South Dakota
South Dakota sheep producer is building the future of sheep genetics
WHITEWOOD, S.D. — Black Hills Land Stewards in Whitewood is working to raise quality sheep while also finding ways to better track and improve sheep genetics.
Jeff Clark moved from California to South Dakota a few years ago and last year started raising pure breed registered Targhee sheep on his operation in western South Dakota.
During his time in California, Clark managed a large flock of commercial sheep, and by doing that he noticed that the sheep industry was lacking in methods to select genetic traits for their herds. They were able to breed for frame size and wool quality, but there were other areas that were insufficient.
“So, I talk about wool quality and frame size, that’s great, you know we get paid by the pound. However there are things that are very important that we were not able to select off of pre-collected data points,” Clark said.
Those traits include everything from fertility, stayability and efficiency.
“Just because those sheep were big did not mean that they made more than, you know, some medium range to more moderate counterparts,” Clark said.
He began looking to other states for sheep genetics.
“I wanted to be able to select against EPDs just like we did with our cattle operation out there, and there just wasn’t anything to choose from,” Clark said.
Ariana Schumacher / Agweek
Clark discovered the Montana Ram Sale, which is well-known for its Targhee sale. There is also a lot of data recorded about those animals.
“Everything from greasy fleece weight to microns to number of lambs born — it’s a pretty extensive list,” Clark said.
Throughout the sheep industry, genetic data point collection is a practice that is not extensively used.
“However, when you consider the value of an average animal, I understand it,” Clark said. “We aren’t selling bulls at a sale averaging $5,500 to $7,000 a head, right? So, collecting all of the data and more as we add in the progeny and number of lambs born and along with the fleece weight and micron and things of that nature, there’s a lot of data to collect to really do it right.”
However, data is something that has always interested Clark, and he is working to see advancements in sheep data collection.
“I have worked in the beef industry my whole life. This isn’t my full-time job, but it is a full-time passion,” Clark said.
One of the reasons he wants to see better sheep genetics is because they can be challenging animals to raise.
“There’s just so many things about sheep that make them harder to run than cattle, you know, from keeping them alive to marketing, and the sheep have always just kind of pulled me towards them because they aren’t easy to do,” Clark said. “I thought, well, if I am this passionate about it and I have a background on the cattle side of pulling these data points in together and producing a really good female, can I do that on the sheep side?”
Ariana Schumacher / Agweek
After moving to South Dakota, he started his own small sheep herd, where he is focused on tracking genetics, inspired by the data recorded from the Montana Ram Sale.
“How we are going to do this is by actually building our own proprietary index that is going to be an ewe profitability index. It is going to take into account everything from the actual maintenance requirements from feed intake, testing the ewes, to the progeny, feed efficacy in production, pull that back to fleece weight, and pounds weaned per ewe,” Clark said. “We are taking all those production records back and building a background index on all of our ewes in order to properly rank them for all of the economically relevant traits.”
His goal is to have a program that is not focused on single trait selection but rather is focused on raising well-rounded animals.
“Really what we are building is the efficient ewe, right? So, we want the highest grossing product, per pound maintained, but most importantly, per dollar of input,” Clark said. “So that’s really the direction of our program, and we know it will put more money in our pocket and more money in the producers’ pockets that acquire our genetics.”
This is something he believes more producers are also looking for in the industry.
“There’s got to be other larger-scale producers out there that are looking for maternal quality bucks but can’t find them anywhere,” Clark said. “You know, they are either too big, the wool is not fine enough, they don’t have the production data behind them, or they are not efficient; so that’s kind of why I jumped into this game in order to really provide the commercial guy with what he has been asking for.”
Clark is also working to get the next generation of producers excited about raising sheep. His 12-year-old son, Everett, is also involved with the sheep, through showing them, helping to care for the animals and attending sales. Everett wants to continue to grow the sheep business, as well as raise cattle and possibly even do some rodeo.
“I am hoping to get a bunch,” Everett said. “I want to do the same thing daddy’s doing.”
WATERTOWN, S.D. — A man who spent 1,217 days as the only suspect in the 2020 murder and beheading of an Indigenous woman filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court on Thursday, Jan. 8, alleging he was negligently and maliciously prosecuted.
The complaint, filed in the United States District Court of South Dakota Northern Division, on behalf of Jeremiah Peacemaker, 49, names nearly three dozen defendants, including current Watertown Police Chief Timothy Toomey, department officers, South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley, as well as agents from the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, the city of Watertown, and others.
Peacemaker was
acquitted on March 5, 2024,
of murdering 28-year-old Kendra Rae Owen, an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate.
Patrick Lalley / Sioux Falls Live
Peacemaker argues his rights under the 4th, 5th, 8th and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution were intentionally, recklessly and willfully violated, and claims the ordeal has left permanent damage to his reputation, his emotional well-being, his livelihood and his relationships.
