In "the fullness of time"  Dick Wilson was removed as tribal chairman.  In the winter of 1975-76, the lawlessness on Pine Ridge increased, despite Wilson's replacement as Tribal Council President by Al Trimble, the former BIA Superintendent.  Dick Wilson was outraged by the three-to-one Tribal Council vote against him on January 16.  He wouldn't actually relinquish office until April, 1976.  But he made the most of the time left to him.  On January 17th the chairman of the Pine Ridge District - Wilson's stronghold - made it known that Trimble's hometown of Wanblee needed "straightening out."  On Friday evening January 30, the village was invaded by three carloads of fifteen goons, wearing GI bulletproof vests and armed with AR-15 rifles.  The following morning (Saturday) shots were fired into the house of Guy Dull Knife, a descendant of the Cherokee chief who had taken his people to shelter on Pine Ridge following an epic and tragic flight from Indian Territory in Oklahoma in 1878.  Although the culprits were identified by witnesses, the BIA police made no arrests.  Later that day, tribal attorney Byron DeSersa was shot to death by a carload of "these same goons."  (Matthiessen, ibid, pp. 254-255.)  That afternoon, the BIA police were reinforced by two FBI agents and some Jackson County deputies.  None of these lawmen did anything to discourage the shooting and firebombing, which continued all Saturday night.  A witness gave the names of the goons involved and descriptions of their cars to the police and FBI agents.  Both authorities questioned everybody except those involved.  Neither group visited the house where the goons were gathered.  Instead, they arrested Guy Dull Knife - for "disorderly conduct."  The FBI agents told those who protested that they lacked "probable cause" to make arrests, and that they were only there "in an investigative capacity."  The outraged Wanblee residents finally organized their own law, and gave the goons until sunset to get out of town.  BIA police then provided the goons with a police escort back to Pine Ridge village.

On February 17th of that year a lady called, reporting a hit-and-run at the junction of Highways 73 and 44 to the Wanblee ambulance driver by telephone from Rapid City, over a hundred miles away.  The sheriff's office investigated but found nothing.  On February 24, a rancher found a woman's body in that same location.  For several years, stray bodies had been common on the reservation, and the rancher was surprised by the unusual attention given this one.  It drew a number of deputies and BIA police, reportedly attended by four FBI agents.  Some came from Pine Ridge village, over one hundred miles away.  But Dr. W. O. Brown, resident pathologist at the Scottsbluff, Nebraska hospital, reported that a small contusion on the head was the only sign of injury, and dismissed the case as routine.  He noted she had had sex not long before her death, but ruled out the possibility of rape, citing the absence of any signs of physical injury.  (This was the same Dr. Brown who had previously dealt with the bodies of Pedro Bisonette and Buddy Lamont in a controversial manner.  Both were also classed as accidents, in spite of strong reasons to suspect homicide.)  On March 2, "Jane Doe" was buried in a Catholic cemetery on orders from the Pine Ridge police.  Despite the "routine" nature of the death, Dr. Brown had cut off both hands at the wrist and turned them over to an unidentified FBI agent - William Wood, said the BIA police.  The fingerprints (which Wood claimed could not be taken at autopsy due to "advanced decomposition.") were identified in Washington on the day after the burial as belonging to Anna Mae Aquash.  Since she did not use drugs or alcohol and was well known for her skills at woodland survival, no one believed she had died of "exposure."  "She had to be murdered or something," her friend Rosalyn Jumping Bull said.  "She's not that dumb, to be walking out there all alone."

Anna Mae's sister, Mary Lafford, contacted Attorney Bruce Ellison the next day.  On March 8, Ellison told the FBI that he would demand an exhumation.  That afternoon the FBI applied for an exhumation order.  An affidavit signed by SA William Wood said that no X rays had been done at the first autopsy, and that the FBI wanted to investigate whether Anna Mae had been a hit-and-run victim or had been murdered.  Wood reported a conversation with an Anna Tonaquoddle in which she stated that Anna Mae Aquash was felt to be a FBI informant by her confederates in the American Indian Movement.  (Ms. Tonaquodle denied any such report or conversation.)  What seemed most interesting was the timing of this announcement, which Wood made on the morning of the second autopsy.  In no time at all Dr. Gary Peterson, resident pathologist at St. Paul Hospital of Minnesota discovered that Anna Mae had been executed by a "metallic pellet . . . . consistent with lead" fired at point-blank range from a .38 handgun into the back of her head.  The bullet's passage was traced back from the lump in the left temple to a bleeding hole at the base of the skull.  "The wound was consistent with homicide" said Dr. Peterson.  He said he was "very surprised to find a bullet and would have expected it to be found the first time."  Confronted with the results of the second autopsy, Dr. Brown explained that he had "inadvertently" overlooked the the bullet while opening the skull and removing the brain for tests.  He admitted that because the decomposed body was so "stinky" he had not ordered an X ray.  "Why all the interest in this case?"  Dr. Brown complained.  "It seems awfully routine, you know.  So they found an Indian body; so a body was found."  The BIA doctor stoutly maintained that the bullet had not caused the death:  "The bullet may have initiated or set in progress the mechanism of death, the proximate cause of which was frostbite."  [Comment: It's not as if Indians are like, real people, you know!]

