858: How to Tell a Dumb American Story

Ira Glass

Sierra Crane Murdoch has 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. He said his daughter Mika 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. Mika was Native, a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation.

Lots of Native people are killed in hit-and-runs, and the drivers are rarely brought to justice. And Sierra thought she might be able to document why by diving into Mika's case, because Mika's parents had recordings of nearly all their interactions with law enforcement. Mika's parents did some other things, too. They were very strategic and did some extraordinary things other families had not tried to make sure Mika's case was one that the authorities could not ignore.

That story and how it unfolded, and what it's like to be a couple making that happen, that's going to be our whole show today. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. And with that, I hand it over to Sierra.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Mika's family lives on the Flathead Indian Reservation. It's in a valley, surrounded by big, toothy mountains. Mika was 22 years old the night she was killed. She'd been out with her younger brother. They'd gone to a bar to buy cigarettes. On their way home, Mika 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. She'd go back to the bar to get it, and then she'd walk home.

Hours later, around 4:00 AM, a tribal police officer found her body on the side of the road, Highway 93. The officer, a friend of Kevin's, drove to his house and woke him up.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Later that day, Kevin and his wife Carissa Heavy Runner, Mika's mother, took a cross and a teddy bear to the roadside where she'd been found. 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 Mika's phone. 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.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Mika was constantly challenging her parents, but not in a get-in-trouble kind of way. They were close. 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. 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.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: A week after Mika's death, Kevin got a text from a friend. The driver who killed Mika wasn't in jail, like he'd been told. Her name was Sunny White. She was 28 years old. Police were looking for her, not because she'd killed Mika, but because she'd allegedly just kidnapped her two kids. There was a police alert out for her.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Aryan and Nation. Carissa also got a text from a friend around the same time.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Carissa and Kevin had so many questions. First, why wasn't Sunny White in jail? Hours after she hit and killed Mika, Sunny had been arrested for child endangerment, not vehicular homicide. 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 Mika's phone? He'd promised to call, but he never did. Carissa and Kevin started blowing up his phone. They called every day for a week-- nothing. Then a friend dialed him from her phone, a number he didn't recognize, and he picked up.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Bieber tells Carissa he's applied for some warrants and then keeps talking about how busy he is.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: I asked Montana Highway Patrol several times for an interview with Wayne Bieber, but they declined.

Ira Glass

Sierra Crane Murdoch. Coming up, Kevin and Carissa 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.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. Sierra Crane Murdoch picks up the story of Mika Westwolf and her parents.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: The distrust Native families have of law enforcement is centuries old. Starting in the 1860s, the US troops that had been stationed on reservations were replaced with police forces. These police took Native children from their families to send to boarding schools, arrested holy men for practicing religious ceremonies, and quelled rebellions.

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. Meanwhile, a lot of crimes affecting tribal citizens were never investigated or prosecuted.

In the 1960s, the federal government turned over its jurisdiction on the Flathead reservation to the state of Montana, but Montana has been reluctant to spend money on policing the reservation, and tribal members' distrust of law enforcement has only grown.

Carissa and Kevin were convinced Bieber wasn't investigating Mika's case, so they tried investigating on their own. They started working with a tribal advocate who helps families of murder victims. Her name is Erica Shelby. She knocked on every door within a few miles of where Mika was killed, looking for surveillance footage and witnesses. One business had a direct view. She connected Carissa and Kevin with a lawyer to make sure the business preserved the footage.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Three weeks after Mika's death, Bieber finally visited Kevin and Carissa at their house. They remember him standing awkwardly in the kitchen. Carissa is seated at the kitchen island. Kevin is in a recliner behind her. Erica is there, too, taking notes. The meeting feels tense, restrained. They can't get an answer to their main question, why wasn't Sunny White behind bars?

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: A walk path. He's not talking about Sunny White's intoxication. He's talking about Mika's. This is the first time anyone in law enforcement has mentioned to Kevin and Carissa that Mika might have been drunk.

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. 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--

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: "The totality of the circumstances"-- Bieber will repeat this phrase 11 times in the recording. It's pretty vague what he means, and you hear Kevin trying to get Bieber to clarify, to pick apart his logic.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Kevin asks him if he's gathering any of the surveillance footage from the night Mika was killed, the footage they'd been working to preserve. Maybe this could tell them something, like if Sunny swerved, or if she stopped when she hit Mika, or sped up.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Carissa is quiet. She's now suspicious of Bieber. He has Mika's phone with him, and he asks her for the code to open and search it. She refuses.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: He says no. Kevin told me Bieber held up the phone in an evidence bag, sealed it shut.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: When the Montana Highway Patrol applied for the warrant to search Mika's phone, it listed intoxication while walking on a road as the crime they were investigating, not the crime that killed Mika.