Represented by Steven Beardsley, Kate Benson and Scott Bratland, of South Dakota law firms, Peacemaker is seeking compensatory damages in an amount to be determined by a jury at trial.
In the complaint, Peacemaker claims little of Owen’s case was actually investigated: Witnesses were ignored, evidence was ruined, misplaced and lost, and other suspects besides Peacemaker were not investigated.
“Investigators refused to consider the possibility that they had arrested the wrong person,” his complaint states.
Peacemaker told investigators that he met Owen only once, days before her murder, and he was the victim of a beating and a hit-and-run the night before his arrest.
At the time, police thought Peacemaker’s story strange, according to the complaint, and fingered him as the primary suspect hours after Owen’s body was found.
“They wanted to prove that (the) plaintiff made up the story about the assault and hit and run. When they actually did an investigation, what they discovered is that he had told the truth,” the complaint states.
Shortly after Owen’s murder, investigators agreed to trick Peacemaker, according to the complaint. Outwardly, they pretended they were going to investigate the hit and run, but quickly focused on placing Peacemaker at the scene of the murder.
At the police station, Peacemaker alleges he was tricked into giving a DNA sample, and into talking about a woman with pink hair.
Owen had pink hair.
Patrick Lalley / Sioux Falls Live
Eventually, he was read his Miranda Rights. A photograph of Owen’s corpse and her head propped on a mattress was “slapped” in front of him, the complaint stated.
Even though Peacemaker tried to tell investigators that he had only met Owen one time, two days before the hit-and-run, they called him a psychopath and a serial killer.
“He was completely blindsided and stunned,” the complaint stated.
Video evidence later revealed that Peacemaker was telling the truth, according to the complaint — he was seen with Owen buying beer from a nearby bar.
“The plaintiff explained that he was not trying to hook up with her and that she did not make him mad. He was happy to meet her and to have made a new friend,” the complaint stated.
After an entire night of interrogation, Peacemaker was arrested.
Patrick Lalley / Sioux Falls Live
Nearly three years after Owen’s death, Peacemaker’s defense lawyers returned to the crime scene. While walking around the house, they saw a strange saw on the roof. After reviewing crime scene photographs from 2020, the saw was visible in the same spot, according to the complaint.
“Defendants did not find it because they did not look. It remained on the roof for three years. By the time it was finally collected, the forensic evidence was gone,” the complaint stated, adding that there were reddish-brown stains on the roof under the saw.
Patrick Lalley / Sioux Falls Live
No reasonable investigating officer could have believed there was probable cause to arrest Peacemaker, the complaint stated.
“Because of the quick arrest of Mr. Peacemaker and subsequent press releases, the public was led to believe that this was an open and shut case. Law enforcement officers were hailed as heroes for the quick arrest. The victim’s family had no idea how flawed the case was until they showed up to watch the trial,” the complaint stated.
Contributed / Jewel DeMarrias
Owen, whose Indigenous name according to her obituary was Gakiya Nagun Wiyan or “Hears the Voice in the Distance Woman,” lived a “high-risk lifestyle,” the complaint stated, adding that she had disabilities that impaired her judgment. She had a substance abuse disorder, but she was also independent and a fighter.
Owen’s case worker, Marciella Espinoza, from the Human Service Agency, called her “Mike Tyson” because her initials were “K.O.,” and at times she was involved in fights, both as an assailant and a victim, according to the complaint.
But Owen was much more than that, her mother Jewel DeMarrias told Forum News Service in a brief interview.
She played bowling, basketball and softball in the Special Olympics. She was a churchgoer, DeMarrias said.
“She was an earth angel. She would give you her last penny to help you,” DeMarrias said.
Contributed / Jewel DeMarrias
Because of her lifestyle, intoxicated people were frequently in her home, according to the complaint. From Jan. 1, 2020, until the day her body was found, she called 911 six times, usually asking for help removing people from her home.
“A quick search of Ms. Owen’s record yielded a ton of potential suspects. The 911 records had the names of individuals who should have been interviewed because they were recently in altercations with Ms. Owens, but they were not,” the complaint stated.
From that suspect list of eight people, some have already died since the trial, according to the complaint.
One possible suspect had had Owen’s keys and threatened to kill her.
A second possible suspect — a woman — tried to hire an undercover FBI agent to commit murder, and when asked what she would do to help with the murder, she offered to cut up the body, according to the complaint.
A third potential suspect, who made the last nine phone calls to Owen, stopped by her house numerous times looking for his jean jacket. Owen was wearing a jean jacket at the time of her death.
A fourth potential suspect once broke Owen’s arm, and a fifth was with Owen when she met Peacemaker. Both these people are now deceased.
The sixth person on the list described by the complaint was described as Owen’s occasional boyfriend.
