Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Candace Rough Surface

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

When young mother goes missing from the reservation border town of Mobridge, South Dakota, investigators struggle to find any leads in the case. A chance discovery along the muddy banks of the Missouri River answers one question. But it’ll take 15 years and a whole lot of chance to finally unravel the mystery of what happened – and why – on one fateful night in 1980.  For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-candace-rough-surface/ 

Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is about the senseless murder of a young mother in South Dakota back in 1980. A murder that would have likely gone unsolved until a bitter divorce shook loose the lead of a lifetime along with some uncomfortable truths. This is the story of Candace Ruff-Surface. It's breakfast time on the morning of Saturday, August 3rd in the tiny reservation town of Kennel, South Dakota. And a woman named Alberta Ruff-Surface is at home with her two-year-old

grandson Homer. She's got her hands full already, so she's anxious for her daughter Candace, who everyone just calls Candie, to get home and jump back into mom mode. You see, Candie had gone out the night before to have some drinks with friends, and Alberta's been watching Homer for her. And listen, she's happy to help, like Candie is a great mom who works hard to provide for her son, but Alberta knows she's still an 18-year-old who likes to do 18-year-old things, like heading out for some drinks at the bar with friends. Wait, at 18?

Yeah, and it's actually on the up and up. According to Brian Bonner's reporting for the monitor, at least one of the bars in Roebridge, this one called Joker's Wild, is actually able to serve low-alcohol beer to people as young as 18, so they really like cater to that market. Anyway, so Candie's plan is to spend the night in this town of Moebridge, which is about a half an hour from Kennel. But as the day goes on, and Candie still hasn't come home, Alberta starts to worry. She calls her daughter Clara, thinking, if anyone's gonna know where Candie is, it's her. And Clara tells her that she had seen Candie last night

at the Silver Dollar Tavern, but Candie wasn't there long before she headed out. And did she mention where she was headed next? Not specifically, no. It was a busy night in Moebridge, apparently, and so Clara figures she wouldn't have had to go far to like run into even more friends. Clara says that she expected to hear from Candie that morning because she'd asked for a lift back to Kennel. But she never called, and so Clara just assumed that she found another ride, like with another friend or whatever. Because like I said, everyone on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation basically hung out in this town, and it's only like a half hour away, so there's always somebody

like going back and forth. It wouldn't be weird to just catch a ride. But the more Clara thinks about it, the more worried she gets about Candie. She tells Alberta, listen, I'm gonna go look for her because surely one of her friends is gonna know where she is. According to an article by Jennifer Olson in the Bismarck Tribune, the first people Clara goes to see are Candie's friends, Mary and Lisa. They've both been out the night before, and there's a solid chance that they ran into Candie after she left Silver Dollar. If nothing else, Mary and Lisa should be able to at least point her in the right direction for where Candie went that night. But, Mary and Lisa, they are anything but helpful. Like

they don't seem to want to help Clara at all. And didn't you just say that these were Candie's friends? Supposedly, but they're not responding in the way that I'd expect you to respond if my sister Alyssa was like standing under doorstep looking for me. Right. They're just being like difficult, a little hostile, and just, again, it's not really the vibe Clara was expecting. I mean, do we know why they're acting like this? Like, did they have a falling out with

Candie or something? There's no mention of anything like that in what I found. I get the sense that Mary and Lisa are just feeling kind of defensive, like Clara is there to accuse them of something or of knowing something. And that's totally not where Clara's head was when she arrived at the place, but now that she's here, she's not sure what to believe anymore. Because when she's there, she notices something weird. She can see that Mary's legs are legit, like, covered in scrapes and bruises. And at some point during this truly bizarre exchange, according to Jennifer Olsen's piece, Lisa comes right out and says, quote,

they said I killed Candie. Did I? End quote. Whoa, let's hang on a second. Who said this and who said anything about a murder? This is just a missing person right now, right? Right. I think it's more like a general they say, you know, you know what they say, not like anybody in particular. Lisa herself doesn't elaborate any further nor does the source material. But Clara must have diffused the situation, at least enough to get them to confirm that they had seen Candy the night before, as they were walking past Joker's wild.

