Sgt. Alan Two Crow
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DID SOMEONE KILL SGT. TWO CROW?
Posted by Erthavenger with thanks to Robert Eurich
Steve Young at syoung at argusleader.com or 331-2306
published: 3/9/2003
http://www.argusleader.com/news/Sundayfeature.shtml
Army rules West Point death an accident
EAGLE BUTTE - It ended in the fading light of a tranquil September evening,
as the shadows lengthened across a deer trail descending through the woods
at West Point military academy in New York.
Suddenly, a shrill whistling shattered the quiet as a 43-year-old Crow
Indian from the Bronx came running from the trees, blowing hard on his bone
whistle.
Eric Milland had just discovered a human body in those woods. And not just
any remains, but those of a military policeman - a Lakota Sioux from South
Dakota named Sgt. Alan Two Crow - for whom Milland had specifically come to
West Point to search.
He could scarcely contain himself as he hurried along the ridge. It had
taken Milland, his girlfriend, Laurie Hogan, and a mechanic named Charlie
Hetman less than two hours of wandering the academy grounds on a Saturday
afternoon to find the missing soldier.
That after the Army had spent 10 weeks vainly conducting its own search of
the academy grounds. At least 80 soldiers and New York State Police officers
with trained dogs, and a helicopter crew overhead, had canvassed the same
area after Two Crow turned up missing last July 16.
With no luck.
Army investigators had inquired at area hospitals, morgues and shelters to
see if the missing MP had shown up, thinking he might be injured or worse.
And they found nothing.
Army officials had speculated that Two Crow might have decided to bolt and
was absent without leave. That seemed unlikely, considering he had just been
honored as Soldier of the Month at West Point and had an unblemished
military record. Still, investigators extended their search to his immediate
family in Colorado Springs, Colo., and on the Cheyenne River Reservation in
South Dakota and insisted that relatives turn him in if they were harboring
him.
Which they were not.
Even now, months later, with Sgt. Alan Eugene Two Crow buried beside his
mother in the Eagle Butte Cemetery, the Army is preparing to release a final
report, announcing exactly what fate it believes befell him.
The fact that there is a report at all is due in large part to that
improbable discovery Sept. 21, when three civilians decided to drive to West
Point to see what they could turn up on a missing soldier they had heard so
much about.
To everyone's surprise -Êincluding their own -Êthey found him, ending the
mystery of Alan Two Crow's disappearance.
Or so they thought.
The truth was, Milland and the others couldn't begin to fathom the questions
about to be raised as a whistle shrilled in the tranquility of that
September evening nearly six months ago.
But they and everyone else were about to find out.
The family's rock
Alan Two Crow was descended from Sitting Bull. He was an honor student and
athlete at Cheyenne-Eagle Butte High School, from which he graduated in
1993.
After a year at the University of Colorado, he enlisted in the Army and,
within a short time, distinguished himself first as a field artillery cannon
crew member at Fort Sill, Okla., and Fort Hood, Texas. Later, while
stationed at Fort McClellan, Ala., he changed his specialty to military
policeman.
At 6-foot-1, 201 pounds, he was the pillar for his family, most recently
after the death of his mother just two months before his disappearance.
"Alan was here when she died," said his father, Don Two Crow. "He was being,
how do you call that, the steadfast rock, someone to lean on. All of us
leaned on him, me included. He took it better than I did."
On the July day he disappeared, Alan Two Crow left a bag of groceries in his
room. He left his clothes and sacred eagle feathers as well. As far as
investigators could tell, nothing was missing.
Though much of the Army's subsequent search for the young MP focused on the
possibility that he had simply left, going absent without leave - or AWOL -
that didn't seem likely. He had no vehicle registered at the post. No
surveillance cameras at West Point had picked up images of him leaving. And
long after he disappeared, there was no activity in his checking account or
on his credit cards or ATM card.
Besides, Two Crow had been honored in June as Soldier of the Month at West
Point. He had just graduated from the Army's Leadership Development Course
and had been promoted to sergeant. He also had re-enlisted for six more
years so he could transfer to Colorado Springs, Colo., and be closer to his
2-year-old son, Jaise, and his ex-wife.
