Going West: True Crime - Savanna Greywind // 331

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

In August of 2017, a 22-year-old North Dakota woman headed to a neighbor’s apartment to help with a sewing project, and never returned home. When her body was discovered in a river days later, her loved ones were horrified to learn why. This is the murder of Savanna Greywind. BONUS EPISODES Apple Subscriptions: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/going-west-true-crime/id1448151398 Patreon: patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES 1. Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/183207843/savanna-marie-lafontaine-greywind 2. Inforum: https://www.inforum.com/newsmd/crews-prison-confidant-gives-explosive-testimony-in-murder-conspiracy-trial 3. Valley News Live: https://www.valleynewslive.com/content/news/Brooke-Crews-testifies-gruesome-details--494276921.html 4. Twin Cities Pioneer Press: https://www.twincities.com/2017/08/24/newborn-found-2-questioned-in-fargo-womans-disappearance/ 5. Valley News Live: https://www.valleynewslive.com/2021/08/20/remembering-savanna-greywind-four-years-later/ 6. Lies, Crimes, and Video: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14156990/ 7. HPR: https://hpr1.com/index.php/feature/news/this-was-a-play-straight-from-hell/ 8. Everipedia: https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/william-hoehn 9. The Florida Times-Union: https://www.jacksonville.com/story/special/special-sections/2018/09/26/woman-who-cut-fetus-from-victims-womb-said-boyfriend-pressured-her-to-produce-baby/10007845007/ 10. New Zealand Herald: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/creepy-past-of-baby-obsessed-brooke-crews/Q7KLX44555L6VGVKKDLW2HZEJE/#:~:text=After%20Crews%20returned%20from%20Australia,two%20children%20with%20Carl%20Crews. 11. Daily Star: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/savanna-greywind-brooke-crew-haisley-18678268 12. The Dickinson Press: https://www.thedickinsonpress.com/news/we-are-treating-it-as-a-criminal-investigation-fargo-police-say-about-missing-pregnant-woman 13. KVRR: https://www.kvrr.com/2018/02/02/55469/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on true crime fans? I'm your host Tee. And I'm your host Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Hello everybody. Big thank you to Samantha, Chelsea, Oksana, and Miranda for recommending today's case. I remember seeing this in the news, and I've been thought about this story in so long,

but it came up on our list after so many people recommended it. I mean, this is just an absolutely unbelievable story out of North Dakota. And just horribly, horribly tragic as well. Yeah, and just ahead of we we are gonna be talking about pregnancy in this episode a lot, but we tried to keep it as clean and non-graphic as possible, just to be as sensitive to the situation as we could be. But we will give you guys a little bit

of a graphic content warning. Yes, we will. We have only one in the episode, but we will give that heads up for sure. And I think that's all we've got. Alright guys, this is episode 331 of Going West, so let's get into it. In August of 2017, a 22-year-old North Dakota woman headed to a neighbor's apartment to help with a sewing project, but she never returned home. When her body was discovered in a river days later, her loved ones were horrified to learn

why. This is the story of Savannah Greywind. Savannah, Marie Lafontein-Greywind was born on August 9, 1995 in Belcourt, North Dakota. Savannah was one of four children born to parents, Norberta and Joe, alongside brothers Casey and Joe, and as a certain named Kayla. Her mom, Norberta, belonged to the Turtle Mountain tribe of Native Americans and her dad, Joe, belonged to the Spirit Lake tribe. The small town of Bell Court, which is on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation, is so far north in North Dakota that it sits very close to the Canadian border and isn't considered a town nor a city, but instead a census designated place hosting around 2,000 people.

But when Savannah was young, the family relocated from Bell Court, 4 hours northeast to Fargo, which is the largest city in North Dakota, hosting 120,000, but with over 250,000 people in the metropolitan area. But then, after living there for a few years, the family moved up onto the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation, which is near Devil's Lake. Savannah came from a very close-knit family, according to her obituary, which reads, quote, family was everything to Savannah. But she was particularly close with her little niece and nephew, and so much so that her

family said, quote, everything she did revolved around them. Savannah is remembered as gentle and kind, loving every person in animal she came across. After graduating from the Warwick Public School District, Savannah went on to attend Lake Region State College in Devils Lake, earning her certificate as a nursing assistant, and she just hoped to build a career around helping people.

