BISMARCK, N.D. — A woman who says she’s led more than 100 searches for the body of a North Dakota oil patch worker who was bludgeoned to death says she won’t stop looking now that another man has confessed to ordering his killing.
James Henrikson, 36, on Friday pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington state to ordering the deaths of oil patch business associates Kristopher Clarke and Doug Carlile. Carlile was killed in Spokane in December 2013. Henrikson said Clarke was killed in February 2012 in Henrikson’s North Dakota truck shop. Clarke’s body hasn’t been found.
Lissa Yellowbird-Chase, who lives on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and is a member of the Sahnish Scouts nonprofit, told The Bismarck Tribune that she wants to find Clarke’s body so his family can lay him to rest. The Sahnish Scouts group works to find missing people.
Federal prosecutors will seek a 40-year prison term when Henrikson, who grew up in Oregon’s Bend and Redmond areas, is sentenced Dec. 18, though he could receive a lesser sentence if he helps in locating Clarke’s body, according to Washington U.S. Attorney Mike Ormsby.
Yellowbird-Chase said she doesn’t believe Henrikson will give up the burial location unless he gets a substantially reduced sentence.
“He’ll take that location to his grave unless he gets a deal,” she said. “I’m not depending on him at all.”
Investigators believe Clark’s body is buried somewhere near Watford City. Yellowbird-Chase and other volunteers focused their search last weekend at a location just south of Theodore Roosevelt National Park’s North Unit. The Sahnish Scouts now are waiting for landowner permission to search a site south of Mandaree.
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