RIVERTON—You can find Nicole Wagon outside the courthouse in a huddle with a victim’s family members, handing out advice about what comes next in their loved one’s court case.
Sometimes, she’s the voice on the line on a frantic call when a child goes missing or sharing a missing-person poster template, the best way to communicate with authorities – whatever a family might need in those crucial moments.
A missing and murdered Indigenous advocate, Wagon is the founder of MMIR 307, and she never knows what the day will bring in her fight for justice. Some days she’s fighting for her own family.
Wagon recently sat down and penned a letter to state Department of Corrections officials, urging them not to place one of the men convicted in her daughter’s murder into a community corrections program. Last spring, she successfully lobbied against his release on parole.
He’s one of four convicted in her daughter Jocelyn Watt’s murder, and Wagon knows there will be more parole hearings, more letters.
Juggling her broader advocacy work with her family’s fight for justice isn’t always easy, but Wagon says each step is one of healing.
“With your own experience, I think people should help others, and I’ve already gone through those storms. Now with the parole hearing, it feels like it’s never going to stop. But through each one, I truly believe you heal with yourself. Every walk, every march, every letter, it’s a healing,” she said. “It’s so easy to get lost within the grief and the sorrow, but who else is going to be able to advocate for them?”
Thrust into the fight
In January 2019, Jocelyn and her partner, Rudy Perez, were murdered in their Riverton home. Just a year later, in 2020, Wagon’s other daughter, Jade, was found dead on the Wind River Indian Reservation weeks after being reported missing.
Wagon had to wait years for answers in Jocelyn’s case — four people were arrested in late 2021 in connection with her death. She’s still waiting for justice for Jade.
In the wake of her daughter’s deaths, Wagon said she realized there was little help out there for victims and their families.
She put it simply: “There was nothing.”
As Wagon navigated the criminal justice system herself, she also began rallying for change as an advocate. She was invited to and joined the Wyoming MMIP Task Force, which began studying the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People in Wyoming and pursuing structural changes.
In 2021, when Gabrielle Petito went missing and sparked a nationwide media frenzy, Wagon’s daughters’ stories bore a striking dichotomy: Missing and murdered Indigenous people’s cases rarely gain as much attention.
Wagon has testified before the state Legislature, national committees, task forces and leaders across the country, pushing for structural change. She’s helped usher in the Ashanti Alert system, an emergency alert used to locate missing and endangered people over the age of 17 who don’t qualify for Amber Alerts.
Her testimony helped pass a slew of law enforcement reforms in 2024 aimed at improving how missing persons cases are handled and reported by Wyoming law enforcement agencies. And she was integral in bringing victim advocate services to the Bureau of Indian Affairs office on the Wind River Reservation.
“Every year that passes, you try to make it better,” she said on justice system reforms.
Much of Wagon’s work happens during those late-night, frantic phone calls, parents searching for their lost kids, families suffering in the wake of losing a loved one. She watches local criminal cases closely, shows up at court hearings and helps families navigate what they can do to become advocates for their loved ones and themselves.
“I know how important it is to be involved with the criminal justice system, even if it sometimes feels overwhelming. But to stay focused on the issue and get justice for your child, the momma bear comes up in you,” she said.
Jocelyn’s case
On Jan. 4, 2019, Watt and Perez were shot and killed inside Watt’s home in Riverton during a robbery. Two years later, Brandon Monroe was arrested and later sentenced to two life prison sentences. His accomplices, Bryce Teran, Patrick SunRhodes and Korbin Headley, were also convicted for their roles that night.
Teran is the first to come up for parole and now for a bid to be housed at a more relaxed Wyoming facility.
Teran was the driver the night of the double homicide, and police used his cellphone data to pinpoint his location at the scene; he later cooperated in the investigation. He pleaded no contest to aiding and abetting burglary and was sentenced to 8-10 years with credit for just under two years in jail.
Wagon, in writing to the Wyoming Community Corrections Placement Board, said she was opposed to his placement in a community corrections setting.
“I have already stood before the court and asked for the maximum sentence for Mr. Teran. I did so because two people were murdered in their own home, and because the consequences of those actions did not end when the police finally identified the people responsible,” she wrote. “They continue every single day.”
Jocelyn had a life, a special smile, a family, hopes and dreams. And she had people who loved her, Wagon shared.
“She was not simply a victim in a case file,” Wagon said. “She was my child.”
Teran was the only adult convicted in Jocelyn’s murder, and for nearly two years, he stayed silent about what happened, Wagon told the board.
“For nearly two years, we had to live with the uncertainty of not knowing who had done this to our loved ones. The community felt unsafe. People wondered who could have committed such a terrible crime and whether those responsible were still around us,” she continued. “Those were two years of grief, fear, unanswered questions and wondering whether justice would ever come.”
The Placement Board will determine whether Teran can be placed in a community setting, where he would be allowed to work in the community and potentially be released on furloughs.
Wagon said she couldn’t support that.
“When I hear the words ‘community corrections,’ I think about the community that was left traumatized by what happened to Jocelyn and Rudy. I think about the families who still live with their absence,” Wagon wrote. “How do we make our communities feel safe again when people who played a role in such a devastating crime are returned to the community before completing their sentence? … There is often discussion about rehabilitation, second chances and helping someone build a better life. I believe people can change, and I believe people can seek redemption. But accountability must remain part of that process.”
Jocelyn, Wagon told the board, deserves to be remembered for the life she lived, not the way she died.
“I ask the Community Corrections Board to look beyond Mr. Teran’s desire to return to the community and remember the people who can never return to theirs,” she said.
A sacred balance
Wagon now raises Jade’s son and daughter as her own as she juggles her advocacy work and her own continued fight for justice for Jocelyn and Jade.
“For me, it’s harder to watch my kids, what they went through,” she said of the two youngsters.
As she sat down to pen her letter to the parole board this spring, and now to the corrections board, she said she leaned on tradition, burning green cedar, then reading and refining, then reading again, to get her statement just right.
“I see [Jade’s] spirit through my grandkids, their mannerisms,” she said. “It just gives me joy.”
Wagon believes it’s the children who are sacred, and she often tells families lost in new grief to focus on them as a light in the darkness. Having her own grandchildren who needed her, she said, is what got her through the darkest days after the losses of her daughters.
“I need my grandkids as much as they need me,” she said. Knowing they are safe, protected, “That gives me comfort.”
Wagon expects to hear the ruling from the Community Corrections Board on Sept. 14.
