Information
Name: Flathead
Tribes:
Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai & Pend d'Oreilles
Population: 26,172
Native: 20%
Counties: Flathead,
Lake, Missoula,
Sanders
The Dixon Bar was the last place Everett Fyant did the things he loved — drinking, dancing and laughing.
At closing time on April 22, 1988, Everett reportedly left the bar after drinking for several hours with a friend and a truck driver who had parked near the area where Everett was found the next morning. A number of patrons at the bar that night told police that Everett had argued with the two men.
When he left the bar, Everett was likely crossing the street to stay the night at his friend George Markuson's house. Markuson told police he'd unlocked the front door and put a blanket on the couch for Everett, though he never heard him enter. He called police the next morning after finding Everett on the side of the road.
Everett was unconscious and would never regain responsiveness before his death that August.
The question of what exactly happened to Everett in the early morning hours of April 22 remains unanswered. However, as an article from the Char Koosta News stated about a year after the incident: "Foul play was involved, that is a fact no one is debating."
The most likely scenario is a hit and run. Dr. John Pfaff, a Great Falls pathologist, determined that Everett's legs had been snapped by a powerful force and not crushed. Reports say skid marks on the highway indicated that the driver of a large truck had braked, released, and then applied the brakes again. Trucks carrying potatoes from Idaho and Washington to Lake County tend to travel on Highway 200 throughout the month of April, local news articles stated.
The family believes Everett also might have been robbed. Everett's sister Virginia Butler cites the fact that her brother's wallet contained only one dollar bill, folded up and stuffed in a back compartment, when it was given back to the family. She also claims she overheard one of the physicians in the hospital say that Everett's head and neck injuries occurred at different times.
Butler spent more time talking to officials about the case than did other family members. She says police also told her that Everett may have been beaten after stumbling upon a drug transaction.
Nevertheless, after a month of interviews, tribal officer Jacque Morigeau concluded in his police report that Everett had been killed in a hit and run, though he said at the time that the case would be kept open. Beginning the spring after Everett's death, the Fyant family offered rewards to anyone who could provide information that would lead to an arrest. At first they put forward $2,000. This was eventually upped to $25,000.
"None of us had any money, but we figured we'd get it if anyone had information leading to a prosecution," Everett's daughter Shelly says.
Some people claimed to know something and Butler spoke with many of them, including a woman who insisted on meeting in a Safeway
shopping aisle. Butler would not say what the woman told her.
"Money will bring out strange things," Butler says.
It only takes about 15 minutes of talking about her dad before Shelly Fyant produces a large box of Puffs tissue and places it on her kitchen table, cluttered at the moment with faded photos representing the years that Everett was alive. He is smiling in all of them.