The seventh was a violent meth user who once gouged out a person’s eye.
And the eighth possible suspect was once married to a woman who assaulted Owen. While in jail, he made a “strange phone call” to Peacemaker, saying that whoever killed Owen was after him.
Cigarette butts found in Owen’s apartment were also not tested until defense attorneys in Peacemaker’s felony trial insisted. When DNA evidence came back, the genetic trail led to a woman named Brianna Lawrence, who spent time in prison for hiring a hit man to kill the father of her children, according to the complaint.
“She planned to assist the hit man by chopping the body into pieces,” the complaint stated, adding that Lawrence was also not interviewed until three years after the murder, a delay that made documentation of Lawrence’s location difficult.
The Watertown Police Department’s failure to properly investigate the case “shocks the conscience,” the complaint stated.
“Key pieces of evidence were recklessly ignored. Evidence proving Mr. Peacemaker was innocent, lost, not collected, not tested and not documented,” the complaint stated. “Investigators were more worried, tiptoeing around each other’s egos, than doing a proper investigation.”
Watertown Police Capt. Ryan Beauchamp — one of the defendants — told Forum News Service that the department could not comment on the lawsuit at this time.
Iran pulls internet access as protests surge nationwide
Iran pulled internet access as economic protests surge nationwide over economic hardships.
It’s expensive to extend fiber-optic cable to the remaining locations in South Dakota that don’t have high-speed internet, so the state is leaning into providers offering service from satellites in space.
The state’s ConnectSD initiative, which began in 2019, had helped bring broadband access to 91% of South Dakota by 2024. A state report noted the remaining 9% would be costly, given the price of bringing miles of fiber to remote areas with few customers.
The broadband initiative has cost $300 million so far, with funding from federal, state and private sources. Gov. Larry Rhoden announced recently that the state will soon receive another $72 million in federal funding for the effort.
A little more than a third of the new funding will go toward “Low Earth Orbit Satellite” technologies, like SpaceX’s Starlink, to reach 2,705 of the 7,060 locations in the state targeted for the funds. Most of the other targeted connections will come by way of fiber-optic cable, and 177 will come via signals beamed from cellular towers.
The satellite funding will not be used to pay for individual subscriptions, said a spokesperson for the Governor’s Office of Economic Development.
“Instead, the award reserves network capacity with the provider so service is available in those locations,” said Bri Vande Pol. “The provider is reimbursed on a per-location basis only when a customer subscribes to the service.”
Vande Pol said the federal funding requires providers to make high-speed internet available to each eligible location for at least 10 years. She said the provider receives 25% of the award upon confirming service is available, and the remaining payments for the reserved network capacity are made quarterly over the 10-year period.
The new federal money comes from the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, authorized by the 2021 Infrastructure and Jobs Act, passed during the Biden administration.
“Under the Trump administration’s changes to that program, states are encouraged to use a technology-neutral approach and connect locations in the most efficient way possible,” Vande Pol said.
“In some of South Dakota’s most remote areas, Low Earth Orbit satellite service is a strong, reliable solution that meets performance standards while allowing us to maximize the reach of available BEAD funding,” she added.
As of June 2025, South Dakota’s ConnectSD program had used $84.4 million in state general funds, $88.5 million in federal funds and $129.6 million in private investment from broadband providers to connect about 31,000 locations. The state and federal money has mostly been spent on grants to service providers, to help them expand their networks.
Rhoden’s latest proposed budget asks lawmakers to authorize $87 million in federal funding to be spent on broadband in the coming fiscal year.
Rhoden spokesperson Josie Harms said the $72 million figure announced in a press release represents “the amount that will actually be awarded to the subrecipients.”
“The $87 million amount is the total spending authority, which includes the project costs as well as administrative costs and marketing costs,” she wrote in an email to South Dakota Searchlight.
South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
WAGNER, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – The South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation has released details on a homicide that happened on January 10 in Wagner, SD.
A Wagner man has been arrested in connection with a fatal vehicle incident that occurred Saturday night near Wagner, according to SD Attorney General Marty Jackley and Charles Mix County State’s Attorney Steve Cotton.
Darian Wright, 32, of Wagner, has been charged with Vehicular Manslaughter, Driving Under the Influence, and Leaving the Scene of an Accident, with additional charges possible.
Dana Frederick, 29, of Wagner, was found deceased at a residence after a vehicle crash south of Wagner earlier that evening.
The vehicle was allegedly driven by Wright, who, along with a young child, sustained minor injuries in the incident.
The incident remains under investigation by the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, the South Dakota Highway Patrol, and the Wagner Police Department.
Wright is presumed innocent under the U.S. Constitution until proven guilty.
There is no additional threat to the public.
Copyright 2026 Dakota News Now. All rights reserved.
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