Photos by
Shane McMillan

Information


Name: Crow

Tribe: Crow

Population: 6,900

Native: 75%

Counties: Big Horn,
Yellowstone

"We live in a society where we expect government, and we have the right to expect the government, to do something when we are the victims of crime," Bangert says. "Even though it just concerns three plaintiffs, I think it's a major, major case."

Eric Barnhart, the current Billings senior supervising resident FBI agent, wasn't serving in Montana at the time of the initial investigations. But he is named in the suit because he now heads the Billings field office.

Barnhart says his office isn't keeping any secrets from the families. He says many of the details the FBI does withhold involve information necessary for a complete and fair investigation, as well as information that cannot be revealed for privacy reasons.

"We're not not giving out information because we have something to hide," Barnhart says. "I understand there is frustration on the part of the victims, but that doesn't mean we can tell them anything they want."

Barnhart says the FBI dedicates all available resources to investigating homicides. And Montana U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer says the federal government has come a long way in its investigations and prosecutions of felonies in Indian Country. "We have a lot of good people on the ground," Mercer says.

The Coles feel they've been treated with contempt almost from the moment they learned their son had been shot.

Earline and her other sons were running errands in Billings when they saw the first responders head out Highway 87. On the way home she found out her son was at the Leachman ranch. When they arrived at the scene at about 6:30 p.m., Earline was met by the foreman, Reitman.

"'Bob shot Steve,'" Earline says Reitman told her. "The second he said that, what I thought since nobody was rushing around, maybe he got nicked, maybe on the leg, nothing serious."

She walked toward three Yellowstone County sheriff's deputies standing near the trailer.

"I said, 'I'm Steve's mother,' and they didn't even answer me. They ignored me," she says. "I asked a second time and they still ignored me. So the third time, I kind of yelled and said, 'I'm Steve's mother, is he all right?' And the one sheriff turned around and just kind of looked at me and said, 'No he's not all right. He died.'"

Once the FBI took over the investigation, because it occurred on an Indian reservation where the federal government has jurisdiction over major crimes, the Coles say things only got worse. The family also says the FBI failed to inform the Bureau of Indian Affairs about the shooting as policy requires. BIA officers arrived on scene, but were reduced to watching the road and not allowed to pursue an investigation, according to the family.

The Coles claim Oravec, the lead FBI investigator named in the lawsuit, was short-tempered, rude and seemed indifferent to the outcome of the case. They say Weyand, his supervisor at the time, didn't push Oravec to fulfill his duties.

Shortly after their son's death, the Coles met for a case update with agents Weyand and Oravec. In that meeting, the family says Oravec kept checking his watch and a wall clock, looking down as they talked. It frustrated them that Oravec acted as if he had somewhere else to be.

Midway through the roughly 45-minute meeting, the Coles say, Oravec looked up and asked, "Who is Steven?"

"I think that stunned everybody," Cletus says. "I'm looking at this guy and wondering, 'Man, how can this guy not even know what we're talking about?'" He says even Weyand seemed to be caught off guard by Oravec's remark.