On August 19, 2017, in Fargo, North Dakota, Savanna LaFontaine Greywind was at home in the apartment she shared with her parents and siblings.
Savanna was a member of the Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe and eight months pregnant with her first child.
At 1.24 pm, she texted her mother, Norbetta Greywind, saying she had ordered a pizza for the family’s lunch and that she was headed upstairs to help her neighbour, Brooke Crews, with a sewing project.
An hour later, Norbetta sent Savanna’s 16-year-old brother, Casey, upstairs to get her so she could drive him to work. No one answered the door, but he remembered hearing a sewing machine running inside the apartment.
Five minutes later, Savanna’s father, Joe Greywind, walked up to check on her. Crews answered the door, but told him they were not finished working on the dress.
Norbetta ended up driving her son to work herself. At 4.30 pm, after she got back, Savanna’s mother knocked on Crew’s door again, and she told her that Savanna had just left. Sensing something was wrong, Norbetta called the police and told them her daughter was missing.
What no one else knew at the time was that Brooke Crews lured Savanna into the bathroom, under the pretext of getting her to try on a dress. Crews then invented an argument and shoved Savanna to the floor.
Savanna struck her head and was knocked unconscious by the impact. Crews descended on her with a box cutter and performed a crude Cesarean section to remove her baby.
This was a desperate act to save her relationship, as her boyfriend, William Hoehn, had issued an ultimatum for her to produce a baby.
Hoehn came home minutes later to find his girlfriend holding a newborn baby girl. There was blood spatter in the bathroom, and their neighbour, Savannah, was on the floor, drifting in and out of consciousness.
Hoehn left them there and returned with a rope. He used it to strangle Savanna. According to Crew’s testimony later in court, he said, “If she wasn’t dead before, she is now.”
While Savanna’s family was downstairs waiting for her, the couple scrubbed the bathroom of the blood and tissue. This was just after Savanna’s brother and father came upstairs asking after her.
Later that afternoon, Hoehn wrapped Savanna’s body in plastic garbage bags and hid her inside a bathroom closet. He took the bags of cleaning supplies and drove them across town to dump them into a West Fargo commercial dumpster.
A Fake Pregnancy and Ultimatum
Crews had initially fabricated a pregnancy to avoid losing her boyfriend, William Hoehn. She even emailed him a fake positive test and a sonogram photo.
When Hoehn eventually realised it was a lie, he told Crews in August that she had to produce a baby or else he would leave. Crews took it as an ultimatum, later stating, “I took that to mean I better have a baby, no matter how it happened.”
Crews described her relationship with Hoehn as violent and fueled by drugs. She also mentioned that Hoehn often expressed fantasies of killing people. Crews initially told him she was also into it, but allegedly didn’t mean it.
Apparently, one day Hoehn came home and said, “That Greywind girl is really pregnant.” This was taken as implying that Hoehn wanted to get Savanna’s baby, but he never specifically gave any instructions to do so.
Panic and Three Police Searches
When Norbetta knocked on the door upstairs at 4.30 pm, Crews answered the door and told her that Savanna had already left. Savanna’s mother went back downstairs and found her daughter’s car keys and wallet in the same place she had left them.
Knowing that Savanna had ordered a pizza that was now cold and that she had missed driving her brother to work, Norbetta knew something was wrong.
At 5 pm, after the authorities were called, officers arrived at the apartment building. They did a basic consensual walkthrough of Crews’ apartment. As Savanna’s body was tightly wrapped and hidden in the bathroom closet, the officers did not see anything out of the ordinary.
At 10 pm, the Greywinds were still unsatisfied, so the police returned to Unit 5 for another walkthrough with Brooke Crews’s consent. Since they did not have a warrant to search the closets, they could not conduct an in-depth search.
The next day, police implemented another search of the apartment. They also deployed K-9 tracking units around the neighbourhood. U.S Customs and Border Protection aircraft did aerial searches for the girl, while the fire department scanned the nearby river.
For days, Crews and Hoehn lived in the apartment with Savanna’s body in the closet. They also actively fed and cared for the newborn baby girl while pretending the infant was, in fact, theirs.
The Greywinds also never questioned Brooke Crews’s sudden baby because the family was never allowed inside the apartment to see the baby. Whenever the Greywinds came to her door, Crews would only open the door a crack or refuse to answer altogether.
In the early hours of August 21, Crews and Hoehn carried a dresser down the stairs and loaded it into their vehicle. Hoehn removed garbage bags with bloody towels and his shoes from the apartment. He threw them away in a dumpster somewhere unknown.
Savanna’s mother also pleaded with investigators to escalate their investigations into Crews and Hoehn. “I begged them from the beginning, from the minute I called them. I pleaded with them, ” There’s something wrong. You’ve got to do this now.”
The Discovery of the Baby and Savanna’s Remains
Police obtained a search warrant for Crew’s apartment after coming across a diaper purchase. They also heard that Hoehn had told co-workers that he and Crews had a baby over the weekend.
When detectives arrived at the apartment, they found Crews holding a five-day-old infant girl. Since Savanna had vanished from that building while eight months pregnant, the presence of an unexplained newborn was extremely suspicious, and they took Crews into custody. Police also arrested Hoehn at his job.