After obtaining her license in 2014, she secured a job at a nursing home in Spirit Lake, and there she was caring for elderly patients. Her patients recall her infectious laugh, her warm spirit, and that she loved getting to note each and every one of them individually, and learning more about their lives. Her boyfriend Ashton added, quote, she wanted to help everybody. She would help everyone else before she helped herself. In 2016, she and her family moved back to the city of Fargo, and Savannah transferred to a care facility there.

But back in middle school, Savannah met fellow student Ashton Muthini and they started dating, and despite her move back to Fargo and the distance between them, they made their relationship work. Naturally caring and nurturing, Savannah couldn't wait to become a mom someday. In 2016, when they were 21 years old, Savannah brought up the subject about having kids with Ashton. He remembers that he wasn't quite ready yet, but by the next year when she announced that she was pregnant, they were completely thrilled by it, and were embracing the surprise.

Ashton was working in Minneapolis at the time, and moved back to be with Savannah and there soon to be baby girl, and leading up to her due date, Savannah was living at home with her parents, and one of her brothers on the ground floor of a three-story walk-up apartment building in Fargo. In August of 2017, just after Savannah's 22nd birthday, she was 8 months pregnant, and the couple were excitedly making preparations for the baby. They had even signed the lease to their own apartment, and were just about to move in. And Ashton was actually planning something really special of his own, and he decided that he was going to propose to Savannah.

So they were at the cusp of all these extremely exciting developments and a whole new chapter of their lives. Ashton remembers, quote, I never brought it up to anyone. It was a thought in my head head after we settled into our apartment. I just wanted to surprise her. I was going to do it on our seventh anniversary. On Saturday, August 19th, 2017,

Savannah was home with her dad and brother. Her upstairs neighbor, Brooke Cruz, who was a resident of the third floor apartment, came downstairs to ask Savannah to model address that she was making. She even offered to give Savannah 20 bucks for her time if she was willing to help her. Well, Savannah agreed and said that she would come up in a few minutes. Puzzled, her dad asked why she was offering to do so, knowing that Savannah didn't really need the money, but she said that she felt obligated to help Brooke out because that's just the generous

person that she was. So Savannah headed upstairs to Brooke's apartment around 1.30pm that day after ordering a pizza for lunch. She texted her mom that she was going upstairs and that she would be right back. But after a while, her dad grew worried and walked upstairs to check on her. But when he did, Brooke opened the door and simply said that they needed more time. But during this very short visit, he didn't see Savannah himself. Like, Brooke opened the door and said, oh, we need more time.

And then he left. So Joe went back downstairs, but about two hours passed. And then he was becoming increasingly more concerned. Because now she's been up there for three hours. This was supposed to be really quick. She had ordered lunch, she's waiting for her pizza. It was supposed to be just a very, very brief favor. Yeah, all she has to do is put on a dress and then,

hey, great, okay, and then leave. But if you think about it, it's kind of weird that she was asking Savannah to model this dress for because Savannah's eight months pregnant. So it just kind of, unless she's making like a maternity dress, but that was kind of like a weird thing to ask anyway. Yeah. To me. And maybe that's why Savannah's dad Joe was kind of confused by this and like, why?

Yeah, what is why? What's going on? Exactly. So he again, knocked on Brook's door, asking if his daughter was okay, because at this point, he's thinking that something must be wrong. There's no way she's just willingly still up there, but confused. Brook said that Savannah had left a while ago, and this was very alarming to him because Savannah was becoming far less mobile as her pregnancy

came closer to its end, and on top of this, her car was still at their apartment and she couldn't have made it very far on foot. She'd also left her wallet in the apartment and texting calls to her cell phone were going unanswered. And where could she possibly even have gone and why? But regardless, there seemed to be no trace of Savannah. And frustratingly, there were no security cameras in the hallway of the building to help you know kind of narrow down where she could have gone or what could have happened.

Yeah, approved that she had left that apartment. Exactly. But weirdly, around the time that Savannah disappeared, a few residents of the building claimed that they heard a loud thud, though there seemed to be no source of that noise. Nobody knew where it came from. And then one neighbor on the second floor recalled, quote, we were getting ready to leave and we heard a banging in the bathtub. And he was referring to the apartment directly above theirs. Guess what's above the second floor? The third floor, yes. The first apartment. So he claimed that the sounds lasted between 15 and 20 minutes, which is a long time, and that's why it was so alarming.

