they declined.

Speaker 4 Sarah Crane-Burdock.

Speaker 4 Coming up, Kevin and Chris will realize that if they want anything to happen in the case, they'll need to take matters into their own hands. Which they do.
Stay with us.

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Speaker 4 This is American Life. Sarah Crane Murdock picks up the story of Micah Westwolf and her parents.

Speaker 5 The distrust Native families have of law enforcement is centuries old. Starting in the 1860s, the U.S.
troops that had been stationed on reservations were replaced with police forces.

Speaker 5 These police took Native children from their families to send to boarding schools, arrested holy men for practicing religious ceremonies, and quelled rebellions.

Speaker 5 It was the role of law enforcement on reservations to control Native people before it was to keep them safe. Police were there to protect white settlers who lived on and around reservations.

Speaker 5 Meanwhile, A lot of crimes affecting tribal citizens were never investigated or prosecuted.

Speaker 5 In the 1960s, the federal government turned over its jurisdiction on the Flathead Reservation to the state of Montana.

Speaker 5 But Montana has been reluctant to spend money on policing the reservation, and tribal members' distrust of law enforcement has only grown.

Speaker 5 Carissa and Kevin were convinced Bieber wasn't investigating Micah's case. So they tried investigating on their own.
They started working with a tribal advocate who helps families of murder victims.

Speaker 5 Her name is Erica Shelby. She knocked on every door within a few miles of where Micah was killed, looking for surveillance footage and witnesses.
One business had a direct view.

Speaker 5 She connected Carissa and Kevin with a lawyer to make sure the business preserved the footage.

Speaker 5 Three weeks after Micah's death, Bieber finally visited Kevin and Carissa at their house.

Speaker 5 They remember him standing awkwardly in the kitchen. Carissa's seated at the kitchen island.
Kevin is in a recliner behind her.

Speaker 12 Erica is there too, taking notes.

Speaker 5 The meeting feels tense, restrained. They can't get an answer to their main question.

Speaker 5 Why wasn't Sunny White behind bars?

Speaker 10 I mean, to be honest, it's just strange that if she was in fact charged, why is she not in jail?

Speaker 13 We have to look at everything as the totality.

Speaker 13 So, Montana law,

Speaker 13 if you are intoxicated, you you are not allowed to be on the roadway.

Speaker 13 You cannot even be on the shoulder. You have to be walking off into the ditch or using a designated walk path.

Speaker 5 A walk path. He's not talking about Sonny White's intoxication.
He's talking about Micah's.

Speaker 5 This is the first time anyone in law enforcement has mentioned to Kevin and Carissa that Micah might have been drunk.

Speaker 5 It's also the first time anyone has told them that being drunk and walking on the side of the road is a crime in Montana.

Speaker 5 And it's the first time anyone has suggested that if you get hit, your drunkenness could mean your death was your own fault. Then their tribal advocate Erica asks.

Speaker 9 So, but what's that have to do with her being out?

Speaker 13 The totality of the circumstances, looking back at the whole thing as a offense.

Speaker 5 The totality of the circumstances.

Speaker 5 Bieber will repeat this phrase 11 times in the recording.

Speaker 5 It's pretty vague what he means. And you hear Kevin trying to get Bieber to clarify, to pick apart his logic.

Speaker 10 Well, I mean, it's if the other person was in violation of the law as well, wouldn't Micah be charged with intoxicated on a roadway and then the other person be charged with

Speaker 10 vehicular homicide because she was intoxicated driving, operating a vehicle?

Speaker 13 That is why I am saying review.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 10 Micah's toxicology, though, came back where she was impaired.

Speaker 13 So these are things that take time and a review process.

Speaker 10 I guess my concern would be like

Speaker 10 that's kind of your justification for her not being currently in jail would be Micah's

Speaker 10 potential intoxication.

Speaker 13 The question that we come back to is exactly what I was telling you was if you are intoxicated and walking on the road.

Speaker 10 But we don't know that. Right?

Speaker 10 Okay.

Speaker 13 The totality of the circumstances.

Speaker 5 Kevin asks him if he's gathering any of the surveillance footage from the night Micah was killed. The footage they'd been working to preserve.
Maybe this could tell them something.

Speaker 5 Like if Sunny swerved or if she stopped when she hit Micah or sped up.

Speaker 13 What would be

Speaker 13 that you're trying to look for?

Speaker 10 Anything and everything to get like the total the total grasp of the situation like for instance if it is a white supremacist maybe it was an intentional hit and run so now all of a sudden it's deliberate homicide and we're we're not investigating it as such

Speaker 13 what is it that you're i mean it's about

Speaker 9 her children's names

Speaker 8 arian and nation

Speaker 10 i can't tell you how to name your child Yeah, but if you if you name your kids Arian and Nation, chances are you're an affiliate.

Speaker 13 Look at it as that.

Speaker 13 And I shouldn't look at it as that.

Speaker 10 Well, then you shouldn't look at it as Micah was drunk on the side of the road, so we don't treat it.

Speaker 13 To me, if I could tell you got pent-up aggression,

Speaker 5 Carissa is quiet. She's now suspicious of Bieber.
He has Micah's phone with him, and he asks her for the code to open and search it. She refuses.

Speaker 13 I have to take this.

Speaker 10 Why do you have to take it?

Speaker 13 I have to seal this up now because this goes into

Speaker 13 I have to go apply for a warrant.

Speaker 10 So can we hold on to it until you get the warrant?

Speaker 5 He says no.

Speaker 5 Kevin told me Bieber held up the phone in an evidence bag, sealed it shut.

Speaker 10 So I guess I'm confused as to that's our property. That's my property.

Speaker 10 It wasn't on the scene.

Speaker 13 And now it has to get a warrant to collect any information that may be valuable to the investigation.

Speaker 2 I can tell you 100% after that. We knew that

Speaker 2 we spooked him, you know, and so you could tell he was clearly mad after that.

Speaker 2 You could tell he was flustered. I wish we would have recorded him trying to leave our driveway.
He went around the light pole thing once because he didn't know which way he was going.