"I talked to one of their people, Lt. Col. James Rice, about a month after
Alan disappeared," Don Two Crow said. "Rice said to me, ÔMaybe Alan
didn't like the military any more.' And I said he had talked to me on July 3
and said, "Dad, I want to make the Army a career.' "
Questions about death
The AWOL theory disintegrated quickly in the days after Alan Two Crow's
remains were found. The Army immediately decided the 27-year-old had died
accidentally.
Investigators believe he left the apartment of a friend, Sgt. Graig Meeks,
in the early hours of July 14 after a night of watching "Platoon" and
drinking Doc's Hard Lemon. Two Crow took a shortcut through the woods back
to his barracks and, according to the Army's theory, slipped while going
over rugged terrain, fell and broke his neck.
All of that sounded highly suspicious to his family.
For starters, Two Crow wasn't a heavy drinker, relatives say.
"He would drink socially and occasionally," his ex-wife, Toni Gurule, said
from her home in Colorado Springs. "But he was not a drunk ... which they
say was why he may have fallen.' "
An autopsy done at West Point revealed no evidence of alcohol or drugs in
Two Crow's remains.
His relatives also don't believe he somehow misstepped on his way down the
ridge to his barracks, a half mile away from the Stony Lonesome housing
complex where Meeks lived.
"Alan was in very good shape and an avid runner," his ex-wife said. "He knew
the terrain. So if he was going to head back to his room that night, he
would have taken the clear path because he could have run it so quickly.
Besides, it was a clear moonlit night, said state Rep. Tom Van Norman,
D-Eagle Butte, a Cheyenne River tribal lawyer who is assisting the Two Crow
family.
On top of that, Two Crow died of a "subluxation" - or twisting - of his
neck, the autopsy showed. There was nothing broken, pathologists say. The
vertebrae in his neck were simply misaligned, or partially pulled apart.
So how did he step off a ridge and tumble down a hill without suffering any
bruises or fractures? ask Van Norman and Jimmy Norris, a detective with the
Cheyenne River tribe who has been to West Point and seen where Two Crow was
found.
Certainly he would have put out his hands or arms to break his fall, Norris
said, and they should have been bruised or fractured. There should have been
blood, skin or DNA samples on the rocks he supposedly tumbled over. He was
missing a front tooth, and Norris wonders, what happened to it? If Two Crow
accidentally stepped off a ridge in the dark and fell as the Army
investigators suspect, why did they find no broken tree branches or plants
where he tumbled?
"There are at least four physical areas where he supposedly fell where a
body would have stopped before it ended up where it did," Norris said. "A
body would have been stopped by boulders or trees or an outcropping of rock.
It would not have twisted down the hill that far."
No, Alan Two Crow's family doesn't buy any part of a scenario that he was
drunk and tumbled to an accidental death. What they do believe is that the
Army did a slipshod job, first in trying to find him and later in
investigating the circumstances of his death.
They also suspect Two Crow might have been murdered. There are just too many
odd and unexplained circumstances behind his death, they say, to believe
anything else.
Baffling search
Perhaps the most perplexing aspect of Two Crow's disappearance is how, after
10 weeks, the Army had failed to find the soldier's body on its own grounds
when three civilians sauntered in on a Saturday afternoon last September and
located him within two hours.
West Point officials insisted they did a thorough search beginning July 17 -
a day after Two Crow failed to show up for a duty assignment after a
four-day pass.
In a letter dated Sept. 27 to Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., West Point's
superintendent said the academy grounds were searched as many as five times
between July 17 and July 25 by as many as 80 base personnel and New York
State Police officers, as well as by dogs - even a helicopter crew.
"Although I understand and share the family's frustrations that Sergeant Two
Crow remained missing for over two months, I assure you that the leaders,
soldiers, and law enforcement personnel at the United States Military
Academy took extraordinary steps" to locate him, Lt. Gen. Bill Lennox wrote.