Like, what is this constant 15 to 20 minute third sound that's coming from upstairs? And this occurred between 1.30 and 2.00 PM that day, which would have been right after Savannah went upstairs. And then this neighbor continued, quote, then the shower turned on. It seemed kind of odd. Now given her vulnerability as a pregnant woman, her family decided not to chance it and reported her missing right away.

And luckily by late that afternoon, police were on the hunt for her, starting with her last known location, which again was Brooke Cruz' apartment. And though they didn't obtain a warrant, police knocked and asked if they could just come in and take a look around the apartment, which Brooke agreed to. Brooke claimed that she and Savannah had chatted

while she tried on the dress that Brooke was making, and that Savannah had left hours ago. So finding nothing suspicious, the police then left, but they returned again later that day for another walkthrough, yet still they found nothing, claiming that Brooke had been kind and accommodating. The following day, which was Sunday, August 20th, Savannah's family still hadn't heard from her. So police came by Brooke's apartment for a third time.

In audio of this interaction, Brooke can be heard asking who was there. When she opened the door, she said to the officer in a shrill tone, oh my god, your tall! She spoke to them quickly in a bubbly, high-pitched cadence, and when they told her that they were looking for Savannah, Brooke said inquisitively, what's going on I've been wanting to ask them. When police asked for access to her bathroom, she laughed and said, you can look anywhere. Then they walked through the small one bedroom apartment, and even checked inside of a few closets and drawers with Brooks' permission.

In Brooks' words quote, We got busy chatting, her dad came up and said that, you know, Mom wanted to see her or call her or whatever, and she didn't call, she got up and went down, and that's the last time I saw the girl. There seemed to be no sign of foul play inside Brooks' apartment, or in the staircase leading down to Savannah's apartment. Norther signs of a struggle or obvious remnants of blood. Having seemingly exhausted the possibility that something happened to her and her short visit to Brooks apartment, her family and police just kind of turned to the community for

help. The police held a press conference urging the community to check their yards, their property and garages, just in case Savannah had walked away from the apartment building and maybe gotten hurt and was trapped somewhere. They also contacted every hospital in the area in case she had gone for a walk and gone into labor or had a medical emergency since she was 8 months pregnant. The community really banded together and they posted flyers, they held

volunteer searches, and started a Facebook group for activism and information. Savannah's mom, Norberta, took the stand at the press conference and threw tears pleaded with the public for any information. Her boyfriend, Ashton, remained by their sides, just also posting flyers and graining interviews to the press. He explained, quote, �We were just about to move into our apartment. She�s a great woman. It�s very unlike her to just up and disappear like this without telling anyone.

I don�t think she would do that. Though Ashton seemed just as devoted to finding hers everybody else did, police of course brought him in for questioning just in case. But he swore that he had never harmed her and that the worst that he had done was race his voice at her during a fight. He did admit, however, that it had been a hard time for them recently as they, you know, grappled with becoming parents, which is totally normal, to huge change in their lives with the baby in the move coming at about the same time.

But Ashton confessed that they had fought the day that she disappeared which was confirmed by text conversations that he willingly shared with authorities. Yet he explained that on the days of Anna Vanished, he was out with friends in Grand Forks which is a whole 80 miles or 128 kilometers away and this is north of Fargo. As Ashton detailed, that's actually what the fight was about. He had been in Grand Forks drinking with friends, and Savannah wanted him to come home. But despite the conflict with her that day, Ashton claimed that he would never do anything to hurt her or their baby.

As police kept digging, they circled back to the first person they talked to, Brooke Cruz. And also living in the third floor apartment with Brooke, was her boyfriend, William Hane, who had not been present any of the three times that police went to talk to Brooke. So it was in their interest to speak with him, for sure. And as investigators started digging into Williams' past, they found that he had served a year

in prison back in 2012 for child abuse and neglect. But he also had two very recent charges and a warrant out for his arrest due to an unpaid fine. Additionally, he fled the scene of an accident when he backed his truck into another car in the parking lot of Walmart. The driver of the car who was hit by William reported this incident, which took place just three days after Savannah disappeared. So hoping to glean more information about broken her possible involvement in Savannah's disappearance,

police brought William in for questioning under the guise of discussing the accident and the outstanding warrant for his arrest due to the unpaid fine. When investigators asked William about his relation to Savannah and if he knew anything about her disappearance, he claimed that he had just met her on the day that she disappeared. He told them that he had come home to the apartment that afternoon to find Broken Savannah there together, with Broken introducing her as their downstairs neighbor. And when police asked what Savannah had been doing there, William, like Brooke, said that Savannah was helping her tailor address.