Speaker 2 And he had trouble trying to back up over. And it's like his tires were just spinning.
And we're just standing at the window, like laughing. And I was like, did that really just happen?

Speaker 5 When the Montana Highway Patrol applied for the warrant to search Micah's phone, it listed intoxication while walking on a road as the crime they were investigating, not the crime that killed Micah.

Speaker 5 Carissa and Kevin have been together for 18 years. Carissa is native, Blackfeet, and Denae.

Speaker 5 Kevin is white, but he grew up on the Flathead Reservation. A lot of his family is Salish Kootenay, including his son.

Speaker 5 They met as single parents when Kevin's son was three years old and Micah was six. They became a tight family unit.
Kevin built them a house at the foot of the mountains.

Speaker 5 Their albums are full of photos of them camping and hunting together. They told me Micah was a good shot, but she always intentionally missed.

Speaker 5 How has losing Micah impacted your marriage?

Speaker 2 It's been hard.

Speaker 2 I find myself where

Speaker 2 Kevin's wanting to get me outside, go take a ride up the mountain, and then I'm being reluctant because I'm already thinking in the back of my mind is

Speaker 2 this making me sad, I'm going to cry, I don't want to do that, you know. And I feel bad about that because I know he's just trying to get me outside and do the things that

Speaker 2 we love and Micah loved.

Speaker 5 There's a saying about the highway Micah died on. Pray for me, I drive 93.

Speaker 5 Carissa and Kevin could name three other native people who'd been killed in the last five years while walking this same stretch of highway.

Speaker 5 In none of those cases had the driver been prosecuted or even arrested. They wanted to know why.

Speaker 5 So a few weeks after their meeting with Bieber, they invited the mothers of the victims over to their house for dinner. They all sat in the living room.
It was a little awkward.

Speaker 5 Bonnie Asencio's daughter, Marina, was killed in 2022.

Speaker 6 I wasn't sure what to say or what to do. It was a little bit solemn, kind of.

Speaker 6 And then when I started talking about Bieber calling me, they were just like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 5 They learned they'd all had the same investigator, Wayne Bieber.

Speaker 5 And the same county prosecutor, James Lepotka, who Carissa and Kevin hadn't heard from yet.

Speaker 2 I remember, like, I was like, what the fuck, Jesus? You know, we all looked at each other, us all our friends, and like, oh my gosh, we cannot let them get away with this.

Speaker 2 Same lead prosecutor, same lead investigator.

Speaker 5 Marina was Bonnie's second child to die on the road. Her first, Ruby, had been riding with a friend when he crashed their car and killed her.
He was intoxicated. He survived.

Speaker 5 Bonnie says the friend told Bieber that Ruby had been driving. But Bonnie's family didn't believe him.

Speaker 5 They did their own investigation, found witnesses, including a farmer who said he'd seen the friend in the driver's seat. He went to prison.

Speaker 5 But if Bonnie and her family hadn't investigated, he might not have been charged. Two years later, when Marina died, no one was charged.

Speaker 5 Even though the Montana Highway Patrol knew who the driver was, and the family says, told them that she was over the legal limit for THC.

Speaker 5 Bonnie met with the county prosecutor, James LaPaca.

Speaker 6 They told us specifically at that meeting that they could not win a case if they pressed charges,

Speaker 6 that it just wasn't enough.

Speaker 6 And he said, I just know I've done enough of the, I know that

Speaker 6 we can't win.

Speaker 6 And I'm not going to take a case to

Speaker 6 court that I can't win.

Speaker 5 It felt to Bonnie like La Paca had written her daughter off. She obsessed over the particulars of her daughter's case.

Speaker 5 She wanted to rent a billboard on the highway and brainstormed messages like, How hard is it to gather evidence? And whose reservation is this? And who is protecting who?

Speaker 5 But she didn't have money for a billboard. She checked herself into the mental health department at a hospital.

Speaker 5 I talked to another mother, Tricia Finley. Her son, Aiden, was killed in a hit-and-run in 2018.

Speaker 5 She says it was almost six years before anyone in law enforcement shared anything with her about her son's case. The county attorney, Lepatka, invited her to his office.

Speaker 5 A witness to Aiden's death had come forward and named the driver, but there was a problem. Bieber had taken four months to locate the driver and get his confession.

Speaker 5 During that time, the statute of limitations had passed.

Speaker 15 So they couldn't find him from November till April.

Speaker 16 That's what it looks like.

Speaker 16 Honestly, if all of this police work would have been wrapped up in November, we could charge him.

Speaker 16 Why wasn't it?

Speaker 15 Because we didn't find him. Because they couldn't find him.

Speaker 16 That's what it looks like.

Speaker 16 Because I'd have had till the first week in December.

Speaker 15 But they knew where he lived.

Speaker 15 I mean, it's not that hard to find somebody.

Speaker 16 My guess is they weren't in a really big hurry to

Speaker 16 do anything in November and probably didn't understand that

Speaker 16 there was a statute of limitations window closing.

Speaker 16 I bet they weren't paying attention to that at all.

Speaker 15 Isn't that their job, though?

Speaker 16 Yeah, yeah, it is.

Speaker 15 So, because of that,

Speaker 15 there's

Speaker 15 like they're gonna get away with it?

Speaker 16 I hope not, but

Speaker 16 that's a possibility.

Speaker 5 The driver did get away with it. Lepaca couldn't find a way to charge the case.

Speaker 5 I reached out to Montana Highway Patrol about Bonnie and Trisha's cases, but they declined to answer my questions.

Speaker 5 There were two harms when Micah was killed. The first when she was hit, the second when she was left on the side of the road to die alone.

Speaker 5 Nationally, Native pedestrians are six times likelier to be killed in a hit and run than white pedestrians.

Speaker 5 I tried to figure out why.

Speaker 5 I learned that when states were building their highway systems in the 1920s and 30s, they put them through reservations instead of around them, because if they ran through reservations, the federal government had to pick up the tab.

