Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind

Case background and investigation

Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind was a 22-year-old member of the Spirit Lake Nation who was eight months pregnant when she was killed in Fargo, North Dakota, in August 2017. On August 19, 2017, she left her family's apartment to help an upstairs neighbor, Brooke Crews, with what Crews described as a sewing project. Savanna never returned, and her family reported her missing when she failed to respond to their attempts to reach her.

The neighbors, Brooke Crews and her boyfriend William Hoehn, had for months been at the center of a fabricated pregnancy. According to Crews's own account, she attacked Savanna inside the couple's apartment, incapacitated her, and used a knife to cut the near-term infant from her womb. The baby, later named Haisley Jo, survived. Investigators grew suspicious after Hoehn's co-workers reported that he had suddenly begun talking about a newborn at home. On August 24, 2017, Fargo police executing search warrants found the living infant in Crews and Hoehn's apartment; DNA later confirmed she was Savanna's daughter. On August 27, 2017, kayakers discovered Savanna's body wrapped in plastic in the Red River near Harwood, north of Fargo. Her death was ruled a homicide.

The two neighbors were charged, and their cases resolved very differently. Brooke Crews pleaded guilty. On December 11, 2017, she admitted to conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and giving false information to police, and on February 2, 2018, she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. William Hoehn's path to conviction was more complicated. On September 4, 2018, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and to giving false information to law enforcement. He then stood trial on a separate charge of conspiracy to commit murder, and on September 28, 2018, a jury found him not guilty of that murder-conspiracy count. He was therefore convicted only of the kidnapping conspiracy and the false-information charge, to which he had pleaded guilty.

Hoehn was initially sentenced to life in prison after prosecutors successfully argued he should be treated as a dangerous special offender. The North Dakota Supreme Court later reversed that enhanced sentence, finding the dangerous-special-offender designation had been improperly applied. On October 7, 2019, Hoehn was resentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the case.

Savanna's killing drew national attention and became a rallying point for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement, which highlights the disproportionate rates at which Native American women are killed or go missing. Her case directly inspired federal legislation. Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota introduced a bill named in Savanna's honor in 2017, and after being reintroduced, Savanna's Act was signed into law on October 10, 2020. The law directs the Department of Justice to improve data collection on missing and murdered Indigenous people, clarify law-enforcement responsibilities across tribal, federal, state, and local agencies, and strengthen coordination and reporting.

As of 2026, Brooke Crews continues to serve life without parole, and William Hoehn remains imprisoned under his 20-year sentence. Savanna's daughter, Haisley Jo, survived and has been raised by her father and Savanna's family. The case remains a defining and frequently cited example within the broader MMIW movement.