In 1975: Two FBI agents shot dead on Pine Ridge Reservation
Today in True Crime
by CaseBond · Source-backed daily true-crime history
June 26, 2026
Non-graphic · Sensitive events discussed without explicit detail.
In 1975: Two FBI agents shot dead on Pine Ridge Reservation
On June 26, 1975, two young FBI agents drove their vehicles onto the Jumping Bull Ranch at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. By the end of the day, both were dead. The murders of Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams set off one of the most contentious criminal cases in American history — a prosecution that would wind through courts for nearly fifty years and become a defining symbol of the conflict between federal authorities and Native American communities.
Pine Ridge had been a flashpoint for years. The American Indian Movement, founded in 1968, had organized demonstrations drawing national attention to poverty, broken treaties, and systemic discrimination facing Native communities. By 1975, the reservation was effectively at war with itself — AIM supporters and tribal members loyal to the reservation's leadership were clashing regularly, and federal agents were a near-constant presence on the land.
According to FBI accounts, Coler and Williams had entered the reservation that morning in pursuit of Jimmy Eagle, an AIM member wanted for burglary. The trail led them to the Jumping Bull Ranch, which served as an AIM compound. What happened there remains disputed — whether it began as a routine arrest attempt, an ambush, or something else entirely — but the outcome was not. Coler was struck while still inside his vehicle and could not escape. Williams managed to exit before succumbing to his wounds.
The FBI launched what it called one of the largest investigations in the bureau's history. Three AIM members were charged in connection with the deaths: Leonard Peltier, Robert Robideau, and Dino Butler. Robideau and Butler were tried first and acquitted in 1976. Jurors found insufficient evidence to convict them. Their acquittals shadowed every subsequent phase of the case, raising a question that prosecutors never fully answered: what distinguished Peltier's conduct from that of two men a jury had cleared?
Peltier was tried separately. On June 1, 1977, Chief U.S. District Judge Paul Benson sentenced him to two consecutive life terms — the stiffest penalty the law allowed. Peltier had maintained throughout the proceedings that he had not shot the agents. His defense team argued the government's case rested in part on fabricated testimony, with a woman named Myrtle Poor Bear at the center of the dispute.
Poor Bear claimed she had witnessed Peltier fire the shots that killed Coler and Williams. Defense attorneys alleged that FBI agents had manufactured or coerced her account and that her statements had been used falsely to obtain the extradition warrant that brought Peltier back from Canada, where he had been arrested in February 1976. Courts reviewing these claims acknowledged irregularities in how Poor Bear's testimony had been used but declined to overturn the conviction, holding that the errors did not rise to the level of requiring a new trial.
For nearly five decades, Peltier remained in federal prison. Human rights organizations, Native American advocacy groups, and civil liberties organizations argued that the case had been compromised from the start — that the FBI's determination to solve the deaths of two of its own had overwhelmed the safeguards designed to protect the accused. In November 2024, the U.S. Parole Commission denied his application for release.
Then, in one of his final acts as president, Joe Biden commuted Peltier's sentence. The commutation was not an exoneration. It carried no legal finding that Peltier was innocent or that his conviction had been unjust. But it ended the imprisonment, nearly forty-nine years after it began, and it reignited a debate that had never really gone quiet: whether the trial that put Leonard Peltier behind bars for his entire adult life was ever truly fair.
The families of Jack Coler and Ronald Williams have never had a simple answer to hold onto. Both agents were young men performing a job that brought them onto a stretch of South Dakota grassland on a summer morning in 1975. Whatever history finally decides about the evidence, the guilt, and what should have been proven in court, that much has never changed: two people died at Jumping Bull Ranch on June 26, 1975, and the wound left by their deaths never fully closed.
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Sources used/checked for this issue
- Leonard Peltier, Wikipedia — "Leonard Peltier," Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Peltier
- RESMURS Case — Reservation Murders, Federal Bureau of Investigation — "RESMURS Case — Reservation Murders," Federal Bureau of Investigation. https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/resmurs-case-reservation-murders
- Leonard Peltier, Encyclopaedia Britannica — "Leonard Peltier," Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonard-Peltier
- Leonard Peltier denied parole, The Guardian — "Leonard Peltier denied parole," The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/02/leonard-peltier-denied-parole
- Biden commutes sentence of Leonard Peltier, Native American activist imprisoned for nearly 50 years, NBC News — "Biden commutes sentence of Leonard Peltier," NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/biden-commutes-sentence-leonard-peltier-native-american-activist-impri-rcna188331
- 40th Anniversary of the Pine Ridge Shootout, Reason — "40th Anniversary of the Pine Ridge Shootout," Reason. https://reason.com/2015/06/26/40th-anniversary-of-pine-ridge-shootout/
Today in True Crime by CaseBond — 2026-06-26
