AG: Aquash case might solve other Wounded Knee cases

FORT PIERRE, S.D. (AP) – Now that John Graham is in prison for life for murdering Annie Mae Aquash in December 1975 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, perhaps other cold cases related to the Wounded Knee incidents four decades ago can be solved, Attorney General Marty Jackley said during a presentation.

Jackley prosecuted Graham successfully in 2010, 35 years after Aquash’s body was found lying in a “cradle position,” showing she was alive and suffered after Graham put a bullet in her head, he told about 40 people at the Casey Tibbs Rodeo Center Museum in Fort Pierre. It was a benefit for the museum.

The story of how the cold case was kept from the deep freeze by a string of judges, prosecutors and witnesses, several of them American Indians who wanted justice for Aquash, even though it probably damaged the legacy of Leonard Peltier and other leaders of the American Indian Movement, shows the good side of law enforcement in South Dakota, Jackley said.

He also expressed frustration with federal judges who decided to drop the case because Graham was a Canadian Indian and therefore, according to the judges, not under the jurisdiction of the federal government. That, however, gave him the opportunity to prosecute Graham in the state court system in Rapid City.

Jackley played video excerpts, including some that were entered as evidence at Graham’s trial and cited other evidence, the Capital Journal reported.

For example, it was in 1975, during a long road trip in a Winnebago given to American Indian Movement leaders by actor Marlon Brando, that Aquash and others heard Peltier brag about killing the FBI agent as the agent knelt, begging for his life, according to trial testimony from 2010. Within three months, Aquash was murdered, after being kidnapped and raped by Graham, Jackley said.

Jackley showed a video excerpt of former AIM founder and leader Russell Means, who died in 2012, speaking several years ago saying that Aquash’s murder was planned and ordered by AIM leaders at a key meeting in the South Dakota home of his brother Bill “Kill” Means.

Russell Means went on to be a successful actor and some federal investigators disagree with Jackley over whether Means was involved in Aquash’s death.

Jackley said, however, that he got to know Means over many years and believes he had nothing to do with the criminal conspiracy to kill Aquash, although Jackley said Means had been involved in an earlier murder and other crimes.

Means also aided Jackley and others in law enforcement in the case, Jackley said.

AIM has many good members who have and continue to work to improve the lives of Indians, Jackley said. “Unfortunately there were some bad actors in AIM.”

After his presentation, an American Indian woman who said she had known Means thanked the attorney general for his work on the case in winning justice for Aquash.

Jackley said there’s more justice to seek.

Another still unsolved Wounded Knee case even older than Aquash’s is that of Ray Robinson, the black civil rights activist from Alabama killed in 1973 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation shortly after he arrived to help AIM.

“No one has ever been held responsible for Ray Robinson’s death,” said Jackley. But he said he suspects that John Graham might have information about Robinson’s death.

“The problem is we have no body,” he said.

It was only last April that the FBI finally confirmed that Robinson had been killed during the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation and that it suspects AIM members of killing him. The vast area of the reservation has been searched many times, including with ground-penetrating radar, Jackley said.

Graham might play a role.

Graham, who is serving life in prison, will never get out unless a governor pardons him or unless Graham himself decides to cooperate with law enforcement in solving other crimes of which he has knowledge, Jackley said. He said he’s promised Aquash’s two daughters, one of whom is “a Mounty,” an officer in the Canadian Royal Canadian Mounted Police, that he won’t cooperate with cutting Graham any deals unless the daughters agree.

Jackley explained the big break in the Aquash case came in 1994 when Arlo Looking Cloud, driven by his own conscience, confessed his involvement to federal investigators, which re-opened the long dormant case. Sentenced to life in federal prison, Looking Cloud testified against Graham.

Jackley said one of the collateral effects of Graham’s conviction is that it seemed to finally put an end to much of the popular, Hollywood-heavy support for Peltier as a victim of the federal authorities.

The testimony about the motive of AIM members in murdering Aquash – much of it from other AIM activists – revolved around her firsthand knowledge of Peltier’s acknowledging to other AIM leaders that he had killed the two FBI agents in 1975 on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Russell Means and other AIM members, as well as prosecutors such as Jackley, have said that was the reason Aquash was murdered – so she would not tell the FBI about Peltier’s confession.

Graham hasn’t acknowledged publicly to his role in Aquash’ murder, Jackley said.

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Information from: Pierre Capital Journal, http://www.capjournal.com