Pheasant pleads guilty to 2013 cold case murder
Ernest Pheasant. File photo
Over a decade after Marie Walkingstick Pheasant’s body was found in a burned-out vehicle in Cherokee, the community has finally received a modicum of closure as her husband, Ernest Dwayne Pheasant, has pleaded guilty to committing the murder.
Investigators determined that the vehicle her body was found in had been intentionally set on fire. An autopsy revealed that Marie died from stab wounds to the neck and abdomen. DNA retrieved from a baseball cap found near the vehicle was linked to Ernest.
According to a press release sent out by the office of Dena J. King, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, on April 7, 2022, following a review of unsolved homicides in the region, the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Missing and Murdered Unit (MMU) opened a full interagency investigation into the case. During the investigation, law enforce ment determined that Ernest had killed Marie at their home, then transferred her body to the car, drove it to Big Cove Road and set it on fire.
Prior reporting from The Smoky Mountain News noted that Pheasant also made efforts to cover up his wrongdoing. In a conversation at the Pizza Inn in Cherokee on Dec. 30, 2013, about two days after the murder, he allegedly approached another person to establish an alibi to account for the timeframe during which Marie was murdered.
Ernest was arrested in November of last year and charged with numerous felonies tied to Marie’s killing, including first-degree murder, tampering with witnesses, domestic violence and tampering with evidence, all felonies. He was also charged with possession of a firearm by a felon.
He pleaded guilty to the murder last week in federal court, but it wasn’t his first time. In a federal case dating back to 1998, Pheasant pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced in June of the following year to nine years in prison followed by five years of supervised release, which began on Feb. 23, 2007. Less than three months later, he was again sent to prison for a probation violation, for which he was released in May 2008.
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Marie was a mother of two, and a “quiet, sweet, loving girl” whose death devastated the family, her aunt Diane Wolfe told SMN in a 2022 interview.
“Ten years ago, our community was shaken by her tragic death, with her family and friends left with questions unanswered,” Principal Chief Michell Hicks said in a Facebook post the day of Ernest’s arrest. “It is our sincerest hope that this development will help give her family closure and bring justice for Marie.”
Her death shook friends, family and neighbors and echoed a larger issue that continues to plague Native American communities. According to a 2016 National Institute of Justice Research Report, more than four in five Native American women have experienced violence in their lifetime, over half have experienced sexual violence and the majority have been victims of physical violence at the hands of intimate partners. Native women are 1.7 times more likely than white women to have experienced violence in the past year. In some counties, they face murder rates more than 10 times the national average.
“We must continue to amplify the stories of Indigenous women and girls who are impacted by violence and honor their memory and legacy, and we must continue to stand in solidarity and take action to end the violence against Indigenous women and girls,” Hicks said in his post.
With his guilty plea, Pheasant admitted to murdering Marie willfully, deliberately, maliciously and with premeditation.
“[The] guilty plea is the result of the joint investigation conducted by the MMU, the FBI in North Carolina, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, the North Carolina State Highway Patrol, the Cherokee Indian Police Department and the EBCI Office of the Tribal Prosecutor,” the U.S. Attorney’s office’s release reads.
“The Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina continue to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of cases involving Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) and bringing justice to victims and their families,” the release continues. “Pheasant remains in federal custody. At sentencing, Pheasant faces a statutorily required sentence of life in prison. A sentencing date has not been set.”
For more information about the Justice Department’s efforts to address the MMIP crisis, please visit the MMIP section of the Tribal Safety and Justice website at justice.gov/tribal/mmip.