Like they saw Candy in the bar? Well, that's not 100% clear, but it's at least something. Clara and her other sister Elaine spend the rest of the weekend driving around the reservation, knocking on doors, but no one seems to know anything. No one saw anything and no one's saying anything. So by the time Monday comes, Homer is missing his mom and Alberta is beside herself with worry. So she heads to Moe Bridge that morning to report Candy missing. And do you want to take a guess at how that goes? Well, if you're asking me, it's probably not great yet. At first, police are almost

pushing back on Alberta's claim that her daughter is missing. They're like, look, we get reports like this a lot and usually just ends up being that the girl ran off with some guy to start a new life. I would love to know the statistics on how often that actually happens to some of these police departments, you know? So would I. Yeah. The officer basically suggests to Alberta, like, listen, just go home, wait it out, like maybe Candy will change her mind and just decide to come home. But Alberta knows Candy didn't just run off with some guy. She would never leave Homer behind like

that. There's nothing to run away from. Alberta knows that her daughter's life wasn't always easy because it wasn't easy for anyone living on the reservation at that time. Like in a piece from the Washington Post, journalist Anita Parlow described Standing Rock as an area of grinding poverty, high unemployment and alcohol addiction. It was tough. But Candy was determined to make a better life for her and her son. She worked hard. She had plans to go back and finish high school and things were actually good. So Alberta knows Candy hasn't run away and she isn't about to be pushed around either.

She pressures police to start an investigation to go out and search for her daughter, you know, for them to do their job, right? And Alberta's efforts seem to pay off because authorities from the Bureau of Indian Affairs organized a ground search while the Moebridge police start pounding the pavement looking for leads. The bartender at Joker's Wild tells them he doesn't remember seeing Candy specifically. Like it had been a busy night and he doesn't remember everyone who comes through his doors. But somehow he is able to remember this one kid, a 16 year old named Nick Shear.

And is he naming Nick for any reason in particular or it's literally like the one person he remembers from everyone he saw that night. I don't know. I think it might just be that the bartender like everyone else in town knows Nick and his brothers and his parents. Like they're basically from a prominent family in Moebridge. So maybe that's why he recognized him. Okay, so it's probably more like, I mean, he's the one dude I can tell you for sure was there. Right. Now this is a long shot for sure, but whatever, at least it's something.

So police go talk to Nick and he says, yes, he was at Joker's Wild that night, but so was like pretty much everyone else in town. And he says he doesn't remember seeing Candy there that night, but he also can't say for sure she wasn't there either. Like the place was packed as usual and there were a bunch of guys from out of town hanging out there too. Ultimately, he says that he and his friends ended up leaving the bar pretty early that night anyway.

So as the closest thing they have to a lead fizzles out, they start to wonder if maybe Candy didn't just run off with some guy from the bar that night. What if they've been looking in the wrong place all along? What if the person that they're looking for came from closer to her own inner circle? The next person police want to talk to is Homer's father. His father was not involved in Homer's life like at all and he doesn't have much of a relationship with Candy either and he for sure wasn't with her at the Joker's Wild. He says that he was home all evening hanging out with friends and police are able to back

that up. The officer leading the investigation reports back to Candy's family that they are still investigating, still trying to track down potential witnesses and interview people. There are even a few reported sightings of Candy that they're looking into, one in another part of South Dakota, another in Minneapolis, but those eventually fizzle out too. And the whole investigation is slow going. And by slow going, I mean not really going at all. Even the media isn't reporting on her disappearance and police aren't calling the family anymore

either. They just say that they have nothing to report. But Candy's family isn't really buying this like no leads crap that police are telling them. The exact thing play out before, the entire town has, it is a tale as old as time for them. When an indigenous person goes missing or is found murdered, the desire to find answers is pretty much non-existent.

According to Anita Parla's piece in the Washington Post, in this region of South Dakota, it has been that way for as long as anyone can remember. And Candy's family can't help but wonder if Candy were a white girl, would this investigation look different? Would she be home by now? And I mean, that's a fair question to ask. Even just from the start when her mom was reporting Candy missing, all of the pushback that she got from law enforcement, you know, saying that she would likely run off for a

better life, all of that feels like it's really based on race and not much else. Yeah. Now, unfortunately, the next lead in Candy's missing persons investigation doesn't come until the next year, in May of 1981, when a young ranch hand named Steve calls police and says that he just found a body. Officers had to meet Steve at a remote stretch of the Missouri River just a few miles north of Moe Bridge, where he leads police to the partially decomposed body of a young woman. Under her, police find five shell cases, all from a.22 caliber weapon.

