No body, but persistence gets indictment

KELLER, Wash. – Lynda Tonasket’s two brothers went missing on the Colville Indian Reservation more than 15 years ago, leaving her heartsick and convinced they were murdered, possibly by the drug underworld.

For years she tried to get authorities interested, but without bodies they would only listen and add reports to their thick files.

That changed a month ago when FBI agents got a federal murder indictment against a criminal with a lengthy record, who was about to get out of prison.

Instead of going free, James H. Gallaher Jr. is scheduled to be brought to Spokane on Wednesday to be arraigned in U.S. District Court for the 1991 murder of Edwin O. “Eddy” Pooler, one of Tonasket’s two missing brothers.

“I’ll be there in court – just to look him in the eye,” Tonasket said last week from her home on the 1.4 million-acre reservation in northeastern Washington. Because the alleged crime occurred on an Indian reservation, the FBI has jurisdiction, along with tribal police.

“I’m just so glad something is finally being done,” she said.

Tribal elder Jude Stensgar, former longtime chairman of the Colville Tribal Council, said justice is unfolding largely because of Tonasket’s one-woman crusade. Stensgar was on the council when Tonasket persuaded its members to post a reward.

“After this long, long delay, it seems miraculous that they finally brought this charge,” Stensgar said last week.

“She’s been working diligently for years and years on this,” he said. “Law enforcement probably would have put it in the ‘dead file’ unless she continuously pressed them to do something.”

Even without finding Eddy Pooler’s body, the federal murder case will go forward – an extraordinary step in any criminal justice system.

It is believed to be the first time that a federal murder case has been brought to trial in the Eastern District of Washington without discovery of the victim’s body.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Harrington, who obtained the grand jury indictment, said Justice Department guidelines prevent him from discussing particulars of the case.

Prosecutors customarily don’t seek an indictment, however, unless they believe they can convince a jury a defendant isguilty.

Other sources familiar with the case said the prosecution of Gallaher will be built around statements from witnesses, who are terrified of the 47-year-old suspect and the possibility of his return to the Colville reservation.

If fear and reward money helped move the case toward resolution, Tonasket said she’s glad.

She’s also hoping the arrest of a suspect in Eddy’s death will prompt new leads in the earlier disappearance of her other brother, George Pooler.

He was last seen at a bar Nov. 18, 1988, with two other men, one of whom may have been angry or jealous of George’s relationship with a woman, Tonasket said.

Police took a report on George Pooler’s disappearance and followed some leads, but have found no trace of the 37-year-old man.

Gallaher is not suspected of any involvement in George Pooler’s disappearance, and no one has ever been charged, authorities said.

Tribal Police Detective Mike Carter, who investigated both disappearances, died in 1997, but the cases remained with tribal Detective Kevin Anderson. He said he couldn’t discuss either man’s case.

But Tribal Police Chief Rory Gilliland said it was Anderson’s work last year and new leads that triggered renewed interest by the FBI.

“I’m pleased with the fact that we’ve got a federal charge in connection with the disappearance of a person that’s been missing this long,” the chief said Friday.

While Tribal Police are tight-lipped, Tonasket is not. She has tried everything to keep interest in her brothers alive.

“Over the years we wrote to ‘Unsolved Mysteries,’ and they didn’t want it. I called the FBI. Without a body, they didn’t want it. They just weren’t interested. Nobody wanted it,” she said.

Her brother Eddy, who battled alcoholism, disappeared in April 1991, shortly after he turned 45.

Tonasket vividly remembers the last time she saw him.

“It was during the Keller Rodeo. He’d been drinking a lot. I saw him walking down the road, and I pulled over and talked to him. He said he was planning on going to the rodeo.”

When he didn’t show up, Tonasket wasn’t immediately concerned. “I didn’t think much about it at first.”

“He and George would take off for a while, sometimes go up to Canada, just disappear for a few days.”

But her concern grew in the days to come, when Eddy was nowhere to be found. He had a failed relationship and two teenage sons and a daughter, but was living alone when he disappeared.