Carissa and Kevin have been together for 18 years. Carissa is Native, Blackfeet and Diné. Kevin is white, but he grew up on the Flathead reservation. A lot of his family is Salish Kootenai, including his son. They met as single parents when Kevin's son was three years old and Mika was six. They became a tight family unit. Kevin built them a house at the foot of the mountains. Their albums are full of photos of them camping and hunting together. They told me Mika was a good shot, but she always intentionally missed.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: There's a saying about the highway Mika died on-- "Pray for me. I drive 93." Carissa and Kevin could name three other Native people who had been killed in the last five years while walking this same stretch of highway. In none of those cases had the driver been prosecuted or even arrested. They wanted to know why.

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. Bonnie Ascencio's daughter Maureena was killed in 2022.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: They learned they'd all had the same investigator, Wayne Bieber, and the same county prosecutor, James Lapotka, who Carissa and Kevin hadn't heard from yet.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Maureena 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.

Bonnie says the friend told Bieber that Ruby had been driving, but Bonnie's family didn't believe him. 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. But if Bonnie and her family hadn't investigated, he might not have been charged.

Two years later, when Maureena died, no one was charged, 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. Bonnie met with the county prosecutor, James Lapotka.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: It felt to Bonnie like Lapotka had written her daughter off. She obsessed over the particulars of her daughter's case. 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? But she didn't have money for a billboard. She checked herself into the mental health department at a hospital.

I talked to another mother, Tricia Finley. Her son, Aiden, was killed in a hit and run in 2018. She says it was almost six years before anyone in law enforcement shared anything with her about her son's case. The county attorney, Lapotka, invited her to his office. 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. During that time, the statute of limitations had passed.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: The driver did get away with it. Lapotka couldn't find a way to charge the case. I reached out to Montana Highway Patrol about Bonnie and Tricia's cases, but they declined to answer my questions.

There were two harms when Mika was killed, the first when she was hit, the second when she was left on the side of the road to die alone. Nationally, Native pedestrians are six times likelier to be killed in a hit and run than white pedestrians. I tried to figure out why.

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. 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.

In Montana, Native pedestrians make up more than half of hit and run fatalities, even though they're just 8% of the population. And what happens to the drivers? I scoured Montana newspapers and court records trying to figure out which cases got prosecuted.

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

Carissa and Kevin feared their case could end the same way that Tricia's and Bonnie's did-- with no one charged, even though law enforcement had found the drivers. They had a new goal-- get Sunny White arrested. Their strategy was public pressure. They would bring attention to Mika's case, and also to Bonnie and Tricia's kids' cases, since police had stopped investigating.

That night, they met with the mothers at their house. They came up with this idea. They'd do a four-day walk along Highway 93.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: They ended the walk on the steps of the Lake County courthouse. The march was all over local and national media. Kevin's a mailman and remembers how excited people on the reservation were when he delivered the state's biggest newspaper with Mika's face on the front page. Carissa created a Facebook group called Mika Matters and quickly collected over 1,000 followers. She started getting invitations to speak at big events, like at the grandstand for the Missoula County Fair.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: There's this one video that Carissa shared with the media that blew up. It's of Mika. She's in their laundry room with a ukulele, singing a parody she wrote of Vance Joy's "Riptide."

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: She's singing, "I was scared of rez dogs in the wild. I was scared of drunk drivers and catching head lice."

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: 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.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: This perfect, dumb American narrative of victim and villain, innocent and guilty, Kevin and Carissa realized that Mika's could be the case that got people to care about all these hit and runs. 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 tribal councilman.

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

Ira Glass

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

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's show, How to Tell a Dumb American Story. Sierra Crane Murdoch picks up where she left off.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: The prosecutor for Lake County is James Lapotka. His jurisdiction is basically the entire Flathead reservation. He's from Wisconsin, but has worked for Lake County for most of his career. He's white, in his early 40s, smiley. He looks like a Boy Scout. Mika's case had drawn more media attention than any other case he'd worked on because of Carissa's organizing.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: It was annoying. But the attention also got him more resources from the FBI and the state. He met with Carissa and Kevin briefly a couple of times in the months after Mika died.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: He acknowledged that Montana Highway Patrol had made mistakes that slowed down the investigation. He had to let Sunny White out of jail because investigators hadn't collected enough evidence to charge her. He also needed Sunny's blood test results to prove she had been intoxicated, but orders at the Montana Crime Lab were backed up.