He explained that Savannah left the apartment shortly after her dad knocked to check on their status, and that they hadn't seen her since. Well, Williams said that he had gotten into the shower after getting home from work that day, and that when he came back out, Savannah was gone. And though there was no direct link between William and Savannah yet, suspicions of William and Brooks involvement were growing. And luckily they were able to detain William on the charges of his unpaid fine to buy them more time to investigate.

Now, William's boss, Hesuse Rios, came into Bale William out and they decided to question Hesuse too to see if they could ascertain any new information about William before he was released. And when they asked about William's girlfriend Brooke, Hesuse mentioned that the pair had just welcomed a baby over the weekend. But the strange thing was, Brooke hadn't been pregnant. Police were stunned at the mention of a new baby in the household because there had been no reference about a baby from Brooke during any of the three times they searched her home

nor from William while he was being questioned. Like, there hadn't been any signs in their house nor from them that would indicate that a newborn lived there. Yeah, so basically no like baby crib. Yeah, nothing, nothing. No baby. Yeah, no baby. Right, so police consulted other employees

who worked with William and they too agreed that William had been talking for months about how his girlfriend was pregnant and that she was due soon. So with this news, police wasted no time shutting down the perimeter of the apartment building, because at this point, they're like, something's really off.

We don't believe that they're telling the truth here. We don't think that Brooke actually gave birth to a child. So on August 24th, for a fourth time, they came to Brooke's apartment, but this time, they had an actual search warrant. After knocking a few times without hearing an answer, police were forced to break the door down, and inside was Brook, feigning confusion and surprise that they had just busted in the way that they did.

They turned the apartment upside down and finally found what they were looking for. There on the bed, resting quietly and nestled between two pillows, was a newborn baby girl. She was taken into state custody immediately and brought to the hospital to be assessed, and though she weighed less than five pounds, she was completely healthy. When investigators asked Brooke whose baby she was, again really not believing this is Brooke's actual birth child, Brooke refused to answer, not even saying that it was her own, like she just straight up was not saying who it was, which makes her look even worse. So they arrested her on the spot and again, detained William, who had just been bailed out. When investigators spoke to the couple separately, they were able to poke holes in their stories

and the two just imploded. When they brought Brooke into the interrogation room, she told a very interesting story. She claimed that as the authorities suspected, the baby did belong to 22-year-old Savannah Greywind. However, Brooke explained that Savannah had given the baby to her willingly. Oh man, this is where it gets just so weird and also stupid. So Brooke told them that while Savannah was at her home on August 19th, she had confessed to Brooke that she was panicking at the thought of being a new mom

and that she needed time to clear her head. Brooke claims that she explained to Savannah that there were ways to break your own water and induce labor, and that if she needed Brooke to watch the baby until Savannah was ready to take over, she would be happy to do so. But when police asked if Brooke had helped her deliver the baby, Brooke claimed that she didn't. After being there for the dress fitting and discussing Savannah going into labor early, Brooke claims that Savannah left and returned a short while later with the baby in her hands. Brooke said in her interview with detectives quote, all I know is I was asked to take care of a baby for a short period of time, and that's what I've done.

When William was questioned however, he had a completely different explanation, leading police to believe that the couple just didn't have time to get their story straight, which meant that there was a story in the first place, and that investigators were not getting the whole truth. When asked whose baby they had taken from the apartment, William responded that he didn't know who it was. When they questioned if it was Savannah's, he said he didn't think so. But he did start to come clean about what his coworkers had been saying.