Speaker 5 Fewer Native people own cars, so they're more likely to be walking along these roads. They're dying where there are no sidewalks, no street lamps.

Speaker 5 In Montana, Native pedestrians make up more than half of hit-and-run fatalities, even though they're just 8% of the population.

Speaker 5 And what happens to the drivers? I scoured Montana newspapers and court records trying to figure out which cases got prosecuted.

Speaker 5 I calculated that between 2011 and 2022, in cases where the victim was Native, it was much less likely for the drivers to be found. And when they were found, their sentences were much lighter.

Speaker 5 During that period, the drivers who killed Native pedestrians in Montana, if you added up all their sentences, it was a total of 51 51 years. Those who killed non-native pedestrians, 265 years.

Speaker 5 Carissa and Kevin feared their case could end the same way that Trisha's and Bonnie's did, with no one charged, even though law enforcement had found the drivers.

Speaker 5 They had a new goal. get Sonny White arrested.
Their strategy was public pressure.

Speaker 5 They would bring attention to Micah's case and also to Bonnie and Trisha's kids' cases since police had stopped investigating. That night they met with the mothers at their house.

Speaker 5 They came up with this idea. They'd do a four-day walk along Highway 93.

Speaker 5 They ended the walk on the steps of the Lake County Courthouse. The march was all over local and national media.

Speaker 5 Kevin's a mailman and remembers how excited people on the reservation were when he delivered the state's biggest newspaper with Micah's face on the front page.

Speaker 5 Carissa created a Facebook group called Micah Matters and quickly collected over a thousand followers.

Speaker 5 She started getting invitations to speak at big events, like at the grandstand for the Missoula County Fair.

Speaker 2 Imagine if this was your child.

Speaker 5 There's this one video that Carissa shared with the media that blew up. It's of Micah.
She's in their laundry room with a ukulele, singing a parody she wrote of Vance Joy's Riptide.

Speaker 5 I was scared of res dogs and the wildlife. She's singing, I was scared of res dogs in the wild.
I was scared of drunk drivers and catching headlights.

Speaker 2 I was scared of drunk drivers and catching headlights of all my

Speaker 2 cousins and friends.

Speaker 5 It's clever, funny. She never wanted to make the video, but when she played the song for Kevin, he begged her to let him film it.

Speaker 5 Was there an aspect of Micah's case that felt to you like, oh, this has the potential to become big?

Speaker 2 Oh, yes. I believe it was because of

Speaker 2 the woman that hit her and her children's names. And the contrast of them with Micah.

Speaker 2 Like, Sonny, who appears to be like a, you know, like, hateful person or whatever.

Speaker 2 And then Micah, who's this, like,

Speaker 2 you know, hippie child or whatever that like

Speaker 2 loves everybody and all that yeah did it ever feel to you you're like oh this is sort of like the perfect victim and perfect civilian narrative right yeah americans are dumb like that they just they need you know like the big villain and the kind sweet-hearted victim or whatever so it's like you it's you're twisted, you know, it's like one hand that's really sad and you think of like all the other people that no one cares about.

Speaker 2 It's like, because Micah is this young, beautiful, talented woman, people care about her.

Speaker 5 This perfect, dumb American narrative of victim and villain, innocent and guilty. Kevin and Carissa realized that Micah's could be the case that got people to care about all these hit and runs.

Speaker 5 And they decided Carissa would be the public face of their movement. She comes from a politically active family.
Her dad was a state legislator and a a tribal councilman.

Speaker 5 Kevin told me he felt a little cynical about all the public events Carissa was having to do. He didn't know of any white families who had to make a spectacle of their kids' cases to get justice.

Speaker 5 But he wanted to support Carissa and went to her events.

Speaker 2 We're definitely yin and yang. Like, if it was just me, like, I'm going to...

Speaker 2 be no one's gonna like me no one's gonna talk to me i'm gonna piss everyone off and and it's i'm not gonna get anything accomplished by myself. Whereas Krissa is the complete opposite.

Speaker 2 Everyone is going to want to talk to her. Everyone likes her, you know?

Speaker 2 So I think it's nice to sneak in a couple like, you know, right hooks or whatever that maybe knocks some sense into some people without them even realizing it.

Speaker 2 And then she's going to be able to make it so everyone isn't just seeing this angry like Debbie Downer type dude that hates everything.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm really struck by that.

Speaker 2 It makes for a very difficult relationship though, because you never really agree on anything.

Speaker 2 So it's like she accepts that I'm wrong and I accept that she's wrong in our own minds, you know what I mean? And we're starting to learn that neither one of us are really wrong.

Speaker 2 What's going through your head, Chris?

Speaker 2 I just, I don't know.

Speaker 2 I appreciate my husband so much for his

Speaker 2 truth and his fearlessness that he's just going to come out and say whatever. That's how we're a good team, is that we are able to cover all sides of it.

Speaker 4 Coming up, Sarah talks to the county prosecutor about what the hell with not charging and arresting Sonny White. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

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Speaker 4 This is American Life from Iraq Glass. Today's show, How to Tell a Dumb American Story.
Sarah Crane Murdock picks up where she left off.

Speaker 5 The prosecutor for Lake County is James Lepotka. His jurisdiction is basically the entire Flathead Reservation.
He's from Wisconsin, but has worked for Lake County for most of his career.

Speaker 5 He's white, in his early 40s, smiley. He looks like a Boy Scout.

Speaker 5 Micah's case had drawn more media attention than any other case he'd worked on because of Chris's organizing.

Speaker 19 Let me try and dig this out.

Speaker 19 hundred pages of comments from Facebook, articles from the New York Times. I got a text message from somebody who is not my friend on Facebook saying, you racist piece of shit.

Speaker 19 You will not try that stupid white supremacist bitch because she's white.

Speaker 2 You're garbage.

Speaker 5 It was annoying.

Speaker 5 But the attention also got him more resources from the FBI and the state. He met with Chris and Kevin briefly a couple of times in the months after Micah died.