Marc Raimondi, spokesman for the Army's Criminal Investigations Division in
Washington, D.C., said he couldn't speak to the search efforts conducted by
the base because his CID agency wasn't involved. He also said he couldn't
discuss the CID's current investigation into Two Crow's death until the
family is briefed on its final report. That briefing is waiting for Don Two
Crow, Alan's father, to return from Texas, where he and other volunteers
from Eagle Butte are searching for pieces of the Columbia space shuttle.
Still, from an Army standpoint, it certainly is difficult to put a positive
spin on West Point's inability to find Two Crow, admitted Lt. Col. John
Einwechter, a liaison between the Army and Congress who has worked with
Johnson's office on the issue. Though he is not familiar with the details of
the search, "there is no way to excuse the failure" of not finding Two Crow,
Einwechter said.
"They just have to hang their heads and say, ÔDoggone it, we did the best we
could, and we just couldn't find him,' " Einwechter said. "They took many
people, New York State Police spotters and dogs, the whole nine yards ...
and it was just bad luck."
Raimondi added: "Obviously, we take the well-being of all our soldiers
seriously. It certainly
wasn't our intent not to find this missing soldier."
Location of body
So why couldn't the Army locate Sgt. Alan Two Crow?
After all, if the soldier tripped, fell and broke his neck, his body then
would have been exposed to the summertime heat and elements for 10 weeks,
relatives and tribal officials say.
"His body is 500 feet from this playground, where all these children from
Stony Lonesome play every day," Norris, the tribal detective, said. "How
couldn't there have been a terrible smell? Why weren't they looking for
buzzards above the hillside?"
Norris said Two Crow's MP commander, Capt. Brian Locke, told him searchers
stood on the ridge above the woods where the remains were found, as well as
in the gully toward the barracks -Êwith no more than 150 feet between them.
"He said, ÔIf my guys were on this ridge and in that valley, and they were
looking eye to eye at each other, I can't explain' " why they didn't find
him, Norris said.
Locke did not return a telephone call seeking comment.
It would make sense, too, that a search dog standing on the ridge would have
smelled something, Norris said. The winds at West Point typically blow north
and up the ridge.
"He'd go nuts," the detective said of a search dog. "You could smell it in
the area when we went out there after the body was found, when they had a
service there for Alan."
On top of that, the woods weren't particularly thick where Two Crow's
remains were found, said Wayne Hall of Middletown, N.Y., a reporter for the
Times Herald-Record who covered the story.
"There was no forest canopy overhead," Hall said. "There was an opening, so
he was relatively exposed."
Two Crow's family and fellow Cheyenne River tribal members have their own
opinions about why no one saw or smelled the remains of the young MP. Chief
among them is the belief that he wasn't in the woods at all when the
military was searching.
"What are the obvious answers?" Van Norman said. "A, that they searched and
missed him.
B, the search was so bad that they botched it. Or C, he was dumped there
after the search. As for me, I believe it was C."
Van Norman speculated that Two Crow could have been murdered and placed in
the woods only after his killers knew for certain that West Point officials
had concluded their search.
Elusive suspects
But who would want to kill Alan Two Crow?
The family and their supporters have pondered those possibilities at length.
They have heard rumors from West Point that Two Crow might have had an
affair with another soldier's wife. That has never been substantiated.
At one point, Special Agent Lorrie Dinsmore with the Army's CID at West
Point sent Two Crow's ex-wife, Gurule, an e-mail asking her whether she knew
who Sitting Bull was.
Though Dinsmore later explained that she had found the name "Sitting Bull"
in Two Crow's papers and wondered if it was a nickname for someone, Van
Norman and others speculate that maybe Two Crow's death is tied to Sitting
Bull's defeat of Gen. George Custer at the Little Bighorn in 1876.
Everyone knows Custer's connection to West Point," Van Norman said. "Maybe
this is the Army versus the Indians all over again. Maybe it's revenge. Only
this time one of the Army's own is murdered, one of their best."