He began saying that Brooke had been the ringleader of this whole scheme and that he had also been a victim of her deception. He told them, quote, I've been under the impression for months that Brooke was pregnant. Is she? Was she really pregnant? I don't know. Simultaneously, Brooke's story was beginning to fall apart as well. Police continued to push her to tell them where Savannah was, and she was getting really

frustrated at this point. And she grew increasingly more defensive when police told her that the scenario she described of Savannah, you know, delivering a baby by herself and then returning to the apartment to hand her over to Brooke just didn't really make sense. Claiming she never would have hurt Savannah, Brooke snapped quote, I'm sorry it's not believable, neither is your assertion that from 130 to 330, I did something horrible to this girl. Took her baby, cleaned the baby, hid the baby,

cleaned it up, what? What am I, super frickin' human? But ironically, that's exactly what Brook did. When police revealed to Brook that William and started to tell them the story and that it was nothing like their version of events, she began to crack under that pressure. Investigators painted a picture of a woman desperate to keep her boyfriend and a couple desperate for a baby.

When they had trouble conceiving, she concocted the idea to kidnap a baby instead. had trouble conceiving, she concocted the idea to kidnap a baby instead. In fact, investigators believe that she had never been pregnant with Williams' baby. But when they posed this theory to her in the interrogation room, Brooke asserted, quote, no, I was pregnant. One officer described, quote, you wanted to keep him around. You thought he was going to leave you. You thought he was going to leave you if you couldn't give him a baby. To this, Brooke just laughed maniacally.

And after lengthy interviews with both parties, police were able to surmise that at the very least, William and Brooke had kidnapped Savannah's baby. So they were both arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping and giving false information to law enforcement. A DNA test confirmed that the baby girl was in fact Savannah's daughter, but still they had no idea where Savannah was. Then on August 27, 2017, a body was pulled from the nearby Red River just minutes away from Savannah's apartment building.

Two women out kayaking put in a concerned call to 911 when they passed a log sticking out of the water that had trapped something floating down the river. The caller explained that it looked like the log had caught a body at the bend of its hips, with its legs in the air and its torso bent over the other side of the log. The body was shrouded in black trash bags and plastic wrap, and then circled in duct tape so they couldn't see what it concealed, but they did note the smell of decay, and within a day of its discovery, the body was confirmed to belong to Savannah.

Police believed that her murderer, or murderers, weighed her body down and dumped it from a bridge upstream, but as the body began to decompose, it rose to the surface and floated downstream. Conspiracy to commit murder was added to the growing list of charges against Brooke and William. But before they could get a confession out of her, Brooke shockingly pleaded guilty. In her confession, she said, quote, I was going to take her baby, I guess that was the ultimate goal. There was a scuffle, she grabbed my hair and I pushed her, she had her head, back of her

head on the sink. Brooke claimed that Savannah fell unconscious and drifted in and out of consciousness until she died, saying quote, she was waking up like she was passed out and then she would wake up and then she would pass back out and then she would wake back up but it would happen so fast. I grabbed, it was either a utility knife or a blade. And this next part is a graphic statement. It's only one sentence and it's part of her confession so we're gonna read it but just by the way it is graphic. So breaking down, Brooke said through tears quote, I did cut her and I took the baby out of her.

Brooke claimed that she wasn't dead yet and it was at this point that William walked into what he described as a crime scene, seeing Savannah and Brooke on the floor of the bathroom. William remembered asking Brooke, what did you do? And according to William, Brooke responded with quote, this is our baby, this is our family. And not to minimize this obviously very real and tragic and just unimaginable scene, but this, like this really just seems like something that could only happen in a movie. It's hard to believe that this could successfully occur and that someone

would do this and that the baby could be healthy after this, but this is how it happened. This is what happened. And it's just so insane to do that. And then to say, this is our baby, this is our family, it's sick. I mean, clearly Brooke is a very fucked up and disturbed person for a being able to do that, and then be literally stealing the baby of the woman that you just murdered.

But she really shocked me in this case because with what's to come as well, just everything she says all of her confessions are really surprising because we don't see that very often. And for her to just come clean and say, yeah, I did this. This was my intention. I wanted this.

