Second Man Is Wanted in 1970s Slaying of an Indian Activist

A federal arrest warrant has been issued for a second former American Indian Movement security guard in the 1970s slaying of an AIM activist involved in the 1973 Wounded Knee standoff with federal agents, officials said Thursday.

Authorities said they were looking for John Graham, also known as John Boy Patton, originally from Canada’s Yukon.

The other man, Arlo Looking Cloud, pleaded not guilty this week in Denver to a federal charge of first-degree murder committed during a kidnapping, according to U.S. Atty. James McMahon in Sioux Falls.

A federal magistrate on Thursday ordered Looking Cloud, a 49-year-old homeless man, extradited to South Dakota to stand trial. He was arrested March 27 in Denver.

Graham and Looking Cloud would serve mandatory life prison terms if convicted of killing Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, who vanished from a Denver home in late 1975. Her frozen body was found on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge reservation in February 1976. The 30-year-old had been shot in the head.

Looking Cloud is a Lakota Sioux who grew up on the Pine Ridge reservation.

He and Graham worked as security guards at AIM events during the 1970s, said Paul DeMain, who has researched the case extensively and is editor of the News From Indian Country newspaper in Wisconsin.

DeMain and others familiar with Graham said he was last known to be in western Canada.

Native Americans have said for years that federal investigators and prosecutors knew who took Pictou-Aquash from Denver, drove her to Rapid City and then to the Pine Ridge reservation and killed her. In a 2000 interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. show “The Fifth Estate,” Graham denied any involvement.

Graham acknowledged being with Pictou-Aquash when she left Denver, but he said she had not been kidnapped.

Pictou-Aquash was killed at a time when tensions between AIM members and government-backed factions ended in numerous deaths on the reservation.

Pictou-Aquash, a member of the Mi’kmaq Tribe of Canada, was among Indian militants who occupied the village of Wounded Knee for 71 days in 1973.

Some speculated that she was killed by members of AIM because she knew that some of them were government spies, while others said she was killed because she herself was an informant. Federal authorities have denied any involvement.

The indictment gave hope to Pictou-Aquash’s friends.

“Just to see any movement is a relief,” said Candy Hamilton of Oglala, who was with Pictou-Aquash in Rapid City shortly before she was killed.