Speaker 19 I tried to assure them, like, I'm not a white supremacist comforting of a homicide for my white supremacist friend. Like, that's not what this is about.
And

Speaker 19 I think I got some of that through to them, but I think that they were also, you know, a little righteously upset that we weren't moving faster.

Speaker 5 He acknowledged that Montana Highway Patrol had made mistakes that slowed down the investigation.

Speaker 5 He had to let Sonny White out of jail because investigators hadn't collected enough evidence to charge her.

Speaker 5 He also needed Sonny's blood test results to prove prove she had been intoxicated, but orders at the Montana crime lab were backed up.

Speaker 5 He told me he never found anything that proved Sonny hit Micah because she was native.

Speaker 5 He couldn't verify the rumor that Sonny had come to the reservation to kill an Indian, so he couldn't charge her with a hate crime. I got the sense that he wanted to do a good job for Micah's family.

Speaker 5 The first time we met, I was struck by his genuine warmth whenever he talked about Micah.

Speaker 3 She was a delightful kid.

Speaker 2 Really? You can tell that just by looking through her phone.

Speaker 5 What were some of the feelings? Like, do you remember anything in particular that really endeared you to her?

Speaker 19 She did a lot of videos and a lot of pictures of her, a lot of selfies.

Speaker 2 And they were

Speaker 3 rather innocent kind of like little kid.

Speaker 19 It made me like Micah a lot more.

Speaker 5 It was sweet, but also it made me wonder, if he didn't have those photos of Micah, would he like her? Would he have felt as motivated to work on her case?

Speaker 5 He didn't talk this way about Bonnie and Trisha's kids, Maureena and Aiden. He called what happened to them tragic, but he also said he didn't think a jury would have much sympathy for them.

Speaker 5 He said they made choices that put themselves at risk. Highway Patrol concluded that Aiden was lying in the road when he was hit.
He'd sent text messages to friends suggesting he was suicidal.

Speaker 5 And someone reported Maureena stumbling intoxicated just before she was killed. Lepaca told me he didn't see any way he could win a trial in either case.

Speaker 5 But his explanations left out some key details, like the fact that the driver who killed Marina was intoxicated too, or that in Aiden's evidence file, the coroner said that Aiden's injuries indicated that he'd been standing when he got hit, not lying down.

Speaker 5 All of this was the sort of reasoning that caused so much agony for Tricia and Bonnie. The feeling that law enforcement assumed their kids were responsible for their own deaths.

Speaker 5 Six months after Micah was killed, in October of 2023, Lepaca was finally close to filing charges against Sonny White.

Speaker 5 He invited Carissa and Kevin into his office to hear about the evidence he had compiled against her.

Speaker 19 I was kind of excited. I'm like, hey guys, look,

Speaker 2 look, we did it.

Speaker 19 Look, I have all the stuff. This is what we've got.
Let me show you the whole thing. And then this is the timeline and what to expect.
That's how I felt that meeting was, what that meeting was for.

Speaker 5 That's not how Curissa and Kevin felt about the meeting. One of the pieces of evidence he showed them was body cam footage from the day Micah was killed, just hours after Sunny hit her.

Speaker 5 Her SUV, a Cadillac escalade, had broken down in a church parking lot. It was missing the passenger side mirror.
Police had found the mirror not far from Micah's body.

Speaker 5 In the video, the officer talks to Sunny outside her car. Her two young kids are in the back.

Speaker 2 And she's like totally just like manipulating the shit out of the sheriff, her deputy. Like she's crying and, oh my gosh, I don't know what's happening.

Speaker 2 And that sheriff's like, oh, it's letting her smoke cigarettes. Like

Speaker 2 thinking like if this was a native woman, she would be stuffed and cuffed like immediately.

Speaker 5 I saw this video. The deputy does actually cuff Sunny for a few minutes.
He tells her she didn't hit a deer. She hit a person.
And she starts crying. Asks if she's going to prison forever.

Speaker 5 Not forever, he says. But then he takes the cuffs off.
Her brother-in-law had shown up to pick up her kids. Sonny starts moving car seats and bags into his truck.

Speaker 2 I'm like, Lepaka, what the hell? Like, this is a potential crime scene. And he's letting her move items from the vehicle.
I was quiet that whole thing. I didn't say one thing because I was mad.
Like,

Speaker 2 is everyone this dumb

Speaker 2 in this world that are in these positions of power and we're like telling them what they need to look for or do, how to do their job? I don't know.

Speaker 2 Me and Kemis look at each other and we're like, oh my God, like it's crazy, you know, like I just can't believe it sometimes.

Speaker 5 Lepaka thinks that Sunny's phone was probably in one of those bags. Highway Patrol never found it.
That slowed down the investigation. He suspects there were drugs and paraphernalia in those bags too.

Speaker 5 Her toxicology came back positive for methamphetamine and fentanyl.

Speaker 19 I will readily acknowledge that in hindsight we should have not let her remove evidence from the vehicle while we're doing an investigation. That should not have happened.

Speaker 5 But he also told me one of the kids was in a diaper and needed clothes, so he could see why the officer let Sonny move some bags.

Speaker 5 I kept noticing this dynamic whenever I asked Lepotka about a mistake law enforcement made.

Speaker 5 He'd readily acknowledge it, but then he also always had an explanation that assumed the officers had good intentions.

Speaker 5 Like when I asked him about Bieber taking Micah's phone, he said, yeah, his bedside manner sucked, but Bieber's also a good guy and he needed her phone to quickly rule up suicide.

Speaker 5 If she had been suicidal, it could cause problems for them at trial.

Speaker 5 Montana Highway Patrol finally arrested Sonny White just a few days after Lepaka showed Carissa and Kevin the body cam footage.

Speaker 5 She was charged with negligent vehicular homicide, leaving the scene, drug possession, and child endangerment. Lepaca called Carissa to tell her the news.

Speaker 2 I couldn't believe that, you know, it was happening. Yeah, it was, it was like shocking.
Like, if you just think about the fact that it took us seven months to get to square one.