It is amazing that she admitted to it, but it's like, it's so frustrating because luckily, the baby is alive, but you're going to prison, the baby's alive and Savannah is deceased. So what did we gain here? Absolutely nothing. Yeah, I mean, I get that she feels remorseful and that's great, but I still can't give her a pass,

obviously, like you still kill the human being. And... Yeah, she can't erase what she did despite a confession. Right, yeah, and obviously it is good knowing that that happened because in a lot of cases, as you described, that does not happen, but still, you're APOS. Absolutely, so after Savannah died,

William helped Brooke hide the body in their one bedroom apartment. And somehow, they were able to clean up the entire crime scene, as well as tend to the newborn baby, and stash Savannah's body within the apartment in the span of just a couple hours, because as we know, the police came knocking to search for Savannah a few hours after she was last seen. And somehow again, when the apartment was forensically searched, there was no reaction from leftover blood to luminal, not a speck was found in the entire apartment, which is just wild considering how much there would have been with the act that took place. But it's almost like they either put down plastic or... Well, that's exactly what they did.

Because investigators believe that because Brooke and William were planning a home birth and they had secured the necessary supplies, that would have included a floor covering that would have made for easy cleanup. When the police came by that evening, Brooke claims that they placed Savannah's baby in a suitcase and Savannah's body in a closet in the bathroom, and that that's where she was when police first visited the apartment, which is terrifying to know that they were both in there, visited the apartment, which is terrifying to know that they were both in there, as police were kind of doing their original poke-around. Later, she explained that she and William moved her to a dresser in the bedroom, and William apparently took the drawers out of the dresser, concealed Savannah's body inside it, and then screwed the faces of the drawers back on the front of the dresser so that it would appear normal. After the third walkthrough conducted by the police, William and Brooke carried the dresser down to William's truck

to dispose of Savannah's body. So that's how they got her body out of there, you know, without it being seen because it was inside a dresser. That's so, that's so crazy to me that's, I don't know, that's just like this, one of the strangest things I've ever heard. It's horrible. And actually, this dresser was never found. Two days after the murder, William dumped Savannah's body in the Red River,

and Brooks' phone and Google search history indicated that Brook had been preparing for this for weeks with searches like, How Long Does The Baby Live If The Mother Dies? She also owned books on childbirth and anatomy and physiology and also admitted to police that she had watched numerous videos on childbirth to prepare herself for what she was going to do. And miraculously, Savannah and Ashton's baby didn't suffer

any physical trauma. In a mind-blowing confession, Brooke explained that her relationship with William was rocky and sometimes violent, and that they engaged in frequent drug and alcohol use. She also claims that at one point during the course of her fake pregnancy that they broke up, and that she used sonogram pictures, a positive pregnancy test, and fetal heartbeats that she found online to lure William back. One night amidst a particularly bad fight, he accused Brooke of not really being pregnant and apparently said that she needed to quote producer baby.

And Brooke understood this is basically like an ultimatum saying quote, I took that to mean that I better have a baby no matter how it happened. But the fact that she's using that as an excuse like well, but he he needed me to have a baby so that's why I did this like no, well how how do you go there? How does your mind jump there? Yeah, and it's it's one of those things where I feel like, you know, he was ready to leave and she was, she was like desperate.

She was desperate, she's like, I need to trap him somehow. So if I have a baby, like that will kind of trap him into staying in a relationship with me, and I guess that's what he wanted to. Well, I wonder if she had hoped to do this without his knowledge, like, hoped to tackle this entire project,

if you will, of killing Savannah and taking her child, if she wanted to do that under her own and pretend that it was a baby that she gave birth to. But how in the hell is she really gonna do that? You know what I mean? Like, that's such a... She's not in her right mind. Like, you gotta go to extreme lengths to be able to pull off a scheme like that.

Which she did and was just very willing to do for some reason. Well then about two weeks before Savannah's murder. Brooke remembers that William had pointed out that their downstairs neighbor was pregnant and that gave Brooke the idea to commit the unspeakable act of violence against Savannah and also her baby. Ultimately, Savannah's exact cause of death could not be determined, but according to the medical examiner, it was either blood loss or strangulation, and the autopsy simply alleges homicidal violence. She was found with a ligature around her neck, which Brooke claims

was put there by William. According to Brooke, William panicked, asking if Savannah was dead, and when Brooke responded that she didn't know, he apparently wrapped her neck with rope, and then said, if she wasn't dead before, she is now. But it's also conceivable that she did die from blood loss as there was a 10-inch incision in her abdomen where her daughter was removed. The case moved to court swiftly, and within months, Brooke was awaiting sentencing. Prosecutors presented a slew of past-apraved behaviors from both Brooke and William. Brooke and one of William's ex-girlfriends both testified that he had fantasized about drugging,

raping, and killing women, and that he enjoyed choking them violently during sex. Brooke also claimed that he had a drinking problem. And then William testified against Brooke that he had been in the dark about her faking or pregnancy and said that he was under the impression that Brooke was pregnant with their baby up until he walked in to find her in the floor of the bathroom that afternoon. He claimed that she had even been tracking the baby's development in her symptoms.