Those familiar with West Point call that a stretch, insisting there are
dozens of Native American soldiers on the post. There would have been no
reason to single out Two Crow, they say.
On the other hand, he could have made enemies for reasons that had nothing
to do with his ethnicity, soldiers told tribal members when they went to
West Point on Oct. 7 for a memorial service for Two Crow. If so, the
military teaches its soldiers a method for killing the enemy that results in
the very kind of injury from which Two Crow died.
"These MPs actually demonstrated to us how easy it is to kill someone by
twisting their neck," Van Norman said. "They put their hands on each side of
the head and showed us exactly how to do it."
The family also speculates there might have been a struggle at the time of
Two Crow's death because he was missing one of his top front teeth when he
was found.
Dr. Brad Randall of Sioux Falls, a forensic pathologist who conducted a
second autopsy on the body at the family's request, said he found no damage
to Two Crow's tooth socket. Most likely, the tooth fell out in the decaying
process, Randall said. But Van Norman and Norris wonder then why the tooth
wasn't recovered with the rest of his remains.
Also significant to the family is the fact that the autopsy did not reveal
the presence of alcohol or drugs in Two Crow's system -Êvalidating to them
that he was not stumbling drunk at the time of his death.
But Randall said alcohol or drugs could have worked their way out of his
system during decomposition.
As for the actual injury that killed Two Crow, Randall said his neck
appeared to be stretched to the point of the vertebrae becoming misaligned
or partially pulled apart. While no bones were broken, "the potential exists
that the spinal cord was damaged or severed," he said. "You can't tell
because it was deteriorated."
Randall said a fall might not have caused other bruises or fractures, as the
family has argued.
"I've seen falls where I thought people would have been badly banged up, and
they weren't particularly," Randall said.
Does that rule out, then, that Two Crow was not murdered? Not necessarily,
the Sioux Falls pathologist said.
"If we assume he has a broken neck, we don't know how he ended up with that
broken neck," Randall said. "Did he fall? Was he pushed? Did someone do a
commando trick on the neck and break it? Did he die of a drug overdose, and
we can't find evidence of the drug, and someone threw him over a cliff?
"Who knows? You could come up with a zillion scenarios that would all fit
with what we found."
Missing details
Don Two Crow and others believe some of those answers could reside with the
last people to see Alan Two Crow alive.
They have been told that on the night he disappeared, Alan Two Crow had gone
to the home of Meeks, a fellow sergeant and MP, in married housing at the
Stony Lonesome complex.
The two were going to pick up Meeks' wife the next day from an airport in
the area. Meeks had just moved from the barracks where Two Crow lived and
was waiting for his wife to join him.
According to press releases and news coverage of Two Crow's disappearance,
as well as conversations the family had with soldiers at the academy, at
least three or four others had been at Meeks' place that night as well,
including several MPs and several women. At some point, the others left or
went to bed. When Meeks awoke, he told investigators, Two Crow was gone.
That's the short version, Van Norman said, adding that he, Don Two Crow and
the others have yet to see any interviews of Meeks or the others to find out
detailed information of what actually happened that night.
Meeks would not talk to them when they approached him at West Point, where
they had gone for the memorial service, Van Norman asked. Nor did Meeks
return a telephone call from the Argus Leader to the MP headquarters at West
Point.
"What exactly was Alan doing the night he disappeared? What was going on?"
Van Norman said. "That information is critical, and the family has a right
to know. But in all these months, they've told us nothing. We're still
waiting for the answers."
Lack of publicity
Two Crow's family and friends also were troubled by the length of time it
took West Point to publicize the MP's disappearance. Alan Two Crow was
supposed to be coming off a four-day pass when he didn't show up for work
July 16. His ex-wife said she was notified that night of his absence. Don
Two Crow said he was informed about the same time.
But the academy didn't put out a news release about his disappearance until
Aug. 23 -Êalmost six weeks later.
That was amazing to Maureen La Burt, a senior editor for Native News Online,
a Web site devoted to news on tribal people. She works in Tuxedo, N.Y., near
West Point, but didn't know about the missing soldier until she saw a story
Aug. 24 in the Oklahoma Indian Times.
