Hello All,
Thank you again for your continued support to Kaysera’s family as we continue to fight for justice. It has been 20 months since she was murdered and her body was discovered in Hardin, Montana—and still to this day, not a single law enforcement agency has agreed to formally investigate her murder.
Her family, however, has not given up. For the last year and a half, the family has repeatedly asked the Operation Lady Justice Task Force Cold Cases Unit (now re-named the “Missing and Murdered Unit” under Secretary Haaland, also known as the “MMU”) at the Department of the Interior to undertake an investigation into Kaysera’s murder. After waiting a year and a half for an answer, the family found out this month that the MMU will not be investigating Kaysera’s murder. Their rationale for declining to take her case is that the BigHorn County Sheriff’s Office refuses to share the case file with the MMU.
This constitutes a grave injustice on several levels. The MMU was purportedly created to investigate the cases that local law enforcement have failed to investigate. And in most cases where local state or county law enforcement refuse to investigate the homicide of a Native woman or girl, they refuse to do so because they are either corrupt, or they are purposefully covering up for the criminal who committed the homicide. If the MMU is going to predicate its intervention in a cold case concerning the homicide of a Native person on whether or not local law enforcement consents to that intervention, the MMU will never be able to investigate the vast majority of the cases currently comprising the entire Murdered and Missing Indigenous Persons (“MMIP”) epidemic. The MMU’s policy, in this regard, ensures that the MMU is set up to fail.
Another aspect of this injustice is the fact that not only is BigHorn County Sheriff Laurence Big Hair willing to abdicate his duty to investigate the homicide of a young girl within his jurisdiction—he is also willing to go out of his way to ensure that no other law enforcement agency is able to. If what BigHorn County Sheriff’s Office says is true—that they simply do not believe Kaysera was murdered and think she died of “natural causes”—then why are they unwilling to share the case file with the MMU? The only reason they would refuse to share the case file is to protect the individual who murdered Kaysera, or to save themselves from the public scrutiny that will result when public citizens realize they sat on their hands and did nothing to investigate the murder of a young Native girl.
Sheriff Big Hair has announced he is not running for re-election. For the folks living in BigHorn County, it is CRITICAL that we elect a new Sheriff who will take the MMIP crisis in BigHorn County seriously.
For those of you who live outside of Montana and/or BigHorn County, we ask that you continue to support Kaysera’s family. Please continue to speak out against the BigHorn County Sheriff’s Office to raise awareness about their failure to uphold the law and investigate Kaysera’s murder. Please continue to hold the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation accountable, as they have the resources and expertise to undertake an investigation—and they have simply failed to do so. Please continue to post using #JusticeForKaysera and continue to voice your support.
Also, May 5th marks a National Day of Awareness for Murdered and Missing Indigenous Persons. Kaysera’s family will be hosting a public rally in Hardin, Montana, that will begin at 11am MDT, in front of the BigHorn County Courhouse. Please join us and voice your support for Kaysera, as well as all of those who have been murdered and whose families have never seen justice.
Please stay tuned as we will be announcing plans for our annual events on the anniversary of Kaysera’s murder, in August and September of 2022.
In solidarity,
The Family of Kaysera Stops Pretty Places