Speaker 5 Would you have brought charges without the amount of media attention that Kevin and Carissa brought to this case?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 19 It might have taken a little longer and it might not have been

Speaker 19 as good.

Speaker 19 I think eventually we would have brought charges.

Speaker 19 Honestly,

Speaker 19 the amount of media attention made it easier for me to get help from people. So our case

Speaker 19 ended up being better because of what they did, but they didn't have to do that to get my attention.

Speaker 5 Sonny White pleaded not guilty and posted bond immediately, $100,000.

Speaker 5 I reached out to her for an interview and didn't hear back.

Speaker 5 Now that Sonny had been arrested, Kevin and Carissa had a new goal. They announced it to the media at a press conference outside the Lake County Courthouse.

Speaker 2 I'm thankful that today finally happened where Sonny White was

Speaker 2 read her charges.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 don't want the judge and the county to take the easy way out. Do a plea bargain.
I would like to see this go to trial.

Speaker 5 What did a trial mean to you? Like, what would a trial have given you?

Speaker 2 I was thinking, like, yeah, plea bargain, that's the easy way out. That's keeping it hush-hush, sweeping it under the rug.
That's, you know, cutting the media out and all that. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 It's ending it abruptly. When we did all this and

Speaker 2 looking at the bigger goals it would be trial and everything would be laid out and all that you know that's what i visualized yeah like if it was to go to trial la pauca and lake county would have had and the montana highway patrol would have had to present it to the world exactly how they investigated this case um any

Speaker 2 halfway decent attorney would have been able to pick apart their so-called investigation and evidence.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's so interesting. Like, would you say you wanted the state to lose?

Speaker 2 I mean, absolutely, which is kind of probably sounds ridiculous. So, I mean, it, you know, Micah is gone.
There's nothing that's going to ever bring her back.

Speaker 2 So I would,

Speaker 2 I would sacrifice Micah's personal justice

Speaker 2 for a big picture justice. You know what I mean? Like, that would be a very easy sacrifice for me personally.

Speaker 5 Kevin kept thinking about this this one time, shortly before Micah was killed. He was in the kitchen.

Speaker 2 I came in the house to eat something and Micah was in her room and she comes like bolting out like, hey, bro, if someone murked me, you'd forgive him, right?

Speaker 2 And I just remember like, what are you talking about, weirdo? And she's like, well, well, you would, right? And I was like, I don't, would you want me to? She said, well, yeah.

Speaker 2 And I was like, well, then, yeah, I guess. To me, it was like some dumb thing she would say.

Speaker 2 But and then later she's dead by the hands of someone else and i was like

Speaker 2 trip me out you know i had to forgive that sunny white right away like and i did you know

Speaker 5 forgiving sunny was easier than he thought he wasn't angry at her he was angry at montana and lake county for how they handled this case for how they handled bonnie's and trisha's cases too It was the state's fault that a driver could leave a native pedestrian to die on the side of the road and think she'd get away with it.

Speaker 5 A trial date was set for December 2024. Lepaca invited Carissa and Kevin to his office for another meeting.
He had some good news.

Speaker 5 The case had become so high profile that the Montana Attorney General's office sent in one of its best trial attorneys, Thorn Geist.

Speaker 5 And he'd gotten Micah's blood alcohol content excluded from trial. This was a big win for Carissa Carissa and Kevin.
Micah had been over the legal limit for walking on the road.

Speaker 5 But within a couple of minutes, the real point of this meeting became clear.

Speaker 19 Sonny's attorney came to us a couple of weeks back and wanted to talk about what we think would be a fair resolution to this case, but we wanted to consult with you before we made any formal offerings.

Speaker 2 So that's a plea bargain, right? Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 5 A plea bargain.

Speaker 5 Carissa is caught off guard. She thought she'd made it clear to Lepaka that they wanted a trial.

Speaker 5 Lepaca says he is ready to go to trial,

Speaker 5 but he also wants to offer a plea because anything can happen at a trial. They could lose the whole thing on one jury member.

Speaker 5 And even if they did win, Sonny would likely file an appeal. It could take years to work its way through the courts.

Speaker 5 Lepaca is in this dance with the family. He doesn't have to do what the family says, but he has an incentive to get them on his side.

Speaker 5 Because if the family doesn't want a plea bargain, the judge could reject it.

Speaker 5 So Lepaka keeps pressuring them to consider a plea deal. But then he also keeps trying to make it seem like he's not.

Speaker 19 We are not afraid.

Speaker 19 I don't want you to think we're just trying to settle this so we can go.

Speaker 2 Man, this is an opportunity to make a change. I don't know.
That's all.

Speaker 5 The state prosecutor, Thorin Geist, says he'd like to make a plea offer tomorrow. He needs them to think about numbers.

Speaker 5 If Sonny pleads guilty to the first two counts, vehicular homicide and leaving the scene, that gives them up to 40 years in prison.

Speaker 5 But she wouldn't serve all of the years she's sentenced to. They'd have to offer to suspend some of that time.

Speaker 4 The question then becomes this.

Speaker 19 What does justice look like to this family?

Speaker 2 To me, the whole point of this trial would be to discourage

Speaker 2 future freaking homicides. And so my concern is like, and I know that Micah would feel the same way, is these other Aryan nations, we've had an influx of these groups moving here recently.

Speaker 2 They need to see these hard numbers. So there's got to be like 40 years is like, oh shit, that's my life.
My life is essentially done.

Speaker 19 So what do you think is appropriate? 40 years.

Speaker 4 40 straight.

Speaker 5 Kevin told me his strategy at this point was to offer Sunny an unrealistic deal. So trial would be her only option.

Speaker 5 Lepaka turns to Carissa.

Speaker 19 Carissa, you're awful quiet over there. You were just starting to say something.

Speaker 2 Um, I'm just thinking.

Speaker 2 When would you like us to

Speaker 2 tell you what terms I'm in today?

Speaker 19 If we could

Speaker 19 help us out.