He told me he never found anything that proved Sunny hit Mika because she was Native. He couldn't verify the rumor that Sunny 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 Mika's family. The first time we met, I was struck by his genuine warmth whenever he talked about Mika.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: It was sweet, but also it made me wonder-- if he didn't have those photos of Mika, would he like her? Would he have felt as motivated to work on her case? He didn't talk this way about Bonnie and Tricia's kids, Maureen 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. 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. And someone reported Maureena stumbling, intoxicated, just before she was killed. Lapotka told me he didn't see any way he could win a trial in either case.

But his explanations left out some key details, like the fact that the driver who killed Maureena 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. 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.

Six months after Mika was killed, in October of 2023, Lapotka was finally close to filing charges against Sunny White. He invited Carissa and Kevin into his office to hear about the evidence he had compiled against her.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: That's not how Carissa and Kevin felt about the meeting. One of the pieces of evidence he showed them was body cam footage from the day Mika was killed, just hours after Sunny hit her. 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 Mika's body. In the video, the officer talks to Sunny outside her car. Her two young kids are in the back.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: 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. Not forever, he says. But then he takes the cuffs off. Her brother-in-law had shown up to pick up her kids. Sunny starts moving car seats and bags into his truck.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Lapotka 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. Her toxicology came back positive for methamphetamine and fentanyl.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: But he also told me one of the kids was in a diaper and needed clothes, so he could see why the officer let Sunny move some bags. I kept noticing this dynamic whenever I asked Lapotka about a mistake law enforcement made. He'd readily acknowledge it, but then he also always had an explanation that assumed the officers had good intentions.

Like, when I asked him about Bieber taking Mika's phone, he said, yeah, his bedside manner sucked. But Bieber is also a good guy, and he needed her phone to quickly rule out suicide. If she had been suicidal, it could cause problems for them at trial.

Montana Highway Patrol finally arrested Sunny White just a few days after Lapotka showed Carissa and Kevin the body cam footage. She was charged with negligent vehicular homicide, leaving the scene, drug possession, and child endangerment. Lapotka called Carissa to tell her the news.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Sunny White pleaded not guilty and posted bond immediately-- $100,000. I reached out to her for an interview and didn't hear back. Now that Sunny 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.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Kevin kept thinking about this one time, shortly before Mika was killed. He was in the kitchen.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: 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 Tricia'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.

A trial date was set for December 2024. Lapotka invited Carissa and Kevin to his office for another meeting. He had some good news. The case had become so high-profile that the Montana Attorney General's Office sent in one of its best trial attorneys, Thorin Geist. And he'd gotten Mika's blood alcohol content excluded from trial. This was a big win for Carissa and Kevin. Mika had been over the legal limit for walking on the road. But within a couple of minutes, the real point of this meeting became clear.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: A plea bargain. Carissa is caught off guard. She thought she'd made it clear to Lapotka that they wanted a trial. Lapotka says he is ready to go to trial, 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.

And even if they did win, Sunny would likely file an appeal. It could take years to work its way through the courts. Lapotka 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, because if the family doesn't want a plea bargain, the judge could reject it. So Lapotka keeps pressuring them to consider a plea deal, but then he also keeps trying to make it seem like he's not.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: The state prosecutor, Thorin Geist, says he'd like to make a plea offer tomorrow. He needs them to think about numbers. If Sunny pleads guilty to the first two counts, vehicular homicide and leaving the scene, that gives them up to 40 years in prison. But she wouldn't serve all of the years she's sentenced to. They'd have to offer to suspend some of that time.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Kevin told me his strategy at this point was to offer Sunny an unrealistic deal so trial would be her only option. Lapotka turns to Carissa.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Up until this meeting, Kevin and Carissa had presented a united front, even when they disagreed. 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 any more on the way home. Kevin wanted a trial.

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

So when Lapotka 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. Instead, I got a call from Carissa. She sounded worried that I'd heard they had a disagreement.

A week passed. Sunny 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.

Suddenly, Lapotka approached. He leaned over to whisper in Carissa's ear. Then she leaned over and whispered to Kevin. They followed Lapotka out of the courtroom. When they returned a few minutes later, I couldn't read their faces. Carissa whispered to her dad.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: The judge called up their case.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: The courtroom door opened again, and Sunny walked in.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: I noticed that Sunny had a new tattoo on her forehead, over her right brow. It said "Aryan" in blue cursive.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Sunny's defense attorney read the facts she was pleading guilty to.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Carissa started crying. She leaned into her dad.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Carissa and Kevin didn't get a trial, but Carissa did get something she hadn't expected-- she heard Sunny White admit to killing their daughter.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Of course, Kevin did not feel that way.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Carissa had asked for 40 years with 20 suspended, but the plea offer Sunny agreed to was 30 years with 20 suspended. What this meant was that Sunny would spend a maximum of 10 years in prison. And she could still request parole and get out earlier.