Unpleasant questions had been raised.  Why had such a large group of law officers come to the death scene - one hundred miles out of Pine Ridge - when dead bodies on Pine Ridge, routine and otherwise, had been common for years?  The body and the death site had been inspected for two hours.  How was it that none of the agents or police officers noticed the lump on the temple or hole in the back of the head?  Why had no one asked how or why this person had come so far out into the badlands, at least ten miles from the nearest settlement at Wanblee?  Dr. Peterson believes that any well-trained agent could have taken fingerprints from the body.  Why then had both hands been removed from the body in this "routine" death; while a routine announcement of its presence in the morgue, which might have enabled someone to come in and identify it, was never made?  Why had it been ordered buried on March 2 without waiting for fingerprint identification, which became available on March 3?  In short, why did every circumstance seem to bear out the conclusion of Kenneth Tilsen, lawyer for the Pictou family (Anna Mae's), who figured: "The FBI wanted the investigation to go cold because they thought it would lead them somewhere they didn't want to go."  (Matthiessen, ibid, pp. 258-259.)  Tilsen was extremely offended by the removal of the hands, and suspected that fingerprint identification and notification of the family were never intended by the Pine Ridge agents.  He thinks the hands got into the identification system in error.  The FBI's own report to the Canadian authorities reveals that despite alleged deterioration of the corpse and a consequent need for haste, the hands weren't actually forwarded to Washington for identification until March 3, the day after Anna's burial.

Peter Matthiesen uses significant space in his book (from page 260 through 266) to describe some main issues the community wrestled with in the aftermath of Anna's death.  I won't describe them all here.  [Suggestion: Get the book and read it yourself!]  But here are some details:  There was much speculation as to the reasons behind Dr. Brown's inadequate autopsy work.  However, a consensus was reached.  As Dr. Peterson put it, "Basically, my opinion or maybe intuition is - well, I doubt any knowing cover-up or conspiracy in the first autopsy.  I think the oversight was due to haste and lack of careful observation - not that I condone the oversight."  The second autopsy revealed that Dr. Brown's observations and data on the condition of the stomach and kidneys were entirely meaningless. . . . "The primary factor here was racism,"  Tilsen says.  "Contempt for Indians.  Brown was there to earn his fee and get the hell out."  Some other important observations and comments were: "The FBI lost two agents, and I think Anna Mae and Joe Stuntz made it two-to-two," John Trudell said, in a view that is still widespread on Pine Ridge.  "When they saw they weren't getting any cooperation from anyone, that's what they did. . . . We see the FBI as an extension of Custer's Seventh Cavalry.  The justification they use to go after us is that we're revolutionaries, but . . . we are not a revolutionary group.  We are part of a race of people who have been struggling against invaders for four hundred years."  Al Trimble, new president of the Tribal Council, says "Another trouble was Norman Zigrossi himself.  He comes on damn sincere, but he hasn't changed anything.  The way they've undertaken their work out here, they seem damn determined to settle old scores."  Zigrossi, who saw the FBI as "a colonial police force,  never even bothered to conceal the Bureau's fundamental attitude towards Indians: "They're a conquered nation.  And when you're conquered, the people you are conquered by dictate your future.  This is a basic philosophy of mine."  (Matthiessen, ibid, p. 263.)  The family's reaction to the death - and to the FBI and to the AIM leadership was quiet and bitter.  "My sister's murderer, or murderers, will probably never be found," said Mary Lafford.  "I believe the person or persons responsible may be connected with the FBI, perhaps not directly, but indirectly."