And when they scour the area, they find a small piece of plastic from a pair of eyeglasses. And that piece of plastic has a name on it, Candace Ruff Surface. So hang on, he just happened upon this body nine months later? Yeah, so Steve says that he just happened to be out there that day basically like monitoring the land bordering the river. And he said it's a regular part of his job. What made this trip different is the water levels, apparently, which always drop at this point in the season.

And at this particular point, the waters in this part of the Missouri River were low enough to actually expose the bottom. Oh, so up to this point, no one had seen this body because it was covered in water? Yeah. In an episode of swamp murders on this case, one of the investigators who worked this case said that the remains were essentially like logged in mud. So it's not that he hadn't been to that area before. It's that even if he had, he likely wouldn't have seen anything.

Ultimately, an autopsy confirms through dental records what was already presumed, that the body found on the banks of the river was in fact that of 18-year-old Candy Ruff Surface. The pathologist found wounds in her head and her chest. Five of them, made by those five bullets police pulled from under her body, along with evidence of a sexual and physical assault. As you can imagine, the Ruff Surface family is, of course, absolutely devastated by the news that Candy was never coming home. But they do find a tiny bit of comfort knowing that their case was now a murder investigation.

And they hope that that would finally spur police into some real action. And it doesn't take long before police have what sounds like a promising lead. According to more of Jennifer Olson's reporting for the Bismarck Tribune, a local Moebridge guy tells authorities that his teenage son, Mike, and two other boys had been in that area of the river, months before Candy's body was found. And they had reported seeing a guy, like, just running across the field. Could it have been the ranch hand, maybe? Well, no, it wasn't Steve, the ranch hand, because the Bismarck Tribune story describes

this guy as wearing a trench coat, which in my mind is a strange thing to wear to a remote stretch of river. But in Swamp Murders, that episode, he's described as shirtless and wearing a cowboy hat. Okay, I have questions about both situations. Yeah, I don't know which of those descriptions is weirder, honestly. This is, like, again, remote land in the middle of South Dakota, so maybe the shirtless cowboy look isn't actually all that strange, I don't know.

But when police follow up with Mike, he tells him that the whole thing was just super sketch. Especially because there was nothing out there for that man to be coming from or heading to. It's just, like, acres and acres of empty land and river. And does he remember when this happened? Oh, he remembers exactly when it happened, because it was the day after Candy went missing. Uh, that kind of seems like the kind of thing that would have been great to know, I don't know, nine months ago when they were first investigating this.

Yeah, it would have been, except there was no reason to think that a weird dude running through a field near a river was at all related to Candy's disappearance. I mean, her last known location was miles from there at Joker's Wild, not to mention she hadn't even been reported missing by that time. I guess that's true. And do police ask the kid, like, what these teenagers were doing, hanging out in such a remote area to see this guy in the first place? Yeah, so the kids say that they were fishing that day in the area, which is why they say

they were there. Anyway, Mike tells the officers that the man they'd seen was white. He was in his late twenties, early thirties, and while there isn't any other descriptive detail outlined in the source material, he is able to give police enough of a description to create a composite sketch. But that isn't the only thing Mike gives them. Because one of the other boys he'd been with that day was a name that had come up for police before, nine months ago.

Her ex-boyfriend? No, Nick Sheer. So now they have Nick at the very bar on the very night Candy was last seen, and then at the location her body was found on the day after. Yeah, that feels like way more than just a coincidence. According to an article by Bob Bushner in the Sheboygan Press, at this point investigators actually put Nick on their list of potential suspects in Candy's murder. But just then, a tip comes in about a man in Minneapolis who is making statements about

Candy's murder. And that pulls investigators away from Nick and towards this other lead. And at that point Nick's name is pretty much dropped off from the investigation altogether. Well, and early on in the investigation there was like a lead in Minneapolis too, right? Right, they thought of like some supposed sightings of her. But what I find interesting is that they end up writing him off even though that ultimately this Minneapolis lead turns out to be just another dead end. And so before long the case is ice cold again.

Just tell the rough surface family that they're still actively investigating, but cracking the case is going to require a lot more than what they're working with now. They said they need a breakthrough, but there is no breakthrough. And in fact, if you look at the media coverage out there on Candy's disappearance and death, you will find zero news stories from when she was a missing person in 1980, one published print article from when her body was found and identified in 81, and then nothing. But the sad truth is that at the time people kind of forgot about Candy, the white community in Moe Bridge anyway, according to Anita Parlo's Washington Post feature.

