THE FACTS: JUNE 26, 1975
What follows is corroborated through trial testimony, numerous appeals and findings of fact, primary sources and Leonard Peltier’s public statements:
On June 26, 1975, FBI Agents Coler and Williams were performing their lawful duties on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation searching for a fugitive, Jimmy Eagle. In separate government sedans they followed a suspect vehicle from the main highway onto a dirt road leading to a farm. The vehicle stopped at a distance as did Coler and Williams, who were then exposed in an open field. The occupants of the vehicle, including Peltier, began an unprovoked attack with rifle fire on the pinned-down agents. Of critical importance, crucial because of Peltier’s many fabrications of how the shooting actually began, is that there was an eyewitness. Agent Williams was on the FBI radio describing exactly what was about to happen; trying to describe their location, that they were about to come under fire—the shooting started—and they heard Agent Williams say, “I’m hit.” FBI employees in the Rapid City office and other Agents heard Agent Williams’s transmission and that he also said if they didn’t get there soon, “We’ll be dead.”
Peltier was joined by other American Indian Movement members, with rifles, trapping the Agents in a deadly crossfire. The initial shooting ended quickly as the government sedans were riddled with bullet holes. Agent Coler received what was probably a mortal wound and was likely unconscious. Agent Williams, wounded three times, removed his shirt, waved it as a sign of surrender (that was ignored) and used it as a tourniquet on Agent Coler’s severely injured arm.
Court testimony concluded, and the jury accepted, that Peltier approached the wounded Agents. Agent Williams faced his killer. Peltier placed the muzzle of his AR-15 against an upraised hand and blew Agent Williams’s fingers through the back of his head. Peltier then turned the weapon on Agent Coler, destroying his face with two more shots.
Peltier and the others fled the Reservation. While making a getaway to Canada with other AIM members, Peltier described Agent Williams’s final moments. Sworn testimony in a later trial quoted Peltier, “The M…F…begged for his life, but I shot him anyway.”
Peltier was later captured and convicted, receiving consecutive life sentences. Peltier had over a dozen appeals regarding the facts and his many unsupported and often frivolous allegations of a wrongful conviction. Among a multitude of court findings, one concluded, “Previous federal court decisions provided the (parole) Commission with ample facts to support its conviction that Peltier personally shot Agents Coler and Williams.” “Neither the conviction nor any of the subsequent court decisions have been overturned.” (10th Circuit Court of Appeals, 11/4/2003)