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

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Sunny's sentencing hearing was on a snowy morning this past February. Mika's family and supporters gathered in front of the Lake County courthouse to put up a red teepee. This was almost two years after Mika was killed. Carissa handed out Mika Matters T-shirts.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Kevin hadn't shown up yet, and Carissa kept looking around for him.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: 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. She started venting to a friend.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Kevin still hadn't arrived when the sentencing hearing was about to start.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: The room was packed, most of them here for Mika. Mika's young cousins were curled up on their puffy jackets on the floor. Finally, Kevin arrived-- dirty boots, jeans, hoodie.

A screen to the judge's right rotated through portraits of Mika and candid family photos. One by one, the judge called her relatives up to speak. They told stories about Mika. Her Great-Aunt Iris named eight of her own relatives who have been killed on roads in Montana. I got the sense of how relentless grief can be when new cases are opening before old ones even close. Finally, it was Kevin's turn.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: He slumped onto the stand, hung his ballcap on his knee.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: He told the story again of Mika in the kitchen, when she asked if he'd ever forgive a person who murdered her.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: He brought up what Montana Highway Patrol did to Bonnie after her daughter Maureena was killed.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: He means James Lapotka, the county prosecutor.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: This is the first time the judge has heard that Mika's family doesn't like the plea deal. I wondered if the judge might actually reject the plea and send the whole case back to trial. But then Carissa took the stand.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: She pulled out a crumpled sheet from a yellow legal pad.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: At the end of her statement, they cued up the ukulele video, and right before they hit Play, the judge interrupted.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: She asked for a parole restriction, not a trial.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: 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.

Her defense attorney said that Sunny was a victim, too. Her husband was abusive. The night Sunny killed Mika, she was escaping a domestic violence incident. He was the white supremacist, the attorney said, not Sunny. She shouldn't be the one who shoulders all the blame.

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

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: She immediately started talking about her own kids, how she was still breastfeeding her youngest, how she was staying sober for them. She didn't try to explain or deny her white supremacy affiliations, nor did she take full responsibility for killing Mika.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Sunny would spend 10 years in prison. But there was still the question of whether or not she could get parole before then. The judge addressed Sunny directly.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Ineligible for parole-- they had won. Carissa reached for Kevin's hand, leaned into him. They stayed seated as their relatives huddled around to embrace them.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Sunny was handcuffed and led out the door. Carissa finally stood and gave Lapotka a long hug. People streamed out around them, glassy-eyed. 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.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Outside, at the red teepee, there was hot chocolate.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Carissa gave another speech, then checked in with all the television reporters.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: 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. And now here she was, getting what other families didn't get. Throughout the testimony, I kept looking at Bonnie, Maureena's mother, wondering what she was thinking.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Tricia, Aiden's mom, didn't go to the sentencing. She's the one Lapotka told he couldn't file charges because the statute of limitations had passed.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: I asked Tricia how she felt about the outcome.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Why can't it be you? That's Trisha's mom, Georgi. They were sitting next to each other on the couch.

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Georgi went to the sentencing hearing instead of Tricia.

Sierra Crane Murdoch

(HOST) SIERRA CRANE MURDOCH: Audrey is her daughter. Tricia'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, 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.

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. She said they were working on it. For the anniversary of Mika's death last month, Carissa told Kevin she wanted to spend the day in the mountains, just them and their son, as a family.

Ira Glass

Sierra Crane Murdoch. She's writing a new book, and a big part of it is this case. Her first book-- if you liked this story, you will really like that one. It's called Yellow Bird-- Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Miki Meek. Dana Chivvis edited the show. The people who put together today's program include Jendayi Bonds, Michael Comite, Emmanuel Dzotsi, Angela Gervasi, Katherine Rae Mondo, Stowe Nelson, Ryan Rumery, Frances Swanson, Marisa Robertson-Textor, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emanuele Berry.

Special thanks today to the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Sarah Twoteeth, Bryan Dupuis, Cheryl Horn, Dave Blanchard, and Becky Blanchard and family. 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. 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/lifepartners.

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

Ira Glass

I believe you, Torey. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

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