Hoehn immediately sought to distance himself from the crime, telling investigators that when he got home on August 19, Crews presented the baby to him, saying, “This is our baby, this is our family.” He also added that the baby slept in a suitcase and they took her out in public.
Fargo Police Chief David Todd confirmed that the baby was alive and had been taken to a medical facility. During a social media press release, he stated, “Our investigation thus far indicates the probability that this is Savanna Greywind’s child.” DNA testing later confirmed the hypothesis.
Savanna’s body was found on August 27, 2017, in Red River by Kayakers. It was heavily wrapped in duct tape and plastic. The body had snapped on a tree in the water some distance north of the bridge, where Hoehn had thrown the dresser into the river.
The medical examiner stated the cause of death was homicidal violence since there were overlapping mechanisms that could have led to her death. These included blood loss from the C-section and strangulation, which were both evident.
Charges, Trial, and Sentencing
When Crews and Hoehn were arrested, the initial charges issued entailed conspiracy to commit kidnapping and providing false information to law enforcement.
Crews then gave conflicting stories. At first, she said that Savanna had come willingly, learned how to self-induce labour, then came back days later to give her the baby. Detectives immediately dismissed the story.
During the follow-up, detectives investigated Crew’s medical history. They confirmed that she was never pregnant at the time. Investigations into her digital history and testimonies revealed that Crews had been running a scam.
She had apparently used old sonograms and previous positive pregnancy tests. Crews also kept logs of fake symptoms to trick Hoehn into believing she was pregnant.
After the recovery of Savanna’s body, the Cass County prosecutors upgraded the charges against both suspects to include conspiracy to commit murder.
In December 2017, Crews decided to plead guilty to the charges of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit kidnapping. She also admitted to deceiving investigators.
In her confession, she acknowledged that she had purposefully lured Savanna to the apartment under the pretext of modelling a dress. She also promised to give her $20 for the work.
Crews admitted to knocking her unconscious and performing a crude C-section to steal her baby. She also confessed to lying about her pregnancy to her boyfriend.
In February of 2018, Judge Frank L. Racek assessed the evidence, and he sentenced Brooke Crews to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Racek cited the cruel and predatory nature of the crime while handing down the sentence.
Crews cried as she read an apology statement to the Greywind family, “There is no excuse. There is no rationalisation. There is nothing.”
When Ashton Matheny learned the manner in which his baby was born and how his girlfriend died, it devastated him. Norberta Greywind fought back tears as she said she was satisfied with the sentence.
William Hoehn, though, opted to fight his conspiracy to commit murder charge, leading to a high-profile jury trial in September 2018. Just before the trial started, Hoehn pleaded guilty to kidnapping and providing false information.
He admitted that he helped to cover up the crime, hid the baby and dumped Savanna’s body. However, he said that he had no knowledge of Crew’s plan to kill Savanna.
Noberta Greywind gave a statement during his trial, “He betrayed our family. He looked us in the eye with a straight face while our daughter lay dead in his apartment. Please don’t ever consider letting him out.”
Crews also took the stand as a witness for the prosecution. She testified that when Hoehn came home to the bathroom, he got a rope and tied it around Savanna’s neck, before strangling her. Hoehn’s defence argued that Savanna had already passed away from the blood loss even before he came home.
The jury ultimately found him not guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, but he still had the conspiracy to commit kidnapping and deception charges.
In October 2018, Judge Tom Olson used the ‘Dangerous Special Offender statute’ against Hoehn, sentencing him to life in prison with the possibility of parole for the kidnapping charge.
Following the initial sentencing, Hoehn, through his attorney, appealed the decision, claiming that the trial judge misapplied the law in reaching it. In August 2019, the North Dakota Supreme Court agreed and threw out the life sentence.
Hoehn was subsequently resentenced to the maximum statutory penalty, which was 20 years for conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and one more year for lying to investigators.
Investigative Blunders and Savanna’s Act
The failed searches of Apartment 5 were a source of sustained public criticism. Crews testified that police officers missed the body and a newborn baby during all three searches.
During the first two searches, the body was still in the bathroom closet while the newborn was on the bed next to Hoehn. But he had covered her with a blanket. The next day, Hoehn had moved the body to the dresser.
Police conducted a third search, but they didn’t notice the baby or Savannah’s body in the dresser.
Gloria Alfred, the attorney representing the Greywinds, was critical of the police and their handling of the investigation. Hoehn also had a criminal record, considering he pleaded guilty in 2012 to fracturing his baby son’s skull. This was public record, the first time officers questioned him and Crews.
The death of Savanna arrived at a time of limited federal attention to the rate at which indigenous women in the nation were being murdered or reported missing.
The National Institute of Justice reported that more than four in five Native Americans had experienced violence in their lives. A bill was subsequently introduced in the Senate in October 2017, weeks after Savanna’s murder.
The Savanna Act was signed into law on October 10, 2020, in her honour. It directs the Department of Justice to review and develop law enforcement protocols to address missing or murdered indigenous peoples. It also aims to improve data collection on these types of cases.