But Alberta didn't forget Clara and the rest of Candy's brothers and sisters didn't forget and her son Homer didn't forget either. Although at two years old in 1980, he had precious little to remember and relied heavily on his grandmother to fill in the gaps about his mother that he didn't even get a chance to know. So, 10 years go by, then 15, and the family can't help but wonder if there will ever be justice for Candy. And then, in October of 1995, police finally get that breakthrough that they'd been hoping

for. When a detective in Wisconsin calls and says that they don't just have a lead for police to follow, they have a confession. The detective says that he'd gotten a call from a local attorney who had gotten some information from someone he had worked with who said, hey, a guy told my daughter that he killed Candace Ruff-Surface 15 years ago in South Dakota. Now, the guy at the end of this chain of people is 30-year-old James Stroh. Okay, so a person who knew somebody who knew somebody who said something to someone else

about this and the guy who said it was James Stroh, did that name ever come up before? No, not at all. I mean, this guy isn't even from Moe Bridge, but interestingly, his cousin is. And that cousin is none other than Nick Shear. Of course it is. But here's the thing, again, James had never been on their radar. Not once did his name even come up in all the years that they had been working this case.

Right, so what changed, like what brought him forward after all this time? His marital status. Terry Woster wrote for the Argus leader that years before when he and his wife were first engaged, he'd told her about his involvement in Candace's murder, and she'd kept that secret for years. But then their marriage turned sour, and the divorce was really bitter. So apparently James' mother-in-law told the attorney that she worked for who in turn passed that information to local authorities who then notified the investigators in Moe

Bridge. I mean, obviously I'm so glad the information came out, but that must have been one heck of a divorce. Oh, no kidding. So police go head to Wisconsin where the sky is, knock on this guy's door, and when he opens it, he says, I'm ready to tell you everything. James tells detectives that he'd been visiting relatives, his dad's sister and their family, in Moe Bridge in the summer of 1980.

He was only 15 at the time, and his cousin, Nick, was 16. The Stroh family was only in town for a few days at like the tail end of summer vacation, but Nick insisted that the boys make the most of it. He wanted to show James a good time, so that Friday night, they piled into Nick's truck and headed to the Joker's Wild, and it was there James tells police that they met up with Candy. He says that Nick knew her, and he'd approached her saying like, hey, I know your cousin, like kind of like a connection thing.

And after who knows how many beers Nick and James decided to leave the Joker's Wild and head to a house party at this guy's trailer a few miles outside town. They asked Candy if she wanted to come with them, and she was like, I could, except how am I going to get back? Like, I got stuff to do in the morning, but Nick told her, no worries, I got you. So they all load into his truck and start toward this trailer party. Okay, so quick question, is Nick also drinking on this night, like 16 drinking at a bar and then driving his truck with passengers in it?

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly the scenario, and frankly, it's a miracle that they all made it to this party that night, but they did. Now at some point in the night, one of the other party goers starts making sexual advances toward Candy. To the point, James says that she was really upset and wanted to leave. So he, Nick and Candy hop back in a Nick's truck and start heading back toward town. James says that in the truck, his cousin Nick started to make a move on Candy himself, and she was having 0% of it, especially after what just went down like minutes before.

And so she started saying like, this isn't right, I know you guys, I know your families, I know where you live, whatever. Right. Shannon Marvel reported for the West River Eagle that James says at one point, she threatens to have someone she knows beat him and Nick up. James tells police that Candy actually hit him, and that sent Nick into a tailspin. He pulled the truck over on the side of the road, got out, and then ordered both James and Candy out too.

According to an Associated Press story in the reporter, James says that Nick said, quote, we're going to do her end quote. James says he was terrified and that feeling only grew as he watched his cousin sexually assault Candace and then demand that James do the same. From there, he said they continued taking turns sexually assaulting and beating Candy to the point where she couldn't even fight back anymore. James says that's when Nick marched to his truck, got his gun, stood over Candy and fired.

