DEVILS LAKE, N.D. — Two murders committed in the 1980s haunt Spirit Lake Nation.
The body of Eddie Peltier, a former police officer in nearby Devils Lake, was found on a highway on Aug. 28, 1983, near Ski Jump Hill, a landmark on the reservation.
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Three years later, on Aug. 10, 1986, berry pickers found the badly decomposed body of Gilbert Fassett on Ski Jump Hill, not far from where Peltier’s body had been found.
The two murder cases have more than geography in common.
Both resulted in convictions, but the verdicts have been dogged over the decades by controversy.
Physical evidence was lacking in both cases. There were no fingerprints, blood, fibers or anything else that linked those convicted of the murders to the victims.
Both convictions turned on witness testimony — purported eyewitnesses in the Peltier case, purported confessions, mostly from jailhouse informants, in the Fassett case.
How reliable were those witnesses? What were their motivations?
In the decades since the trials, both cases have come under scrutiny. Both have been called wrongful convictions.
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In the upcoming series "Who killed Eddie and Gilbert?" Forum Communications will detail those two murky murders and the lingering questions surrounding them, including this: Were the men convicted of these murders guilty?
The Trust Project