Speaker 2 And sooner, we'll

Speaker 5 get a hold of you. Up until this meeting, Kevin and Carissa had presented a united front, even when they disagreed.

Speaker 5 But this question of whether to keep pushing for trial or to sign off on a plea deal revealed a fracture between them. They didn't discuss it anymore on the way home.
Kevin wanted a trial.

Speaker 5 Carissa understood, but she also understood that prosecutors were going to offer a plea no matter what.

Speaker 5 She felt caught between aligning with her husband and showing willingness to work with the state so they didn't cut her out. She didn't want to lose what little control she had.

Speaker 5 So when La Paca called her a few days later to ask for a number, she told him 40 years with 20 suspended. I tried calling Kevin after to see how he felt.
He didn't pick up.

Speaker 5 Instead, I got a call from Carissa. She sounded worried that I'd heard they had a disagreement.

Speaker 5 A week passed. Senny still hadn't accepted the plea deal, which was about to expire.
Carissa and Kevin headed to court. They sat in the front row.
I sat behind them, waiting for their case to come up.

Speaker 5 Suddenly, Lepaka approached. He leaned over to whisper in Carissa's ear.
Then, she leaned over and whispered to Kevin. They followed Lepaka out of the courtroom.

Speaker 5 When they returned a few minutes later, I couldn't read their faces. Carissa whispered to her dad.

Speaker 2 I just wanted to be over.

Speaker 5 The judge called up their case.

Speaker 20 Okay, so now we'll go to DC 23344, state of Montana versus Sunny Catherine White.

Speaker 5 The courtroom door opened again and Sunny walked in.

Speaker 20 I have just been handed a plea agreement.

Speaker 12 Is that correct?

Speaker 17 Yes, Jerry. That is correct, Your Honor.
Okay. Sorry for our tardiness.

Speaker 5 Oh, it's okay. All right, so.
I noticed that Sunny had a new tattoo on her forehead over her right brow. It said Aryan in blue cursive.

Speaker 20 So, Miss White, with your rights in mind, are you ready to enter into a plea based on the plea agreement?

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 20 As to counts one and two, how do you plead?

Speaker 2 Guilty, Your Honor.

Speaker 5 Sonny's defense attorney read the facts. She was pleading guilty to.

Speaker 17 Sonny, as to count one,

Speaker 17 on or about March 31st of 2023, did you negligently cause the death of Micah Westwolf while operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of drugs in Lake County, Montana?

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 17 And you did not render aid or remain at the scene?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 5 Carissa started crying. She leaned into her dad.

Speaker 5 Carissa and Kevin didn't get a trial, but Carissa did get something she hadn't expected. She heard Sonny White admit to killing their daughter.

Speaker 2 It was a huge, almost instantaneous weight off my shoulders.

Speaker 2 I just felt it like gone. And that's part what brought on the crying.
I don't know. Something just clicked inside of me where I just felt like

Speaker 2 finally, you know, she's admitting guilt.

Speaker 5 Of course, Kevin did not feel that way.

Speaker 2 We just played right into their hand. It was the best case scenario to get the family to be okay with a slap on the wrist.
So I felt dirty.

Speaker 5 Did you sense how Carissa felt?

Speaker 2 Like I did feel her relief.

Speaker 2 I think that she was really trying to ignore my

Speaker 2 vibe, which and I totally understand like she deserves all the credit and she's taking on the weight of this way more than I have.

Speaker 5 Crissa had asked for 40 years with 20 suspended, but the plea offer Sonny agreed to was 30 years with 20 suspended.

Speaker 5 What this meant was that Sonny would spend a maximum of 10 years in prison, and she could still request parole and get out earlier.

Speaker 5 To prevent that, Carissa and Kevin could ask the judge for a parole restriction at Sunny's sentencing hearing, make it so that Sunny'd have to stay in prison the full 10 years.

Speaker 5 That way they wouldn't have to keep returning to court to make their case every time she applied for parole. Or they could try to get the judge to reject the plea deal and send it back to trial.

Speaker 2 Yeah, let's put them in there.

Speaker 5 Sunny's Sonny's sentencing hearing was on a snowy morning this past February. Micah's family and supporters gathered in front of the Lake County Courthouse to put up a red tepee.

Speaker 5 This was almost two years after Micah was killed.

Speaker 5 Cursa handed out Micah Matters t-shirts.

Speaker 2 I got your shirts right here.

Speaker 21 This is my daughter Lisa.

Speaker 2 Yeah, hey Lisa, thanks for coming.

Speaker 5 Kevin hadn't shown up yet, and Cursa kept looking around for him.

Speaker 2 Just waiting for Kevin to bring the extension cords for the hot chocolate.

Speaker 5 They'd been fighting. Kevin still didn't want the plea deal.
He didn't want to endorse the state's narrative that they were getting justice. But Carissa was exhausted.
She wanted it all to be over.

Speaker 5 She started venting to a friend.

Speaker 2 We haven't even been talking.

Speaker 2 I don't know if we're inspired this, honestly. It's him, he can't

Speaker 2 handle what I'm doing, I guess. I don't know.

Speaker 6 Sucks.

Speaker 2 Seemed to pull this shit like right before this.

Speaker 2 Selfish.

Speaker 5 Kevin still hadn't arrived when the sentencing hearing was about to start.

Speaker 2 Bye, Brother Gidden.

Speaker 17 It's 8.53, but thank you for being here.

Speaker 2 Hope Kevin's not too late.

Speaker 5 The room was packed, most of them here for Micah. Micah's young cousins were curled up on their puffy jackets on the floor.
Finally, Kevin arrived. Dirty boots, jeans, hoodie.

Speaker 5 A screen to the judge's right rotated through portraits of Micah and candid family photos. One by one, the judge called her relatives up to speak.
They told stories about Micah.

Speaker 5 Her great-aunt Iris named eight of her own relatives who have been killed on roads in Montana.

Speaker 5 I got the sense of how relentless grief can be when new cases are opening before old ones even close.

Speaker 5 Finally, it was Kevin's turn.

Speaker 19 Judge, this day calls Kevin Howard.

