Bob's Dream Turns Into A Cartload Of Lies

Now he had all kinds of money to spend on PR and travel, unlimited funds. He must have immediately started looking among the homeless and alcoholics to find someone remotely connected to AIM. “Ecoffey revived the case. Working with BIA investigator Mitch Pourier and FBI agent Jim Graf, Ecoffey pored over old reports, reinterviewed potential witnesses, uncovered new leads. He traveled the country and to Canada. [I was wondering who all the new witnesses were, and the new leads. As evidenced from Arlo’s trial, potential witnesses were paid informants like Kamook and Richard Two Elk, most of the other 23 witnesses against Arlo were FBI.] “It seemed to be an obsession with him,” says Pourier. “Bob would say, ‘Let’s go again,’ and we’d be off…” According to Arlo’s first cousin, Lucy Bull Bear, Ecoffey would remember to take Arlo with him. He took him to several states, and gave Arlo a new name in each state, from Florida to California, always buying drinks and meals along the way. He even offered Arlo immunity from prosecution if only he could name the AIM leaders who wanted Anna Mae dead. Bob offered him a name change and a new identity if only he would tell on Banks and Peltier, 2 AIM leaders most hated by the FBI. When I visited Arlo in jail last February, I asked him, “When did you first know you were a suspect for the murder of Anna Mae?” He said, “It was about 94 or 95.” I asked, “What happened?” Arlo said, “They kept picking me up in Denver. They kept telling me the story of Theda Clark and her little red car. They fed me all the details like I was supposed to know, time after time. “What about your actual arrest,” I asked. “They kept picking me up, since 1994, so I figured it wasn’t any different.” A Denver dedective named Alonzo arrested Arlo. According to Native New On Line, “Alonzo could hardly believe his eyes, or his luck…Still standing on the street, Alonzo punched Bob Ecoffey’s number into his cell phone…How to tell him that after 27 years their first suspect was finally in custody?” The kidnapping that set the murder in motion allegedly occurred in Denver, but Ecoffey didn’t have good contacts there. During a trip in 1994, he met Detective Abe Alonzo, assigned to escort the visiting U.S. marshal around to check out leads. The son of a Mexican farmworker who grew up in Denver, Alonzo knew little of Indian activism or faith. When Ecoffey first explained how Anna Mae’s spirit had come to him, Alonzo wondered if he believed in voodoo. But in Ecoffey, he also saw something he liked. He had expected a stiff in a suit and a tie. What he got was a nice guy in a vest and boots, sporting a ponytail. "You know," Ecoffey told him one day, "I could really use some help." [a token Indian for the FBI] It would become Alonzo’s first and only homicide case in 31 years on the force. The detective served in the intelligence bureau, providing dignitary protection and security. With Anna Mae’s case, he tracked down addresses and helped interview potential witnesses. One was Looking Cloud, who at one point accompanied Alonzo and Ecoffey to what was described as the murder scene in South Dakota and allegedly disclosed details of the crime. There, on the windy ridge, Alonzo also came to believe that something bigger was driving the investigation. It was a hot summer day, well over 100 degrees, but as Alonzo approached the place where Anna Mae died, a cold chill shot through him. The hair on his arms stood up. "She knows you’re here to help her," Ecoffey explained. It is very apparent that Bob was getting help from outside sources, in addition to Alonzo, his side kick, Kimosabbe and Tonto. Isn’t that something? They scooped up poor Arlo and brought him all the way over to the crime site of Anna Mae. They had been carefully rehearsing Arlo with his lines, since he had a starring role in this melodrama. Arlo had trouble remembering his lines and he liked to deviate from the plot. So, it was time to take Arlo through a dress rehearsal before the grand opening, his day in Court in Rapid City, South Dakota. Still, Arlo seemed to get it all wrong, had trouble remembering his lines and the plot. So when they got back to Denver, they videotaped him, plying him with drinks, and prompting him with his lines. Granted, most of the time Arlo’s eyes were closed, his speech a little slurred, and he would fall asleep in mid-sentence, but they finally got him to tell the story the way they wanted it to be told. When the big day came, The Trial of Arlo Looking Cloud, starring…….well, we don’t rightly know who it was starring since Arlo was never put on the Stand. All we had was the stand-in version of himself on videotape, since he couldn’t be counted on to remember his lines. According to Lucy Bull Bear, Arlo’s first cousin, and the one he first turned to for help, “Every day the prosecution would wheel in these carts of binders and papers, carts that looked like library carts, binders as witnesses, the cart load of lies.” “With trial pending, the investigators can’t discuss what finally broke the case open. They will say only that a source was developed that gave them enough to secure the indictment. The 2002 appointment of James McMahon as U.S. attorney in South Dakota also helped, they say. The federal prosecutor’s office “didn’t look at this as being a political case,” Ecoffey says.” [But we now know that it was Bob’s dream that finally broke the case open. Alonzo could testify to this.] Mr. McMahon cerrtainly had the lines and the plot down correct as evidenced in his opening statements on the grand opening. From the Transcript of The Trial of Arlo Looking Cloud: MR. McMAHON: Ladies and gentlemen. On a December morning in 1975 a little red Pinto wagon pulled up to the edge of a road about three miles north of the junction between Highway 73 and 44. The driver of that little red car was Theda Clark, there were three passengers in the car; the defendant, Arlo Looking Cloud, fellow by the name of John Graham, and Anna Mae Aquash. After Anna Mae was taken out of the car, she was walked by the defendant and by Mr. Graham from the edge of the road out to the edge of that cliff. All the way out there she was begging them not to kill her. When they got to the edge of the cliff and she realized that her pleas were to no avail, she asked to have time to pray. While she was praying on the edge of that cliff she was shot in the back of the head. Her body was either thrown or fell over the cliff, came to rest right there where that white mark is. Stayed there for about two and a half months until a rancher riding fence found it. After Anna Mae was killed, the defendant, Mr. Graham, walked back to the car and three people drove back to Denver. So who was Anna Mae Aquash, why was she taken to that cliff to be killed, and how did she get there? And they still didn’t figure it out, not only why, but who? So without any political agendas, Mr. MacMahon, with his cartload of witnesses behind him, with many years of eduacation and training with the FBI, this is the best story they came up with. And they do know the plot to this story. Judge Piersol, like a good stage director, made sure everyone adhered to the plot, with no deviations. And just to make sure, Mr. Rensch, Arlo’s attorney, did not going allow Arlo to screw things up, and would not put Arlo on the stand. It was just as important to the defense as to the prosecution that Arlo be shown as aiding and abetting in the murder of Anna Mae. From Native News On Line: Looking Cloud’s attorney, Tim Rensch, acknowledges his client was present at the slaying, but says he took no part. “He didn’t help with the murder. It was a complete surprise,” Rensch says, adding that he believes prosecutors “were probably hoping to use him as a stepladder to others.” Melodrama aside, it still leaves the family wondering, where’s the smoking gun? Where’s the bullets? Where’s the witnesses? Where’s the hard evidence that put Arlo away? And I am wondering why they didn’t allow Alonzo to take the stand? Why did they take Alonzo off the case? Is the woman still crying through the intercom?