Well the interesting thing here is that it seems like Brooke was very desperate for a baby, but she actually already had multiple children. So her first child came when she was a teenager in Florida, but this child was raised by the father. She later wound up owing him tens of thousands of dollars in back child support. And she then married and had two children, but left her husband, a guy named Carl Cruz, for a man in Australia who she lied about being married to and having kids with.

Carl claimed that Brooks' behavior was erratic and dangerous, and that she once even threatened him with a knife. He eventually sued her for full custody, and then Brooks basically just became fixated on births and kept meticulous notes about home births and fertility methods such as IVF. So why was she so desperate for Savannah's baby? Well it turns out that the interrogating officers were right. That again it seemed like she was just trying to hang on to William.

William maintained that he had no idea about any part of Brooks plot until he walked in on her during the act, but Brooks defense team claimed that she was actually infertile and that William knew this. So they're still going back and forth on this, but at the end of the day, William took part in helping hide the body. He was going to keep this child. But also the weird thing is that he told co-workers that Brooke was pregnant. Yeah, so if he really didn't believe that she was fertile or didn't know about this, would he have said that? I don't know, but anyway, amidst all the back and forth between them, a strange testimony came out at trial

when a fellow inmate of Brooks alleged that Brook told her that the baby had actually been the result of an affair between William and Savannah. So this inmate, whose name is Jennifer Robinson, alleged that Savannah and William had been engaged in a secret relationship, and that Brook had killed Savannah to exact revenge on her. So there was really no basis for this, and Savannah's prosecution detailed that Jennifer's extensive rap sheet included criminal charges for lying to police, so she's not really somebody that feels very trustworthy.

So a bullshitter. Yeah, exactly. And in her victim impact statement, Norbert Agree went to again, as Savannah's mom read, quote, I get so upset and angry and can't understand how or why these people could have taken my girl from me, from us. The pain of losing a child is like no other pain.

I now know that pain. My heart is literally broken. In a tearful guilty plea, Brooks stated, quote, "'There is no excuse. There is no rationalization. There's nothing. I am guilty. I deserve every year I get."

Couldn't agree more. Yeah. So, deservedly so, Brook received life in prison without the possibility of parole. Now initially, William was also sentenced to life, but somehow, he was acquitted of his charge of conspiracy to commit murder and manage to receive a sentence of just 20 years. Over a thousand mourners came to pay their respects to Savannah and her family, all clad in red to Payo Maj to yet another missing and murdered indigenous woman.

Together, her boyfriend Ashton and Savannah's family are now raising her beloved daughter who they named Haseley Joe. Ashton said, quote, minded of her more and more because every day she grows and she's starting to look more like her mother. I miss Savannah so much. I've never put love into someone like I did her. Now that Hazley is almost 6 years old, Norberta made a promise to Savannah that Hazley will grow up knowing who she is. Norberta said quote, from her age right now, right on until she's in a dull, we will

continue to tell her about her mother. We will not keep any details from her. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode, and on Friday, we'll have an all-new case for you guys to dive into. I know this story was so rough, it's just unimaginable. I've said that so many times this episode, but really, truly so unimaginable that this happened.

And only a few years ago, but I am so glad that there's justice, that there's answers or justice in a way, at least somebody is in a way at least somebody is imprisoned at least they have some answers and at least Hasley Joe is still alive. And I'm just so glad that Ashton and Savannah's family are able to still raise Hasley Joe. She's an adorable little girl. If you want to go check out photos, we will have some photos on our socials. We're on Instagram, at Going West Podcast,

We're on Twitter or X, at Going West Pod, and we're also on Facebook. We do have a discussion group, so please go over there. Let us know what you think about this case, and yeah, we'll see you guys on Friday. Yes, thank you guys so much. We'll see you then. All right, guys, so for everybody out there in the world,

don't be a stranger. Thank you. you