Speaker 5 All right, Mr. Howard.
He slumped onto the stand, hung his ball cap on his knee.

Speaker 19 What would you like to say to the court here today?

Speaker 2 So, as you've all heard, Micah was, you know, quite a special person.

Speaker 2 As a parent, typically we teach our children. I think in my case, I learned a lot more from her than I taught her.

Speaker 5 He told the story again of Micah in the kitchen when she asked if he'd ever forgive a person who murdered her.

Speaker 2 I have no choice but to honor her wishes and forgive Mrs. White for her heinous act.

Speaker 2 But, you know, growing up on this res, I've lost other family members in similar ways that didn't receive justice. And

Speaker 2 so for that, I cannot forgive. And until there's a change that's made,

Speaker 2 I hold Lake County responsible. I hold this court responsible.

Speaker 5 He brought up what Montana Highway Patrol did to Bonnie after her daughter Marina was killed.

Speaker 2 The same lead investigator of the Highway Patrol, Wayne Beaver,

Speaker 2 stonewalled Mina's mom and basically intimidated her to just back down and let things go. So we are not receiving justice today.

Speaker 2 Even though we're all here thinking we are, you guys are pacifying us in an effort. to continue about your discriminatory practices.

Speaker 2 She will be granted parole. She's a white lady with two young children.
Why wouldn't she? That's the way the system works.

Speaker 20 All right. Well, you don't, I know everything that you're saying is completely valid.

Speaker 20 I totally understand where you're coming from, but you don't actually, you don't know what this court is going to sentence her to yet.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Your Honor. And I hope that it's not the plea deal.
I hope that

Speaker 2 we go to trial and we see exactly how this investigation took place, how we as a family were forced to investigate our own daughter's death.

Speaker 2 What kind of nonsense is that?

Speaker 2 You guys need to do better.

Speaker 2 I mean, how many families do you know personally, James, that have not received justice?

Speaker 5 He means James Lepotka, the county prosecutor.

Speaker 17 Sorry, he can't answer you.

Speaker 2 I'm done. Yeah, thank you, Your Honor.

Speaker 20 And you don't agree with the plea agreement?

Speaker 2 Absolutely not.

Speaker 20 You would have wanted this to go to trial.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. And

Speaker 2 to just to expose

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 5 treatment that you went through.

Speaker 2 Adequate investigation.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it seems like that you went through the treatment that you were subjected to, you know,

Speaker 2 is horrible.

Speaker 5 And I'm so sorry for that.

Speaker 2 Yet nothing is being done.

Speaker 20 And you know, I think that it's powerful for you to come here today, though, to talk about this. And we need to hear from folks like you who have been treated badly.
And

Speaker 20 so thank you for coming and saying all of that.

Speaker 2 All right. Thank you.
You can make the change, Your Honor. You can start the change.

Speaker 5 All right. Well, thank you very much.

Speaker 20 Anything else you'd like to add?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 20 Okay, you may step down.

Speaker 5 This is the first time the judges heard that Micah's family doesn't like the plea deal.

Speaker 5 I wondered if the judge might actually reject the plea and send the whole case back to trial. Yes, they do.
But then Carissa took the stand. Hello, everyone.

Speaker 2 Thank you for

Speaker 2 being here.

Speaker 5 She pulled out a crumpled sheet from a yellow eagle pad.

Speaker 2 I had to speak up as hard as it was when all I wanted to do was stay in bed and do nothing and just cry, but I couldn't because that's not who I am and it is not the people that I come from.

Speaker 2 And that's not the values that I instilled in my daughter. And I had to do what I had to do as hard as it was, so hard.

Speaker 2 And this is what all these other families are up against when you should just be able to grieve and trust the system, trust the law enforcement to have open communication with you and to trust that they're doing their job.

Speaker 2 And I didn't have that trust.

Speaker 2 And it's breaking our family. It's causing strain between me and my husband.
And most families, parents that lose a child, they don't survive the loss of a child.

Speaker 2 I don't know if me and my husband will survive this.

Speaker 5 At the end of her statement, they queued up the ukulele video. And right before they hit play, the judge interrupted.

Speaker 5 What I want to know, though,

Speaker 20 in addition to everything that you've already testified to, is what you think about the plea agreement.

Speaker 2 I would like that the tenure,

Speaker 2 what the attorneys are going to be fighting for, I would like that to be taken into consideration.

Speaker 5 She asked for a parole restriction, not a trial. You may step down.

Speaker 5 Only a few people spoke on Sunny's behalf. They emphasized what a good mother she was.
They said she should get a shorter prison term so that she can return to her kids sooner.

Speaker 5 Her defense attorney said that Sunny was a victim too. Her husband was abusive.
The night Sunny killed Micah, she was escaping a domestic violence incident.

Speaker 5 He was the white supremacist, the attorney said. Not Sunny.
She shouldn't be the one who shoulders all the blame.

Speaker 5 And she shouldn't have to be punished for the ways the justice system failed Micah's family.

Speaker 5 Then she passed it off to Sunny, who stood facing the judge. She wore a cream-colored blouse and read from a piece of paper.

Speaker 21 I want to start by saying I take responsibility for my actions in these matters.

Speaker 5 She immediately started talking about her own kids, how she was still breastfeeding her youngest, how she was staying sober for them.

Speaker 5 She didn't try to explain or deny her white supremacy affiliations, nor did she take full responsibility for killing Micah.

Speaker 21 To the family, friends, and loved ones of Micah Westwolf, I give my most sincerest apologies for the horrid pain and suffering that I played a part in causing you all.

Speaker 20 All right, thank you. Okay, is there any reason why sentence should not now be imposed?

Speaker 2 No, you're not.

Speaker 17 Not from defense.

Speaker 20 Okay, so I am going to go along with the plea agreement.

Speaker 5 Sonny would spend 10 years in prison.

Speaker 5 But there was still the question of whether or not she could get parole before then.

Speaker 5 The judge addressed Sunny directly.

Speaker 20 I do not find your version of events credible.