"I remember being stunned. ... when this is pretty much in my back yard," La
Burt said. "I had never heard about it."
Wayne Hill, the reporter with the Middletown Times Herald-Record, told La
Burt and tribal officials on Sept. 6 that he knew nothing about Two Crow's
disappearance.
West Point officials did move quickly to enter Two Crow's name in the
National Crime Information Center computer, even as they began searching the
academy grounds and checking out area bus depots, hospitals, even morgues.
They also check with law enforcement in New York City because Two Crow had
told friends he might head there for his days off.
They took the job of finding Two Crow seriously from the beginning, West
Point Superintendent Lennox insisted in his letter to Johnson.
"... The military police and Criminal Investigation Division conducted an
extensive missing person's investigation and sought and received the
assistance from New York State Police, local law enforcement agencies, and
media outlets within an extended area surrounding West Point," Lennox said.
However, La Burt said she started calling area police stations and the New
York State Police between Aug. 24 and Sept 5, and they hadn't heard about
the missing MP. A frustrated Gurule, Two Crow's ex-wife, fired off an e-mail
to Agent Dinsmore of the Army's Criminal Investigations Division on Sept. 6,
2002, complaining that her checks of media outlets and police departments in
the West Point area had revealed that few knew about the missing military
policeman.
"I cannot stress to you how distraught I am over the fact that even though I
have checked every day, I am finding very little out there," Gurule said. "I
hope that you would agree with me in that after two months of searching,
this is not a good thing."
Though the Army will not respond to specific questions about Two Crow's
disappearance and death until it has a chance to brief his family,
Einwechter, the Army liaison working with Johnson's office, offered a
possibility for West Point's initial delay in releasing information to the
public on the missing man.
"I would tell you that they believed he was in New York City," Einwechter
said of Two Crow. "That's where he said he was going."
In addition to that, local law enforcement discovered several bodies in the
area soon after Two Crow's disappearance, Einwechter said. Each was checked
and determined not to be him.
"The Army doesn't want to hide anything here," Einwechter said. "But it is
kind of astounding, these bodies showing up. That may have caused some
delays, a couple of pauses in their search for Sgt. Two Crow up at West
Point. But I'm only speculating."
AWOL allegations
To West Point, Two Crow was a senior MP missing at a time when America was
at war against terrorists in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in
New York and Washington, D.C.
In public statements, Lt. Col. James Whaley, a spokesman for West Point,
insisted the family shouldn't be upset that Two Crow was listed as AWOL.
"It's actually just the Army's way of saying that someone is missing,"
Whaley said. "It's the category he fits into."
But if that were true, the family insists West Point officials didn't convey
that attitude.
Gurule said that in the first weeks after her ex-husband's disappearance,
she received numerous calls from Army officials who believed he had gone
AWOL.
"Several times in my conversations with one of their CID investigators, she
suggested we were hiding him and that there would be people watching my
house, so if I was hiding him, he would be found," Gurule said.
Don Two Crow said he ran into similar attitudes. At one point, he was even
asked to prove his paternity to West Point officials, a request he
considered racist. He said he, too, was warned to turn his son in if he was
hoping for sanctuary on the Cheyenne River Reservation.
"They were constantly commenting on the reservation, and could he be there
since it was Ôeasy for them to hide on the reservation,' and the military
couldn't get to them easily there," Gurule recalled.
While they aren't commenting now, West Point officials gave conflicting
impressions on the AWOL issue in letters they wrote while Two Crow was
missing.
In a note to Gurule dated Aug. 5, 2002, Locke, who was Alan Two Crow's MP
commander, warned her to turn in her ex-husband if she was harboring him.
"Your husband's absence could result in a trial by court-martial with loss
of pay and allowances which could mean that his dependents would lose all
rights to receive allotments, medical care, commissary and post exchange
privileges, and other military benefits," Locke wrote.
