Bob Ecoffey Has A Dream

"He was haunted by the mysterious crying. Ecoffey respected Indian spirituality, but he had never experienced anything like this. So he went to talk to his grandfather, a medicine man. "What does it mean?" he asked. His grandfather performed a traditional Indian ceremony and told him: "A young woman was killed before her time, and it wasn't right. She came to you because you have a good heart. You don't understand it now, but one of these days, you'll be in a position to help her." That Indian woman turned out to be Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, and Bob Ecoffey was able to help her. He just didn't think it would take 27 years." Did the Indian woman really turn out to be Anna Mae? And who interpreted this dream for Bob? Also, Bob didn’t happen to say just who the medicine man was so therefore, we don’t know who was giving him this very erroneous advice. He tried to claim Selo Black Crow as his grandfather. However, Selo was Arlo’s grandfather, and did not claim Bob as his grandson. And there was no ceremony. There was only questioning. Selo said that Bob came around and asked a lot of questions, even accused him of killing Anna Mae. He even accused Roger Amiotte of killing Anna Mae. I guess he accused everyone, just to be sure. Was the woman really Anna Mae? The ghost of Anna Mae? Why was she haunting Bob? Was Bob having a bad dream? "In December 1975, Anna Mae was killed with a gunshot to the back of the head. And an enduring mystery was born. Today, for most of America, what happened at Wounded Knee is the stuff of yellowed newspaper clippings. But for those who lived through it, the violence, the grief, and the bitterness are still fresh. So even nearly 30 years later, "Who killed Anna Mae?" is a question that still matters. It matters to her two daughters, who lost a mother for reasons they don't understand. It matters to former FBI executives who believe they've unfairly suffered the ill will of the Indian community. It matters to Indian rights activists who say their work has been mistakenly tarnished. And it matters to Bob Ecoffey, who still hears his grandfather's words and that soft crying from the jail so many years ago." Actually, most people are asking who killed Jeanette Waters Bissonette, and Pedro Bissonette, and more recently, Hard Heart and and Black Elk, and the 60 some other murders. Most people believe that the FBI are largely responsible for the murder and mayhem that took place back in 1973. In fact, the FBI are still sending off Lakota men to prison. Then they have the nerve to wonder why no one likes or respects them. And then there’s Bob, who is still claiming Selo as his grandfather. Who is interpreting Bob’s dreams? I wonder if Selo is haunting Bob’s dreams? And who is that woman? The woman of Bob’s dreams? And what does all this have to do with Arlo Looking Cloud? No good, as we have come to see. "But in the long, hot summer of 1975, anyone involved with AIM was subject to scrutiny, and the FBI wanted to talk to Anna Mae about the murder of its agents. In September, FBI agents found her in a green tent with dynamite and a sawed-off, .30-caliber carbine. She told them she didn't know anything about the agents' murders." And what about Doug Durham? It was about this time that Anna Mae started to suspect Doug as an FBI operative. Dougie boy was known to work with explosives. He must have attended FBI training classes in How To Make Your Own Bomb. Then, work your way into a group of people who are standing up for their rights, and plant a bomb or start lying little stories about people. "The truth was that Anna Mae was scared because false rumors were flying within AIM that pegged her as an FBI informant. An AIM activist and her husband took Anna Mae to a safe house--a squat, brick triplex in a gritty, Hispanic neighborhood of Denver. She stayed there for a few weeks until one night in early December when some AIM activists came for her. They drove her nearly eight hours to the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Committee office in Rapid City, where some female members of AIM questioned her for the better part of a day. Anna Mae's friend Candy Hamilton saw her crying there and argued that Anna Mae was not an informant. That was the last time Hamilton saw her friend alive." The FBI wanted to talk with anyone about the murder of its agents, Coler and William, and were out to nail all of AIM, put an end to it. More likely, the truth was that Anna Mae was scared of the Feds, particularly Agent Price who threatened to kill her if she didn’t tell him where Leonard and Dennis were. The Feds had and still have no respect for Indians. Can we be sure what these women were questioning Anna Mae about? Maybe they were questioning her about whose man she was sleeping with. Was Kamook there? And did she question Anna Mae about her involvement with her husband, Dennis Banks? Or did she say she was Anna Mae’s best friend? Have you ever experienced a jealous hearted Lakota woman? Were they more concerned over Anna Mae as an informant or were they more