Acquitted in beheading case, South Dakota man sues, claiming malicious prosecution

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.

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

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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

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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.