The trial of the second suspect accused of conspiring to murder a pregnant North Dakota woman for her unborn baby began Wednesday with prosecutors alleging that William Hoehn helped his former girlfriend kill the 22-year-old while she was clinging to life, multiple news outlets report.
Hoehn, 33, of Fargo, is charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the Aug. 19, 2017, death of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind.
LaFontaine-Greywind, his downstairs neighbor, was eight months pregnant when she was killed in the apartment Hoehn shared with 39-year-old Brooke Crews, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Crews, who is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty in December to murdering LaFontaine-Greywind, admitted first to luring her to her third-floor apartment in the building where LaFontaine-Greywind lived with her family and then dumping her body in the local Red River, the authorities have said.
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LaFontaine-Greywind had been asked to go upstairs to model for a sewing project Crews was working on, according to authorities. When she failed to return home more than an hour later, her worried parents asked Crews about their daughter’s whereabouts.
But Crews claimed that LaFontaine-Greywind had already left her apartment, LaFontaine-Greywind’s family has said.
On Wednesday, Joe Greywind, Savanna’s dad, reportedly testified that in the agonizing days after his daughter vanished, he remained suspicious of Crews — and Hoehn, who acted like he knew nothing about what had happened to Savannah, Joe said.
“He came up to me, shook my hand and said, ‘I’m sorry for what happened to your daughter,’ ” Joe said in court, local TV station KVRR reports. “I looked at him and asked him, ‘What happened to my daughter?’ “
Eventually Crews claimed to authorities that Savanna had fallen unconscious after hitting her head during what Crews described as a shoving match in her apartment, Assistant Cass County State’s Attorney Ryan Younggren told jurors, according to local station WDAY.
Sharing new and disturbing details about Savanna’s death, Younggren explained how Hoehn allegedly helped ensure she was dead when he discovered Crews performing a makeshift C-section in their bathroom that August day last year, Younggren told jurors, local station KVLY reports.
Crews allegedly said Hoehn got back from work and asked her, “Is she dead?” Younggren said in court, according to WDAY.
“She says ‘I don’t know. Help me.’ What does [Hoehn] do?” Younggren said to jurors, KVRR reports. “He rolls up his sleeves, goes and gets a rope, puts it around [Savanna’s] neck, pulls it tight. If she’s not dead, she is now.”
A rope was found around Savanna’s neck when her body was discovered in the Red River on Aug. 27, 2017, Younggren said, according to WDAY.
While her cause of death has been determined to be blood loss, the rope could have caused Savanna to become unconscious by cutting off the blood supply to her head, Younggren reportedly said.
Her baby, Haisley Jo Matheny, survived in good health and now lives with her father, Ashton Matheny, Savanna’s longtime boyfriend.
On the defense side, Hoehn’s attorney, Daniel Borgen, told jurors his client only helped Crews cover up the murder but did not commit any homicidal violence himself, KVRR reports.
On Sept. 4, Hoehn pleaded guilty to two lesser charges in the case: kidnapping and providing false information to authorities in their investigation of Savanna’s death, online court records show.
A GoFundMe account has been set up to help Haisley Jo and Ashton with child-raising expenses.
Hoehn’s trial is ongoing.
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