"... If you know where he is, please urge him to return immediately to
military control at the nearest military installation in order to avoid
serious consequences or prolonged unauthorized absence."
In his letter last Sept. 27 to Sen. Johnson, written after Two Crow's
remains were found, West Point Superintendent Lennox sounded an entirely
different tone on the MP's disappearance.
"Because of his outstanding performance and reputation," Lennox said in
part, "Sergeant Two Crow was believed to be missing, not absent without
leave."
'Like ... Keystone Kops'
Members of the citizen search party who found Two Crow's body offered family
members even more reason for concern about the Army's investigation into the
death.
Hetman is a former MP at West Point who runs an auto-body shop on the post
where soldiers can work on their vehicles. Milland is a Crow Indian from the
Bronx who had read about Two Crow's disappearance and, with his girlfriend,
Laurie Hogan, volunteered to help look for him. It was La Burt at Native
News Online who came to know these three strangers and basically brought
them together last Sept. 21 to search for the missing soldier.
Looking back on that search, and on the investigation that followed, Hetman
and Milland describe scenes that were at times comical, and at times highly
suspicious.
"I remember when the MPs started showing up to section off the area as a
crime scene and to take our information," Hetman, 41, said. "It was after 7
and starting to get dark. And none of them had a flashlight.
"So what do they do but borrow Eric's cigarette lighter. On a swing shift,
you bring a flashlight. I mean, c'mon. It's like they're the Keystone Kops."
As a former MP, Hetman also found it unusual that post officials quickly had
them removed from the scene.
"I thought, technically, when you have witnesses, you don't leave the crime
scene," he said. "Under normal procedures, those witnesses wouldn't leave.
And you'd want to separate them so they don't collaborate."
None of which was done, he added.
Though forensic teams came and photographed the scene where Two Crow's
remains were found, the pictures Hetman and Milland have seen since don't
necessarily jibe with what they remember.
They found Two Crow lying on his left side, his head facing downhill. His
right arm was bent at the elbow near his head; the palm was up and holding
an acorn. His left arm was lying extended above his head. His legs were
pulled up in a fetal position.
"In the forensics photos, his left arm is detached," Hetman said. "There's
not one photo where it was attached. But it was attached when we found him."
Similarly, there was a rock wedged against the back of his head when they
found him, Hetman said. But it's not there in the forensics photos.
"Someone moved the body," he said. "I don't know why. From the time we left
until the time forensics got there, it was changed. Why would they move it?"
Neither man believes Two Crow accidentally fell to his death.
"There is no way. If you trip and you stumble and you start falling, you're
going to put your left arm out and have broken fingers or a broken wrist,
trying to stop the fall. He had no broken bones," said Hetman. "So you can
think of a lot of scenarios, but there's no possible scenario that he fell
down. Not based on what I saw."
Reservation briefing
On Oct. 1, 2002, in a conference room at the Super 8 Motel in Eagle Butte,
seven military personnel briefed the people of the Cheyenne River
Reservation on what they believe happened to Alan Two Crow.
With flip charts and information packets, West Point officials tried to
answer questions about how the young MP died, what they did to try to find
him and what kind of investigation was conducted into his death.
The information was not well received among Two Crow's people.
"I think ... it left more questions for me," said Cheyenne River tribal
Chairman Harold Frazier.
There were sketchy points. According to Don Two Crow and Van Norman, West
Point's representatives couldn't agree on whether the status of the
investigation was open or closed, or whether the death was considered
accidental or foul play, or even whether the place where Two Crow's remains
were found was considered a crime scene.
"They sent no documents our way to justify anything they were telling us,"
Van Norman said. "They just schmoozed us."
Still, Two Crow's amily acted with respect. The Army sent a color guard for
the funeral Oct. 3 in Eagle Butte. The young MP was buried next to his
mother in the Eagle Butte Cemetery. And when the Army officials went back to
New York for a memorial service four days later, they took a number of star
quilts with them presented by the tribe and family.
But the briefings and the eulogies and the burial brought no finality to
Sgt. Alan Two Crow's death - far from it. Don Two Crow; his children; his
ex-daughter-in-law, Gurule; Van Norman; and other tribal members still had
too many questions.
