Unanswered questions about Wind River teen’s death drives tension and grief

As the sun set over the Wind River Reservation on Friday evening, more than 75 people gathered in Fort Washakie to remember Stephanie Bearstail, a high school senior who died March 4 under suspicious circumstances. 

Laughter and tears intermingled with spoken remembrances of Bearstail, whose friends and family knew her as funny, friendly and a passionate athlete who wanted to study medicine. 

“It was rare to meet a person who didn’t like Steph or didn’t like to be around her,” one friend said of their lost classmate, in testimonials that were read aloud but whose authors were unnamed. “Not a day goes by when I don’t think of her.”

Three days before, in a Fremont County courtroom, an attorney for Bearstail’s boyfriend told a judge he was missing court-ordered drug and alcohol testing appointments because he couldn’t get out of bed due to trauma and depression related to her death. It’s a death some on the reservation say he knows more about than he’s said publicly. In a void of official information, his attorney said her client has already been assaulted once, in a form of vigilante justice. 

The court hearing and the vigil highlight how Bearstail’s death continues to reverberate through a reservation community waiting for answers. An inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation entered its third month Monday, a date that coincided with a national day in recognition of the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women. The federal agency has provided no public answers to date. 

The scant information officials have made public raises as many questions as it answers. After midnight on March 4, Bearstail somehow exited a moving vehicle along a rural reservation road, according to the Wyoming Highway Patrol. The patrol also reported she was a passenger in the car, and “allegedly jumped” although authorities have not stated how they acquired that information. She was intoxicated, and had marijuana in her system, according to the Fremont County Coroner. Her boyfriend took her to the emergency room, and from there was arrested and booked into the Wind River tribal jail, but has faced only a traffic citation in connection to the accident, his attorney told WyoFile this week. 

Investigators are still working and will “methodically and thoroughly address every element of the incident,” according to an FBI spokesperson. 

At the candlelit vigil, attendees carried signs calling for “justice for Steph,” a rallying cry that took root after Bearstail’s family said they had reason to believe violence played a role in her death.

In March, Bearstail’s parents told WyoFile they left their Fort Washakie home to look for their daughter the night she died, after she had stayed out past her curfew. “She did need help, and we were trying to find her,” her mother said. The family has declined to share details out of concern it would interfere with the ongoing law enforcement investigation.

To date, there’s been no official acknowledgement of the possibility of violence one way or another, as the FBI has remained close-lipped as is its custom. 

The coroner concluded Bearstail died from head injuries after her “exit from a moving vehicle,” and ruled the manner of her death as “undetermined.”

The “undetermined” ruling was made using the information death investigators had available at the time, Fremont County Coroner Erin Ivie told WyoFile on Monday. “If there was definitive evidence that pointed to one manner of death over another, it would have been ruled that way,” she said. 

The coroner’s office investigates deaths independently. But the classification in Bearstail’s case could change to accidental or homicidal if law enforcement presents the coroner with evidence that shifts the needle toward one of those categories, Ivie said. 

Bearstail’s friends and family fear she’ll become another statistic in a long chain of unsolved Native deaths.

“We’re left with a lot of questions that we have no answers to,” Bearstail’s aunt Allison Quiver Warren told WyoFile in a phone interview on Monday. 

“With what little details we have, we’re painting this picture, and it’s not a very good picture,” she said. “We don’t know who else was there that night and what happened; we just know she was with her boyfriend.”

An unrelated court appearance

On April 30, Bearstail’s boyfriend appeared in a Fremont County court to face allegations that he had repeatedly violated the bond conditions he’s been under since his DUI arrest late last year. Among those conditions were a requirement to regularly report for alcohol and drug testing — the appointments he had repeatedly missed. 

Though the boyfriend had previously been represented by a public defender, at the April 30 hearing, private defense attorney Cynthia Van Vleet appeared on his behalf. 

WyoFile is not naming the boyfriend because he has not been charged with any crimes in connection to Bearstail’s death. WyoFile is, however, reporting on the boyfriend’s court appearance in the separate DUI case and statements by his attorney, to add details to a case with little verifiable information despite questions from the public. 

Van Vleet told the judge her client missed his required testing because of mental health issues stemming from the March 4 accident. 

He missed a court hearing on the DUI on March 5, the day after Bearstail’s death, because he was still in the tribal jail, court records show. The only offense tribal authorities have charged him with is a traffic citation for failing to properly report an accident, which would carry a fine of between $100 and $1000 as penalty if he is convicted, according to his attorney.

Bearstail died in the hospital after an hours-long fight for her life, with her parents present, her aunt told WyoFile.

Van Vleet’s client is innocent and has “cooperated fully” with various law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, his attorney said. And she says people have rushed to judge him without evidence of his guilt. He “is getting crucified by the community with no facts to support that this was a domestic violence case, no evidence whatsoever,” she said.  

In a court filing seeking a change to the boyfriend’s bond conditions so that he can attend an out-of-state mental health treatment facility, Van Vleet wrote that her client was “currently in danger in the local community.” She then referenced an assault she said was under investigation by area law enforcement.

“People are taking the law into their own hands,” Van Vleet told WyoFile. Three people attacked her client because of rumors he was involved in Bearstail’s death, she said, and he was hospitalized with a fractured skull. 

The judge granted Van Vleet’s request for a modification to the bond conditions, while also warning her client that he had already cost his family considerable money in bond forfeitures. 

Despite that, his appearance in court and the hiring of Van Vleet indicated “you’re taking this seriously and your folks are trying to help you through the issues you’re facing,” the judge said. 

Van Vleet told WyoFile there were hard questions to be asked about how young people on the reservation had access to alcohol, and she added that there are people involved in the night’s events who aren’t cooperating with law enforcement. 

“There are people who aren’t talking, but it is not [her client],” Van Vleet said. “Young kids on the reservation are drinking way too much.”

Bearstail’s relatives question those assertions. They’ve heard about the assault on the boyfriend, her aunt Quiver Warren said, but believe it may have been an unrelated fight.

And they question whether Bearstail’s boyfriend has told investigators the truth. If he had, Quiver Warren said, her family would have answers. 

“Give us something, say something,” Quiver Warren said, “so the family can start to heal and so that Stephanie can have some peace on the other side.”

This story has been updated to correct the description of a traffic citation given to the boyfriend by tribal authorities. -Ed.