Speaker 20 This is simply you continuing to mitigate your responsibility and blaming others for what you did. So therefore, having been found guilty of Count 1,

Speaker 20 vehicular homicide while under the influence, sentences imposed as follows. The defendant shall be committed to the Montana State Prison for 25 years, with 15 of those years suspended

Speaker 20 on the following conditions. The defendant shall be ineligible for parole for a period of 10 years.

Speaker 5 She signed the power of the power of the press. Ineligible for parole.

Speaker 5 They had won.

Speaker 5 Chrissa reached for Kevin's hand, leaned into him. They stayed seated seated as their relatives huddled around to embrace them.

Speaker 20 You are remanded to the custody of the Lake County Sheriff for transportation to the Montana State Prison.

Speaker 5 All right, anything further?

Speaker 20 All right, thank you. We are adjourned for the day.

Speaker 5 Sonny was handcuffed and let out the door. Carissa finally stood and gave Lepotka a long hug.
People streamed out around them, glassy-eyed.

Speaker 5 Some supporters from the overflow room rushed Kevin. They said he should run for office.
He seemed lighter than I'd ever seen him and surprised by the judge's ruling.

Speaker 2 In a sense, justice prevailed, you know. It's the best we can hope for.

Speaker 5 Outside at the red teepee, there was hot chocolate. Anybody got mugged? Anyone that mugged? Cursa gave another speech, then checked in with all the television reporters.

Speaker 2 Those that gave testimony,

Speaker 2 we did what we came here to do today. Thank you so much.

Speaker 5 Every time they'd won something they didn't expect to win, Carissa told me she felt bittersweet. She pushed so hard to show other families that they deserved justice.

Speaker 5 And now here she was, getting what other families didn't get.

Speaker 5 Throughout the testimony, I kept looking at Bonnie, Marina's mother, wondering what she was thinking. How did it feel for you to hear Sonny White admit to killing Micah?

Speaker 6 It felt really good.

Speaker 6 It felt good.

Speaker 14 I heard her voice shake a little bit.

Speaker 6 You know, I pictured

Speaker 14 the girl that hit my daughter. I pictured her being up there.

Speaker 14 And I told myself that was okay if that didn't happen for me.

Speaker 14 I don't have to know why things happen.

Speaker 14 It just was.

Speaker 14 I cried of happiness, you know, when I left.

Speaker 3 There is some things, some justice

Speaker 3 you can get from other people's winnings.

Speaker 5 Tricia, Aiden's mom, didn't go to the sentencing. She's the one Lepaka told he couldn't file charges because the statute of limitations had passed.

Speaker 2 I um wanted to go.

Speaker 18 Uh, Carissa asked me to go,

Speaker 2 and then

Speaker 18 my stomach just it was probably anxiety or, you know, stress.

Speaker 5 I asked Tricia how she felt about the outcome.

Speaker 18 Mixed, mixed emotions, you know.

Speaker 2 Happy,

Speaker 18 mad,

Speaker 5 and mad because

Speaker 2 um, because

Speaker 20 why can't it be you?

Speaker 5 Why can't it be you? That's Trisha's mom, Georgie. They were sitting next to each other on the couch.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I'm I'm sorry.

Speaker 21 I know it's okay.

Speaker 5 Georgie went to the sentencing hearing instead of Tricia.

Speaker 14 It gives me hope that

Speaker 20 Aiden's gonna be next.

Speaker 2 That

Speaker 20 there will be some justice.

Speaker 18 I mean,

Speaker 18 that's cool. I mean, I um

Speaker 18 pretty much don't have hope anymore.

Speaker 18 But

Speaker 2 I don't want

Speaker 2 you to not have hope.

Speaker 18 I don't want Audrey to not have hope.

Speaker 5 Audrey is her daughter. Trisha's marriage didn't survive Aiden's death.
She told me it wasn't just grief. It was the way grief turned her into a different person.
An angrier person.

Speaker 5 A person exhausted from pushing for answers. This is how grief affected all of the other parents I met, which makes what Carissa and Kevin did feel even more extraordinary.

Speaker 5 But it cost them too. A week after sentencing, I got a text from Carissa.
She and Kevin broke up. When I talked to her, she wasn't sure what was going to happen between them.

Speaker 5 She said they were working on it.

Speaker 5 For the anniversary of Micah's death last month, Carissa told Kevin she wanted to spend the day in the mountains. Just them and their son.
As a family.

Speaker 4 Sarah Crane-Murdock. She's writing a new book, and a big part of it is this case.
Her first book, If you like this story, you will really like that one.

Speaker 4 It's called Yellowbird, Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country. It was a finals for the Pulitzer Prize.

Speaker 4 Keep tripping me up as I scrape my knees over the ground.

Speaker 4 I still plead for rest

Speaker 4 of

Speaker 4 my

Speaker 4 good

Speaker 4 town.

Speaker 4 Our program is produced today by Miki Meek. Dana Chivis edited the show.

Speaker 4 People who put together today's program include Jendai Bonds, Michael Comete, Emmanuel Jochi, Angela Dravasi, Catherine Raymondo, Stone Nelson, Ryan Rumery, Francis Swanson, Marisa Robertson Texter, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu.

Speaker 4 Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum.
Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry.

Speaker 4 Special thanks today to the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Sarah Tutieth, Brian Dupuy, Cheryl Horne, Dave Blanchard, and Becky Blanchard and family.

Speaker 4 This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Quick program note, we keep doing these bonus episodes every two weeks for our life partners.

Speaker 4 The latest one, I do a stand-up set on stage. If you're curious about all this and want to become a life partner, go to thisamericanlife.org slash life partners.

Speaker 4 Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Tori Maratilla.
Every day, I see him in the hallway here at the office. He always says the same exact thing to me.

Speaker 19 I'm not a white supremacist, comfort. I'm a homicide for my white supremacist friend.

Speaker 4 I believe you, Tori.

Speaker 2 I'm Ira Glass.

Speaker 4 Back next week with more stories of this American Life.

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