In fact, they insisted on an independent investigation by the FBI to provide
answers. And they enlisted their congressmen, particularly Johnson, to help
get it.
Investigation boost
Last November, the Army CID decided to augment the initial investigation
into Two Crow's death with more senior and experienced investigators out of
its command office in Washington, D.C.
It did so for a number of reasons, including the family's concerns and a
U.S. senator's inquiries, said Einwechter, the liaison between the Army and
Sen. Johnson's office.
"Because of the interest of the senator, that drew the attention of the
Department of the Army to the case in a more focused way than otherwise
would have been," Einwechter said.
CID sent a number of additional investigators to West Point to reinterview
people and, among other things, to do additional testing at the scene where
Two Crow's remains were found.
Joe Roberts, a staff assistant for Johnson, said he learned in January that
the Army had reclassified Two Crow's death from accidental to undetermined.
Einwechter would not confirm or deny that, though Roberts insisted
Einwechter told him as much.
"I took this change in status to be a step up, where now it's being looked
at and examined more fully," Roberts said.
Even so, the family and tribe maintain they were promised an independent
look at the case by the FBI. That request was supported by the National
Congress of American Indians - the oldest and largest organization of tribes
in America.
But to date, it hasn't happened.
"When the West Point people came for Alan's funeral and had their briefing,
they promised that they would invite in the FBI to do an independent
investigation," Don Two Crow said. "It needs to be independent so it doesn't
look like the Army is trying to cover something up. That's the main thing I
want. But they haven't kept their word."
When Johnson sent a letter to the FBI in October inquiring as to its ability
to join the investigation, he was told the agency had offered its services
but was turned down.
Arthur Baker, a spokesman for the FBI, told Johnson in a letter that
"without a request from the West Point authorities, we have no authority to
take any investigative action in this case."
Both Einwechter and Maj. Kent Cassella, the chief of public information for
West Point, insisted the FBI's assistance wasn't needed.
"The FBI doesn't bring any extra capabilities that we don't have in the
Department of the Army," Einwechter said. Nor does he believe inviting in
the FBI would resolve any potential suspicions that the Army might be trying
to cover something up, as the family fears.
"The FBI checks malfeasance and criminal acts by employees of the federal
government, and that's where they get their paychecks from. And no one
questions their independence," Einwechter said.
New report
About a month ago, Army CID investigators finished their latest look at the
Two Crow Case.
According to the agency's spokesman, Raimondi, they are ready to brief the
family on their findings. It's just a matter of getting everyone together
now.
Don Two Crow expects to be home later this month. By then, his friend and
legal counsel, Van Norman, should be done with this year's South Dakota
legislative session. If Gurule wants to come up from Colorado Springs, she
could, too, he said.
Then the Army should come to Eagle Butte to brief them and the tribe on its
findings, Don Two Crow said. He would like to see that happen by as soon as
possible, though he believes he knows what the Army will say.
"I think they still believe it's accidental," he said recently by cell phone
from Texas. "They don't want to admit their mistakes. I mean, they'll answer
our questions on why they didn't find him. But they don't want to admit what
really happened here."
If that in fact happens, then Two Crow promised to keep pushing for the FBI
investigation. It's the only way he, Van Norman, Gurule and the others
believe the matter will be resolved to their satisfaction.
"It needs to be a separate and complete investigation, unbotched as West
Point did it," Gurule said. "Alan could not have met that demise without
someone or other people involved."
Somewhere, somehow, there are answers out there that haven't been revealed
since that serene September evening when Milland searched through the woods
at West Point and shattered the tranquility with his bone whistle, they say.
And all these weeks and months later, it is going to take something more
than what the Army has told them so far to satisfy friends, family and
tribal members.
"It's out there, somewhere," Don Two Crow said. "I just want to know from
someone who doesn't have anything to cover up what it was that happened to
my son."
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Photograph--Alfred Bone Shirt Sr. wearing a peace medal.