FARGO (KFGO) – Five years after authorities towed a pick-up truck out of Lake Sakakawea and found the body of 32-year-old Olivia Lone Bear inside, the investigation into her mysterious disappearance and death continues.
Lone Bear was reported missing in October of 2017. She was a member of Mandan Hidatsa Arikara (MHA) Nation. She and her children were living with her father in New Town, on the edge of the Fort Berthold Reservation. On the night she disappeared, she told one of her kids she would be home later. She was seen leaving the Sportsman’s Bar later that night and that would be the last anyone would report having seen of her.
Family and friends launched a months-long search for Lone Bear without luck. Tips came in from around the country, but the search was focused on the massive Fort Berthold reservation lands and Lake Sakakawea. Lissa Yellowbird-Chase, also an MHA member and founder of the Sahnish Scouts, a group dedicated to searching for missing people especially in North Dakota’s Indian and oil country, had been helping to lead the search along with Lone Bear’s brother.
Nine months after Lone Bear disappeared, Yellowbird Chase took a small boat equipped with sonar out into Lake Sakakawea’s Sanish Bay and located what looked like a vehicle sitting about 20 feet deep in the lakebed, 400 feet from the shore. She alerted Three Affiliated Tribes police and the Mountrail County Sheriff of her discovery.
On July 31, 2018 law enforcement and North Dakota Fish and Game Dept. divers investigated the site and located a pick-up in the spot Yellowbird-Chase had indicated it would be. Inside, what was later confirmed to be Lone Bear’s body was found buckled into a seatbelt on the passenger side. An autopsy provided little information about the cause of her death.
Five years later, U.S. Attorney Mac Schneider says the investigation into Lone Bear’s disappearance and death is still very much an active one.
“The FBI is working the case aggressively and continues to pursue leads. What we want the family to know, what we want the community to know, is that Olivia is not forgotten. We owe that to Olivia. And we owe it to her family and her community,” Schneider said. “This investigation is important to the US Attorney’s Office. It is a focus for the FBI, and we’re going to continue to pursue this investigation to its end.”
Schneider said he’d recently spoken with Tex Lone Bear, Olivia’s father, about the U.S. Attorney’s office’s continued commitment to the case.
Recently unsealed court records show that in May of 2022, FBI agents applied for and were granted a search warrant for Google location history data, for any pings from electronic devices that may have been in the area of the boat landing and shoreline near where Lone Bear’s body was found the night she disappeared “to investigate the disappearance and possible homicide of Olivia Lone Bear.”
The affidavit in support of the warrant application confirms that Lone Bear had borrowed a dark teal blue pick-up of a friend, a man named James Hofhenke, before she disappeared. That pick-up was the one Lone Bear’s body was ultimately found inside.
Hofhenke was one of the last people to hear from Lone Bear, according to the warrant application.
“Welp we had a little bonfire, now we are going mudding,” read the text message from Lone Bear’s phone to Hofhenke on the night of her disappearance. “Wish me luck.”
No one interviewed by investigators in the case has been able to identify anyone who may have gone to a to a bonfire or gone “mudding” with Lone Bear that night
At 10:24 p.m. on October 25, 2017, a final text was sent to Hofhenke from Lone Bear’s phone, “Good Bye,” it read.
But that wasn’t the last communication from Lone Bear’s phone that night. She sent another text message at 10:37 p.m. to a man named Adam Bangen, with whom she’d been in a prior dating relationship, according to court records.
Facebook records show that Lone Bear’s cover photo on her Facebook page was changed at 11:24 p.m. Lone Bear’s phone was used to access Facebook one last time at 11:38 p.m. but after that there was no outgoing activity.
It is unclear what, if any, information investigators were able to obtain as a result of the search warrant.
Schneider says there is still a $10,000 reward offered for actionable information that could lead to the identification of those responsible for Lone Bear’s death. Anyone with information regarding her disappearance and possible homicide is encouraged to call 1-800-CALLFBI.
