VARIOUS DOCUMENTS 4

Part 5 of: The Lies We Told Each Other

Fandoms: Thunderheart (1992)

Characters: Raymond Levoi, Walter Crow Horse, Grandpa Samuel Reaches, William Dawes, Frank 'Cooch' Coutelle

Additional Tags:
Fake Documents, racism, political violence,

INDEX: https://palabraspulsares.blogspot.com/p/various-documents-lies-we-told-each.html

--------------------------------------------

Chapter 4: Thunderheart (1992)

Summary:
FBI Internal Control Board Notes on Case 19870423SD-In (April 1987 Pine Ridge Murders). Pages on the role of former agent Ray Levoi.

 

Ray Levoi (Los Angeles, California, March 17, 1960).

Biological father: Samuel Seresin (Sioux Indian), unemployed

Biological mother: Karin Kowalsky (second-generation Russian), housewife

Adoptive father: Matthew Levoi (white), coronel of the US Army

 

Ray Levoi went to college at the University of Oregon, where he graduated with a Major in Political Science and a minor in Criminology. He was an active member of the university theater group. He entered the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, in 1981 and had a successful career as an agent for six years. His internship in the theater was beneficial, as he specialized in covert missions. He responded to FBI headquarters in Washington, DC.

In April 1987, Ray Levoi was assigned as an assistant special agent in the investigation of the murder of Leo Fast Elk, a tribal council member of the Oglala Sioux Nation, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota. His supervisor, William Dawes (future FBI director), chose him because of his mixed Sioux heritage, which could aid the investigation as they interviewed residents of the reservation. It is in the record that, when informed of his assignment, Agent Lavoi reported that he was disconnected from his heritage and did not speak Lakota.

Agent Levoi traveled to South Dakota as an assistant to veteran Agent Frank " Cooch " Coutelle. Coutelle had been dealing for some time with the Aboriginal Rights Movement (ARM), a radical group with Marxist influence. He deduced that the murder of Leo Fast Elk had to do with Siuox Indian infighting, as the ARM opposed the tribal council's efforts to modernize the reservation. Thanks to his investigative work, he had already narrowed the list of suspects to Maggie Eagle Bear, a violent political activist and school teacher on the reservation, where he indoctrinated his subversive agenda, and Jimmy Looks Twice, leader of the radical conservative faction of the tribal council. Both were well-known members of the ARM.

Agent Levoi was expected to assist in collecting material evidence and testimonies that would prove Agent Coutelle 's theory. Instead, within a few days, he began to display a strange pattern of insubordination and question the chain of command. He repeatedly challenged Coutelle 's thesis and proposed that the murder was related with a conspiracy to discredit the ARM and take control of reservation land.

Further investigation revealed that Levoi spent time with Walter Crow Horse, a reservation tribal police officer. Crow Horse's agenda was to prove that the murder had been committed by a white person from outside the reservation to protect the image of his community. He convinced Agent Levoi to have unsupervised meetings with him and Samuel Reaches, aka Grandfather. Everything indicates that during these meetings, Agent Levoi was manipulated, hypnotized, and perhaps given drugs without his consent.

 

In the end, the two agents were somewhat correct. After the arrest of Jimmy Looks Twice, agent Levoi and Officer Crow Horse found the subversive Maggie Eagle Bear's body on the Red Deer Table, where signs of illegal uranium mining were also found. Later that day, was discovered the lifeless body of ex-convict Richard Yellow Hawk at his home in Allen. He had committed suicide. In the note he left behind, he explained that during his time in prison, he had interacted with members of organized crime interested in illegal mining and drug trafficking who wanted to use the territory of the reserve. By orders of these people, he had killed Leo Fast Elk and Maggie Eagle Bear.

After reviewing the evidence, it was decided to release Jimmy Looks Twice, although the FBI kept him under surveillance for several years.

Ray Levoi sent his written resignation to William Dawes and stayed to live in Allen. He changed his name to Ray Seresin (his biological father's last name) and agreed to work for tribal police while studying Lakota and exploring his indigenous heritage. Due to suspicions that the ARM might try to use him as an advisor in their attempts against the political stability of the Oglala reservation and other indigenous reservations in the country, he, too, was kept under surveillance.

Ray Levoi has not left the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation since 1988.

 INDEX: https://palabraspulsares.blogspot.com/p/various-documents-lies-we-told-each.html