concerned with who was sleeping with their man? And how was Bob involved? Bob. A spinner of dreams and stories. A storyteller. A woman was crying, or so he said. In his dreams. "The investigation was stymied by intense suspicion and even animosity in the Indian community. "No one would talk to us," says Zigrossi, who left South Dakota in the late 1970s. "No one trusted us. A lot of people would say, `Get out of here.' You couldn't blame them. The innocent Native Americans on the Pine Ridge reservation got caught in all this political stuff. They were scared. They didn't want to be seen talking to us." No one trusts the FBI. And no one wants to talk to them. Gee, I wonder why? "And so, many Indians simply gave up on finding Anna Mae's killer, believing no one cared. But Bob Ecoffey couldn't escape the crying and his grandfather's words. As he learned more, he was moved by Anna Mae's quest for social justice. In turn, he wanted justice for her and her family." Oh, sure, Bob. Actually, Bob was still trying to claim Selo as his grandfather, but no one wanted to have anything to do the Feds. And who is this crying woman? "For Ecoffey, the case has broad symbolism. "It's justice for Indian people as a whole," he says. So gradually, Anna Mae's murder became personal. And as he worked his way out of the grinding poverty of the reservation--he was the first in his family to attend college--and built his career as a police officer, first as a tribal cop, then as a BIA officer on the reservation, Ecoffey kept poking at the unsolved case. It was never easy. When he first called Anna Mae's friend Candy Hamilton in 1981, she hung up on him. Still, as an Indian, Ecoffey did have an advantage over the white agents at the FBI--and after a while, the FBI recognized that too. In 1981, Pine Ridge acquaintances shared a good tip that pointed to Denver. Anna Mae had been down in Denver, he learned, and somehow brought back to South Dakota. He passed it on to the FBI, and bureau officials suggested he work with them. Now, he was officially on the case. Ecoffey and now retired FBI case agent Al Garber checked out leads in Denver and confirmed Anna Mae had been taken from the safe house. But AIM supporters mostly refused to talk to them. They went home, frustrated." So what Bob is saying here is that he discovered Anna Mae was hiding out in Denver, discovered this from his snitches living in Pine Ridge, which was the advantage Bob had over the other Feds, being part Indian and knowing which GOONs he could work with. He knew who could be leaned on to squeal. An enviable skill such as this does not go unnoticed by the FBI, and Bob was right in there with the FBI to cook up a scheme to get Anna Mae back to the Reservation. Agents Bob and Al check out leads, which led them to the jealous hearted women. I think this story was already in the making way back in 1975. A woman crying because another woman is sleeping with her man is an easy target, wouldn’t you say? "In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ecoffey worked for the U.S. Forest Service and as a BIA administrative manager at Pine Ridge. In that job, he befriended an elderly woman, a prominent AIM member who had been at Wounded Knee. In the early 1990s, he helped her with a right-of-way issue on her land and then pressed for a favor in return. "Do you have any information about Anna Mae's murder?" he asked. "There are people who know about it," she told him. "Do you think they'll talk to me?" he asked. "I'll contact them," she promised. Not long afterward, that conversation bore fruit when a man from Denver showed up unannounced at Ecoffey's office and provided key names and crucial information. It was the break Ecoffey had been waiting for. He then focused hard on two young AIM operatives who allegedly took Anna Mae from the Denver safe house to Rapid City: activist John Graham and AIM security guard Arlo Looking Cloud." Who was this elderly women who was so eager to give names and numbers to Bob? One of the jealous hearted women maybe a little nervous about what they had done? Could it be Theda Nelson Clark? So Superintendent Bob helped out this old woman with her land problem in exchange for a favor. Isn’t it interesting that Bob knew exactly which old lady to hit on? And she provided him with information as to who killed Anna Mae?? How did she know who killed Anna Mae? Who provided Bob with key names and crucial information? What sort of Indian would go all the way to Denver to set up Arlo? What I wonder is why the identity of this woman was never brought out in Arlo’s trial? Why did Bob and the boys wait 10 years before they pressed murder charges on Arlo? The only other person who was a purported witness to the murder, who had a huge hand in setting up the murder was Theda Nelson Clark. Was Bob waiting until she was incapacitated or dead before he brought forth Arlo, as the psychologically abused lamb to send to the slaughter? Was this the favor? And who is this crying woman? What role did she have in Anna Mae’s death? The Saga of Bob’s troubled dreams to be continued next week.