The previous year, Eddy had been baptized and became involved in a Christian church to help him battle his alcoholism. But he remained troubled by the disappearance of his brother George, Tonasket said.

After a couple of weeks, when Tonasket couldn’t find Eddy or anyone who had seen him, she reported him missing to the Colville Tribal Police.

Authorities initially accused her of “making the whole thing up” to draw attention to George’s disappearance, Tonasket said.

“They kind of mocked me,” she said. “They didn’t believe me when I said Eddy was missing, too. They thought we were hiding Eddy out. They were just acting like he wasn’t gone.”

Her brothers’ lives, like so many others on the reservation, were scarred by alcohol and drugs, Tonasket said.

She, too, battled alcoholism, but getting a Head Start job about 20 years ago and working with children helped her focus her life, she said.

“I asked God to help me get the job so I could stop drinking,” she said. “Now, working with the kids gives me a purpose.”

She still finds it difficult dealing with the disappearances of her two brothers.

The mysteries consume her.

She immediately believed Eddy had been the victim of foul play, based on bits and pieces of information she picked up after his disappearance. She tried to convey that belief to police, Tonasket said.

Eddy had served prison time for robbery years earlier, was known to use cocaine and marijuana, and hung out with other drug users and dealers, she said.

“He was no ‘Mr. Nice,’ and the police thought he’d gone into hiding,” she said.

Days and weeks passed. Tonasket printed and distributed missing person fliers, hoping someone had seen Eddy, who occasionally would direct wisecracks at himself.

Years earlier, he had lost his left eye working in the woods. It was replaced with a removable glass eye, which became part of a standard joke he’d tell friends.

“In the bar, he’d take his glass eye out and set it by his beer when he went to the bathroom,” Tonasket recalled. “He’d say, ‘Nobody touch my beer ‘cause I’ve got my eye on it.’ “

When he disappeared, Eddy no longer had the prosthetic eye. “He finally lost it one day washing his face. It went down the drain.”

Telling that story is one of the few times Tonasket smiles.

As fast as she nailed up posters of her missing brothers, they, too, disappeared.

“I think the guilty ones didn’t want to see those reward posters,” she said.

Tonasket decided to start her own investigation in her spare time when she wasn’t working at the Head Start program in Keller.

“I’d go to the bar, pick up on the rumors,” she said. She’d even buy someone a beer if leads about her brothers were flowing.

“People seemed to think Eddy was either into drugs or messed with somebody, crossed somebody bad,” Tonasket said. “To me, the motive is a woman.”

“One guy told me, ‘Ed’s dead,’ and he told me who killed him,” Tonasket said. But that potential witness later died of natural causes.

Tonasket kept her interview notes, police reports, correspondence and news clippings about her brothers in a file. Tribal police once asked her to supply copies of reports about George’s disappearance that they’d misplaced, she said.

“If you read and go through this file, you’d say, ‘Oh, my gosh! How come they didn’t solve these right after they disappeared?’ “

After George disappeared in 1988, witnesses reported that he had been stabbed and his body transported in a vehicle with blood stains were seen by witnesses.

Some people speculated where Tonasket should look for the bodies.

Over the years, those leads prompted her and her husband, Bob, to go on various “digs.”

“We’ve dug up so many areas all over this reservation,” she said. “I figure I’ve gone on 30 or 40 digs.” Once, she found bones buried in a tarp. But authorities told her they were animal remains.

Midway through one dig, someone fired a shot at her, but missed, Tonasket said. “We just got in the car and took off.”

Tonasket eventually persuaded the Colville Tribal Council to post a $3,000 reward for information leading to the discovery of either Eddy’s or George’s body. That reward and word that Gallaher would be released from federal prison this month convinced witnesses with information to come forward last spring, she said.

“People who live up here are afraid of these killers, and they’re afraid to talk,” Tonasket said. “But they need to know these cases can be solved if people come forward and tell authorities what they know.”

Tonasket said it’s an important part of her Native American cultural beliefs to find the remains of both her missing brothers “for closure.”

“You have to bury him or his soul is still wandering and not at rest,” she explained. “In our hearts, he’s still lost.”