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.

The 2026 Winter Olympics begin Feb. 6 (with some preliminary matches starting earlier), and Wisconsin will be well represented at the showcase in Milano/Cortina, Italy. That includes a powerhouse in speed skating, a 20-year-old luger from Brookfield and a laundry list of current and former Wisconsin Badgers in women’s hockey.

Here are the people to know:

BIATHLON

Deedra Irwin, 33, Pulaski

She started biathlon at age 25 after attending a camp and will now appear in her second Olympics after taking seventh in Beijing, the best finish for an American in an individual biathlon event. She attended Michigan Tech where she played three sports (cross-country skiing, cross country and track and field).

Paul Schommer, 33, Appleton

Also an Olympian in Beijing, the Kimberly High School alumnus Schommer took seventh in the 4x6k mixed relay. He attended The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota.

CROSS COUNTRY SKIING

Kevin Bolger, 32, Minocqua

At the Beijing Olympics, he took ninth in the 4x10k relay and 17th in the men’s sprint freestyle. He most recently took seventh in a relay at the 2025 world championships.

The Illinois Republican Party has blasted as “divisive” the hiring language the Obama Foundation is using for the Obama Presidential Center, arguing it shows the privately run project is using public land to advance a political agenda.

The Obama Foundation, which is developing the hotly debated center on Chicago’s South Side, recently advertised roughly 150 jobs at the facility, stating that successful applicants are expected to align with the foundation’s “anti-racism” goals.

“It’s an Illinois Democrat tradition to insert divisive, far-left policies into the lives of everyday Americans and to balk at the rule of law,” Illinois Republican Party Chair Kathy Salvi told Fox News Digital.

OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CENTER DEPOSITS JUST $1M INTO $470M RESERVE FUND AIMED TO PROTECT TAXPAYERS

“The Obama Center is no different. It is a recipient of taxpayer funds built on public lands and flouts ‘anti-racism’ hiring goals,” Salvi said. “But such employment practices sound discriminatory and unmoored from any assessment of merit.”

The Obama Foundation secured control of a 19.3-acre section of Jackson Park — often described as Chicago’s equivalent of Central Park — under a 99-year agreement for just $10, after city officials approved the project under the premise that the center would function as a civic institution serving the public interest.

Opponents argued the land transfer violated the public trust doctrine, a legal principle requiring public land to serve a public purpose, and filed multiple lawsuits seeking to halt construction. The courts ultimately allowed the project to proceed without adjudicating the merits of those claims.

While commonly referred to as a presidential “library,” the Obama Presidential Center is not operated by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and does not function as a traditional presidential library.

Instead, it is run entirely by the Obama Foundation, the former president’s private nonprofit organization, which also oversees leadership and civic programs reflecting the values and priorities of former President Barack Obama.

The foundation will operate from the center and oversee a 225-foot-tall museum, conference facilities, a gymnasium and a regulation-sized NBA court. There will also be a digital library, although it will not house original presidential records in the same manner as NARA-run libraries.

Construction costs for the site have ballooned from an original estimate of $330 million to at least $850 million, and the project has also relied on publicly funded infrastructure work surrounding the site.

OBAMA LIBRARY, BEGUN WITH LOFTY DEI GOALS, NOW PLAGUED BY $40M RACIALLY CHARGED SUIT, BALLOONING COSTS

The foundation committed to creating a $470 million endowment — a reserve fund commonly used by nonprofits and universities to help cover long-term operating costs by generating investment income — but its latest tax filings show that only $1 million has ever been deposited.

Salvi said the hiring language reinforces concerns that the Obama Presidential Center is operating as an ideological institution despite being built on public land under a civic justification.

For instance, job postings state that the foundation is “deeply committed to creating an actively anti-racist organization, leveraging our global reach to combat systemic racism and inequity wherever it exists.”

“Anti-racism” is the belief that people must not simply eschew racism, but must actively fight any perception of it. The term came into widespread use amid the rise of Black Lives Matter, and was touted by author Ibram X. Kendi in his 2019 book, “How to Be an Antiracist.” Critics say anti-racism stresses outcomes over opportunity and assigns collective guilt to people who may be unfairly viewed as “oppressors” based on their own skin color.

The Obama Center’s postings link to the foundation’s anti-racism and equity statement, which describes a commitment to embedding anti-racism into hiring, leadership programs and organizational practices. It also shows two people of color marching and holding hands with their fists raised in the air.

“In the United States, we are still grappling — in ways large and small — with the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and the scourge of racism,” the statement reads.

“That’s why our goal is to make sure every member of the Foundation team is committed to anti-racism, sets expectations for how we will engage, and makes space for the work,” the statement continues. “We’re focused on making sure our actions match our intent — removing barriers for diverse vendors, building anti-racism and equity into our hiring practices, and recruiting diverse cohorts for our leadership programs.”

OBAMA LIBRARY, BEGUN WITH LOFTY DEI GOALS, NOW PLAGUED BY $40M RACIALLY CHARGED SUIT, BALLOONING COSTS

Critics like Salvi have also pointed to the project’s long-standing emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as evidence that ideological priorities were embedded into the center from its inception.

Those initiatives have already given rise to real-world legal and financial disputes.

As Fox News Digital previously reported, a Black-owned construction subcontractor filed a $40 million discrimination lawsuit tied to the project, alleging racially discriminatory treatment by an engineering firm involved in construction. The engineering firm has argued that diversity-driven contracting decisions resulted in less qualified subcontractors being selected, contributing to inferior workmanship, delays and cost overruns.

WATCH: The Brian Kilmeade Show: Obama Presidential Center rocked by $40M racial bias lawsuit

“The Illinois Republican Party stands with President Trump and the Justice Department to end the tyranny of DEI and woke, performative politics plaguing the federal government, our military and the private sector,” Salvi said.

“As the Trump Administration investigates such employment practices at-large, we will continue to demand accountability and fairness from civic and educational sites like the Obama Center claims to be.”

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The Obama Foundation responded to criticism of its hiring language by pointing to its stated values.

“Our values remain the same as the day we began; we will continue to actively work to combat racism as we strive to build a more perfect union,” Emily Bittner, the foundation’s vice president of communications, said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

Supporters of the project have said the Obama Presidential Center will serve as a cultural and educational anchor on Chicago’s South Side and reflect the values and legacy of former President Obama.