Joseph Edward Buck Cheshewalla, 69, and his wife Maude were found murdered in the winter of 1989 at their home on an Indian allotment near Pawhuska, Oklahoma. The scene was violent: Maude had been blindfolded, Joseph was bound with a belt and duct tape, and both had been shot twice in the head.

Investigators tied the double homicide to two men, Billy Gene Harris and Eugene Mervin Sides, and determined the motive was a robbery that went wrong. Both Harris and Sides were charged, convicted, and sentenced to concurrent life-without-parole terms for the murders. Subsequent appeals by the defendants were unsuccessful; one of Harris’s appeals argued a jurisdictional charging error, but courts found any error harmless to the outcome.

The killings deeply affected the Osage community and ended the lives of two respected tribal members. Does anyone have memories of the Cheshewallas or information that wasn’t part of the trial record?