[chris]

Brooke Crews was sentenced to life in prison without parole after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit kidnapping in the North Dakota case of 22-year-old Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, whose newborn daughter was found alive. LaFontaine-Greywind was eight months pregnant in August 2017, lived with her parents in a north Fargo apartment building and worked as a nursing assistant. Crews and William Hoehn were a couple living upstairs in Apartment 5. Crews was 38 when she pleaded guilty, and Hoehn was 33 when he was sentenced. In January 2017, Crews falsely told Hoehn she was pregnant. She testified that she lied to keep him from leaving.

LaFontaine-Greywind texted her mother, Norberta Greywind, at 1:24 p.m. on August 19, 2017, then went to Apartment 5 after Crews asked her to help with a sewing project. She did not return. Norberta Greywind called Fargo police at about 4:30 p.m. to report her missing. Officers searched Apartment 5 by consent that evening and again on August 20. They found nothing, though the body was there.

Crews testified that the two argued, she pushed LaFontaine-Greywind, and LaFontaine-Greywind struck her head on the bathroom sink and lost consciousness. Crews said she then used a knife to cut the baby from her. She testified that when Hoehn came home, she asked for help. He returned with a rope, put it around LaFontaine-Greywind's neck and said, "If she wasn't dead before, she is now." Hoehn testified that he believed she was already dead when he entered the bathroom. The medical examiner could not establish a cause or time of death. Testimony showed that the body was placed in a hollowed out dresser and dumped in the Red River on August 21, 2017. Kayakers found it on August 27, wrapped and snagged on a log.

Fargo police executed a search warrant on Apartment 5 on August 24, 2017, after learning Hoehn had bought newborn diapers at a Walmart. Officers found a newborn girl alive and healthy inside. DNA confirmed she was LaFontaine-Greywind's daughter. She was placed with her father and is not named here. Crews was arrested at the apartment and Hoehn at his workplace.

The recordings used in the video are Fargo Police Department interviews of Crews and Hoehn. Hoehn was picked up on an unrelated warrant on August 22, 2017. In his first interview, he said he came home at about 2 p.m. on August 19, saw LaFontaine-Greywind in the living room with Crews, showered and found that she had left by the time he came out. After the diaper purchase came to light, he gave a different account in another interview. He said he came home to blood all over the floor and found Crews with a newborn. She told him, "This is our baby, this is our family." Prosecutors used the recordings to show he had told police two different stories. The footage shows long silences and his standing by Crews under questioning.

Crews pleaded guilty on December 11, 2017, in Cass County District Court before Judge Frank Racek to conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit kidnapping and providing false information to police. Prosecutor Leah Viste said Crews lured LaFontaine-Greywind upstairs to kill her and take her unborn child, and had conspired with Hoehn to raise the baby as their own. On February 2, 2018, Racek sentenced Crews to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 20 years and 163 days on the other counts.

Hoehn pleaded guilty on September 4, 2018, to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and providing false information to police. He went to trial before Judge Thomas Olson on the remaining conspiracy to commit murder count, and the jury acquitted him on September 28, 2018. Olson designated him a dangerous special offender on October 29, 2018, and sentenced him to life with the possibility of parole. In August 2019, the North Dakota Supreme Court held that the designation, which had raised his exposure from 20 years to life, was wrongly applied and vacated the sentence. Olson resentenced him on October 7, 2019, to 20 years, the maximum on the kidnapping conspiracy count, with one year on the false information count running concurrently. No later development has been publicly reported.

The video presents narrated analysis drawn from police interview-room footage and runs about 89 minutes. It covers the interview described above.

[chris]

Brooke Crews pleaded guilty on December 11, 2017, to conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit kidnapping and giving false information, and was sentenced on February 2, 2018, to life without parole.

Fargo police interviewed Crews on August 24, 2017, the day officers found Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind's newborn daughter in Crews' apartment and detained her. Crews did not admit harming Savanna or taking the baby.

Crews said Savanna had confided that she wanted to get away. She said she told Savanna how to break her own water with a long shish kebab stick and claimed Savanna left the apartment on Saturday afternoon, then returned around 3:30 on Monday morning and handed her the baby through a gap in the fence.

Crews admitted lying to officers who came to her door, keeping the baby without calling police and hoping she could make the baby her own. Detectives told her that her story was contradicted by the timeline, the physical evidence and the account of her boyfriend, William Hoehn. They also read out her internet searches about unassisted childbirth.

Crews denied hurting Savanna, asked to be taken to jail and ended the interview by asking for a lawyer.

Hoehn pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and lying to police. He was acquitted of conspiracy to commit murder in September 2018 and, after his first life sentence was overturned on appeal, was resentenced to 20 years on October 7, 2019.

The video is a police interview-room recording running about 70 minutes. It presents the full interview and opens with a short narrated introduction naming the people involved.

[chris]

Part 2 of 2 of the recording described above.