He then ordered James to shoot her too. And he says he's pretty sure he did, though he doesn't remember for sure. Once it was obvious that Candy was dead, James says they stole the cash from her purse and split it up between them, and then they decided they needed to dump her body somewhere other than in the middle of that open field. But Nick didn't want to get blood in his truck, so instead they looped a chain around Candy's neck, secured it to the back of the truck, and then dragged her body nearly a mile across that open field to a little cove along the Missouri River where they dumped

her body, where they dumped her purse, and her clothes. By this time, it was after midnight, clearly there was no light and I'm sure they also didn't want to rouse any suspicion in case somebody came by the area. So they headed back home to Nick's place, but he says that they went back there the next day to make sure that there was no evidence left at the scene. So hang on, is that what they were doing the day they went quote unquote fishing with their other friend? I don't actually know if that was the same trip, but I have been wondering the exact

same thing. Now, James tells police that he and his family left Moebridge to head home to Wisconsin the next day, and there doesn't seem to be anything to suggest that the Mike kid, the one who actually came forward back in 81 with the tip about the shirtless cowboy, or the trench coke guy, yeah, had any knowledge of the murder, let alone participated. But I mean, it's possible, Brian Bonner's piece in the monitor mentions that there had been several other people at the trailer party that night, which by the way, it turns out had been hosted by that guy, Steve, the ranch hand who found Candy's body.

Yeah, everything is a little too connected for my liking. And also, James had admitted to telling like 15 people about what he and Nick had done over the years, and maybe Mike had been one of them, maybe Steve had been two, I don't know. Okay, but despite if they were or weren't, there were 15 people who were told the story, and it still took 15 years for someone to say, Hey, maybe we should take this to the police. Yeah.

Thank God someone actually did. I think of how many cases never get solved because people just never come forward with what they know. I mean, we know people talk all the time. Anyway, all of this stuff is happening very quietly behind the scenes. Police work with James to get the whole story, which he agrees to tell in full in court in exchange for a lesser charge and less jail time. And remember how I said that there was one media story about Candy when her body was

found and then it was like silence? Yeah. And the news that police have made to arrest in connection with Candy's murder is what finally breaks that decade and a half long silence. And you can just imagine the surprise in South Dakota when that happens. Oh, absolutely. And not just that, but for Moebridge's golden child to be involved as well. Well, initially police don't even release the name of who they'd arrested because back

in 1980 when the crime was committed, Nick and James were both juveniles. So they're operating under the rules for young offenders. But by the end of October, the case was moved from juvenile court to regular adult court. And that is when the public learns the names of the two men arrested for Candy's murder. Oh, so they were initially treated essentially as minors. Wow. I mean, I imagine the announcement that it was them then was huge. Oh, you bet.

I mean, like people in Moebridge were shocked. Like Nick Shear, the Shear family, the family that the town literally named their arena after. Yeah, it is a shock to the system for the community, absolutely. But that's not how this plays out on the other side of the Missouri River on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. There, the news that two white men had been arrested 15 years after the brutal murder of a young indigenous mother is almost the opposite of shocking.

It's like, of course they killed her and then got away with it for 15 years. This woman named B. Medicine, an anthropologist who lives in the area, said something in Terry Woster's Argus leader story that I want you to read. She says, quote, if the roles were reversed, a white woman and two Lakota men, somebody would have been convicted years ago, whether they did it or not. End quote. And that pretty much sums up the sentiment in Standing Rock. Are they relieved to finally have a measure of justice in Candy's case?

Sure. But it took 15 years and a divorce in a whole other state to get them there. I mean, again, what's even so frustrating about this is that they didn't press Nick really at all back in the early 80s, even though he was one of their original suspects. Remember, they just like got diverted and then just never circled back to him. So even the solve just kind of like fell into their laps. Yeah. By November, Nick has been charged with first degree murder and first degree sexual assault

while James is charged with second degree manslaughter and aggravated assault. The lesser sentence he was offered for agreeing to testify against his cousin. The preliminary hearing happens later that month. And in addition to James's testimony, the prosecution revealed that they also have tape of a call between James and Nick that had been set up to try to get a confession from Nick, according to Bob Mercer's reporting for the Rapid City Journal. At that hearing, Nick says he's innocent, even in the face of James's direct testimony. The judge sets a trial date for the following spring for Nick, and while James still hasn't

been officially arraigned, both of the men are being held in jail on a $200,000 bond. Almost immediately, Nick's influential family starts circulating a petition around town to lower his bail so that he can be released to await the trial date. That is unbelievable. No, what's unbelievable is that over 100 people in Moe Bridge sign it. But for Candy's family and really the entire community on Standing Rock, it's just par for the course. Like, of course, 100 people think this guy should just be comfortable at home in bed

right now, even though he raped and beat and tortured and killed another human person. And if the sheer family could essentially clap their hands and get 100 signatures on that petition, how in the world is the prosecution going to seat an impartial jury? Because remember, Candy's murder didn't happen on the reservation and happened in Moe Bridge, in a county that happens to be 92% white, and with a long history of standing behind one another and the blatant lack of empathy for their neighbors in Standing Rock. But you know what, Lakota people stand together, too, and they are determined to find a way to get justice for Candy, whatever that takes.

