Oklahoma couple buried, excavated, and kept hiding dead daughter's remains
July 13, 2009
While perusing police and media reports last week, I came across the bizarre case of an Oklahoma couple who allegedly covered up the death of their child for some 15 months. During that time, they buried, exhumed the child, and transported her body across six states nearly a-half-dozen times.
So what drove Abel Travis Wolf, 35, and Denise Ann Wolf, 40, to hide the death of 11-year-old Cheyenne and transport her body a total of 1,900 miles? That's the key question personnel at several law enforcement agencies are trying to answer this week as they continue to sift through the evidence.
According to Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation spokesperson Jessica Brown, authorities became aware of the case on May 9 when relatives of the family contacted Ardmore Police and expressed concerns about Cheyenne's well being, saying that they had not seen her since April 2008. Thus began homicide detective Ruben Garcia's search for answers that led him to six states the family was known to have moved and or travelled to during the 15-month time span. That search eventually led police to a storage facility in Oregon.
On the morning of July 4, detectives with the Umatilla County Sheriff's Office and the Oregon State Police served a search warrant on the Milton-Freewater storage facility, at which time they observed two plastic containers with snap-on lids. Upon removing the lids from the containers, authorities determined the contents were consistent with human decomposition.
"The weight of the containers and the odor that was emitted from them led us to believe there was some type of decaying flesh in them," Umatilla County Sheriff John Trumbo told newsok.com.
Investigators then resealed the containers and transported them 210 miles to the Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office. While awaiting autopsy results, investigators back in Oklahoma tried to determine how the young child, who used leg braces and crutches to walk, may have ended up in the two plastic containers. In an effort to assemble the facts, authorities in Montana – a state the Wolfs recently moved to – picked the couple up and brought them in for police questioning.
According to police affidavits, Abel Wolf said that his family got into an argument one evening in April 2008, when Cheyenne refused to eat her dinner. During the course of the argument, Wolf said that he and another daughter went outside to have a cigarette. Wolf said that roughly 15 minutes later he heard a "thump" and went back inside to investigate, at which time he observed that Cheyenne appeared to be in a daze. Wolf said he examined her pupils and, seeing nothing abnormal, put her to bed.
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