According to an Associated Press article in the Sioux City Journal, in December 1995, more than 300 people come together to walk, drive, and ride horseback in a Justice for Candy march that began in her tiny reservation town of Kennel and ended at the Missouri River where Candy's body had been found. The question they have to face though as they're doing this is will it make a difference? Not long after that march, Nick goes before the judge to request that his bail be lowered, and he presents that petition that I mentioned. Now the judge actually refuses to lower the bond, but Nick's family is still able to

raise the 200 grand and get him out of prison anyways. James, on the other hand, stays put. Before his trial even starts, Nick's defense team argues that the statute of limitations for the first degree sexual assault charge had passed, and so they're saying that the charges should be dropped. And technically, the law at the time said that a person had seven years from the time of the attack to bring charges against someone, and that clock had long since counted down. Okay, not to state the absolute obvious here, but can you explain to me how the f*** that

works if the victim is dead and can't report the crime? That doesn't make a single bit of sense to me. Right? Like, the law has changed since then, thank goodness, but at the time, it was seven years, apparently, whether the victim was alive or dead. And because the law was what it was at the time, the judge agrees. And again, maybe not agrees like philosophically, but the law is the law kind of thing. So by the time jury selection is about to begin a Nick's trial in the spring of 96,

the only charge he faces is for first degree murder. And what kind of sentence could that carry? Jennifer Olson's 96 story quotes the state's attorney saying that he may seek either the death penalty or life in prison, but that can only happen after a conviction. And there was a big if about whether or not a jury would even find Nick guilty. A lot of people around town are being like wink, wink, nudge, nudge, yeah, this will be a fair trial, sure it will, which was a huge concern for police and prosecutors and for the family and community as a whole.

But at the very last minute, literally the night before the trial is set to begin, the prosecution cuts a deal with Nick and instead of opening arguments in the first degree murder trial, Candi's family watches as Nick pleads guilty to first degree manslaughter, which sounds like a serious downgrade, I know, and it is, but it still carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $25,000 fine that feels totally out of place here, but whatever. Manslaughter though does take the death penalty off the table, which I have to think is a big motivator for Nick. And on the plus side, a plea agreement means skipping the trauma of a trial that didn't

guarantee a conviction in the first place. And even if he had been convicted at trial, there could be, you know, years and years of appeals after that. Right. It's not the heavy hand of the law coming down on him, but it's better than trying him in court and him walking away scot-free like he has been for the past 15 years. Right. The prosecutor told Bob Mercer from the Rapid City Journal that there's another reason

the state supported a plea agreement in this case, quote, it's important for the family and the community to see our little Nicky is a killer, end quote. Right, right, right. It removes all doubt and pleading guilty like that means he has to admit that he did it, come to terms with the fact that he actually committed this crime. Yeah. And you know, part of what her family and I think everyone is looking for is like answers to what exactly happened that night.

And yes, they get to hear him admit to being a part of it, but they don't necessarily get all of the answers. So he admits to killing Candy, which again is the crucial piece and he apologizes to her family. But in like the watered down version of events his lawyer shares in the courtroom, Nick says that he's not the instigator of this whole thing, that he was just this wildly intoxicated kid. His lawyer says that the boys were in lockstep the whole way that they both thought it would

be fun to quote unquote scare Candy by taking her to that field. Okay, so how do we get from let's scare this girl, which also no thank you to rape, murder and then dragging her by her neck for a mile through an open field. Nick provides no connective tissue in his version of that night to say where or when or how their behavior went from questionable to criminal. Nick's attorney says that the whole chain to the truck thing never happened, but he says sure he may have helped load Candy's body into the back but never dragged her. So his cousin just made that part up.

According to Nick. Yeah, it personally I even have questions about this because again, if you remember when they found her like the bullets didn't they say the bullets were found underneath her body. Yeah. So there's actually a big chunk of this that doesn't make sense to me based off what I'm going off of. Now just before his sentencing hearing his family issues a statement of apology to the

rough surface family that I want you to read. It says quote, we are terribly sorry for the loss of this beloved family member. We cannot imagine the pain and suffering her family has endured. They have been in our thoughts and prayers over these last few months and we fervently hope that God eases their grief and provides them with some measure of peace. End quote. And then there's another line that says quote, it is unfortunate it has ignited an ugly and divisive racial conflict.

We are certain this has only added to the burden and pain of both families. We wish it would be possible to build a bridge of understanding to the Native American community. End quote. So this was sent to Alberta in a letter or something. Oh, no, absolutely not. It was released through Nick's attorney and I'm pretty sure didn't go directly to Alberta at all but was like published in the local news. Oh, cool.

That seems really, really heartfelt. Yeah. And the timing is just so convenient too, right ahead of the sentencing hearing. And when that happens later that month, the prosecution asks for a 100 year prison sentence. According to coverage in the Daily Sitka Sentinel, Nick apologizes to Candy's family for his role in her murder and members of his family plead for leniency. But the judge supports the prosecution's recommendation and does sentence Nick to 100 years. And would he be eligible for parole at all?

He would, yes, after as little as 12 to 13 years. But the other part of the judge's sentence is a recommendation to the parole board that he not be granted parole the first time he requests it. So the prosecution feels like as long as he keeps his nose clean, he'll likely serve between maybe 15 and 20 years, maybe a little bit more. Now a few months later in July of 1996, James pleads guilty to second degree manslaughter and aggravated assault. And he's sentenced to 15 years in prison, which to me seems like an absolute gift considering

the heinous nature of his crime. But I guess like when they're looking at this, they're thinking, you know, without his testimony, Nick may never have seen the inside of a jail cell. So how soon would James be eligible for parole with that sort of sentence? Oh, you're going to fall out of your chair, 18 months, 18 months for murder. Well, I guess it's manslaughter, but still, no, it's outrageous. So I mean, he's out now for sure. What about Nick?

Well, Nick actually appealed the judge's sentence, not surprising, asking for the 100 years to be reduced, especially in light of the 15 year sentence his cousin was handed for the very same crime. The judge was like, not passed, but he does agree to withdraw his recommendation against early release, saying that basically that'll be up to the parole board to decide what the outcome is when the time comes. And you're right, by the way, James is released early, not after 18 months. He does serve seven years of his 15 year sentence before being released on parole in 2004.

Nick spent a lot longer in jail than his cousin. And so he wasn't paroled until pretty recently actually in 2019 after serving 23 of his 100 year sentence. So they're both just out of jail, living normal lives. Actually Nick died earlier this year in the spring of 2021, but as far as I can tell, his cousin James is living in Wisconsin and he'd be in his mid fifties now. It has been more than 40 years since Candy's life was stolen away, not just from her, but from her family, from her son.

He only had two years with Candy and because of that, her death had a bigger impact on Homer than her life. He grew up without his mom, without a dad in his life either, and while Alberta and the rest of the family did their best by Homer, losing his mother so young and so tragically left him without a strong foundation to build a life on. And like all that intergenerational trauma on top of generations and generations of systemic racism, crushing poverty and lack of opportunities. And I mean, I could go on forever.

Yeah, it just goes on. Homer has a kid of his own now, a daughter named Mercedes Rough Surface, who told Shannon Marvel with Aberdeen News, quote, we had a picture of my grandma Candy, which is the only picture I have ever seen of her framed and in a box with the rest of my baby things. I used to hunt for that framed picture at a very young age. And when I found it, I'd sit in the hallway and cry, end quote. Mercedes says she'd grown up knowing her grandmother had been murdered, but she didn't know by whom or how or where or why or anything like that.

She says that she learned those details from that episode of swamp murders, I mentioned. And Britt, you mentioned intergenerational trauma and you're absolutely right. Things like this don't happen in a vacuum. They have real and lasting impacts on individuals and families and communities. Candy's murder fundamentally changed the course of this family's life. In that story from Aberdeen News, Mercedes said, quote, I've wondered for the longest time, how much different my life could have been if they hadn't did what they did. How much happier Homer could have been if he had his mom with him, end quote.

You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. And follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. So, what do you think Chuck, do you approve?