Ashton Matheny: Raising Haisley Jo After Savanna’s Murder

Ashton Matheny is the longtime boyfriend of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind and a member of the Spirit Lake tribe in North Dakota who, at 21, became the sole parent of their newborn daughter, Haisley Jo, after LaFontaine-Greywind was killed in August 2017 by an upstairs neighbor who cut the baby from her womb. A Cass County District Court judge awarded him full legal custody on September 12, 2017, and he has raised Haisley Jo since, sharing her upbringing with LaFontaine-Greywind’s parents.¹²

Who Ashton Matheny Is

Matheny met LaFontaine-Greywind in 2011 at Devils Lake High School in North Dakota. He was a freshman, she was a sophomore, and they started dating about two months later. By the time of her death, they had been together for roughly seven years.³ Both were enrolled members of the Spirit Lake tribe.⁴

When LaFontaine-Greywind became pregnant, Matheny was working construction in Minneapolis. He moved back to North Dakota to be closer to her and worked on his father’s house on the Spirit Lake Reservation to earn money for the baby.⁴⁵⁶

On August 19, 2017, she went upstairs at her neighbor Brooke Crews’s invitation to help with a sewing project. She was never seen alive again. Her body was found in the Red River on August 27, wrapped in plastic and secured with duct tape, roughly six miles north of Fargo.⁷

Gaining Custody of Haisley Jo

Police executed a search warrant on Crews’s apartment on August 24, 2017, and found a newborn girl weighing 4 pounds, 13 ounces. She was taken to Sanford Health hospital and placed in the temporary protective custody of Cass County Social Services.⁷¹

Matheny was not allowed to see his daughter until September 4. She was placed in his physical care two days later, on September 6.¹ DNA testing confirmed he and LaFontaine-Greywind were the child’s biological parents. He received those results on September 11, the same day he buried LaFontaine-Greywind.⁸

The next day, a Cass County District Court judge dismissed the protective custody order and awarded Matheny full legal custody. His attorney, Krista Andrews, said there had “never been an issue with Ashton’s ability to care for this child” and that social services involvement had been due solely to the circumstances in which the infant was found.² Matheny described the hearing as “a great day,” saying he cried tears of joy in the courtroom.⁵

Raising His Daughter

Matheny has raised Haisley Jo alongside LaFontaine-Greywind’s parents, Norberta and Joe Greywind. “I would never keep her from them,” he said early on, and the Greywind family confirmed they were “enjoying a wonderful shared relationship caring for Haisley Jo.”²

Community fundraising helped in the early months. A GoFundMe campaign raised more than $24,000, a three-year-old’s lemonade stand brought in over $1,000, a Fargo North High School football game fundraiser collected $1,270, and a local business donated more than $3,000 from the sale of red light bulbs.⁹¹⁰ Matheny said he used the GoFundMe donations to buy a vehicle and renovate his home.⁵

By September 2018, he was 22 and studying business administration at a local college. “I think about Savanna every day. I hope justice is served,” he told People. “I don’t want her to see me down and weak. I just keep moving forward — for me and for her.”¹¹ By 2019, Haisley Jo was two and, according to family attorney Gloria Allred, a “miracle child.” The Greywind family maintained a public Facebook group sharing photos of her playing and visiting her mother’s grave.⁹

In a 2018 interview, Matheny said his daughter’s face brings her mother back to him daily. “Every day I’m reminded of her more and more, because every day she grows and she’s starting to look more like her mother.”¹²

The People Convicted of Killing Savanna

Brooke Crews, 38 at the time of the crime, had spent months deceiving her boyfriend William Hoehn into believing she was pregnant, using old sonogram images, pregnancy tests, and an online recording of a baby’s heartbeat. When Hoehn confronted her about the false pregnancy on August 6, 2017, she testified he told her she “needed to produce a baby.”¹³ Crews pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit kidnapping and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.¹⁴

Hoehn, 32 at the time, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and to giving false information to law enforcement, but a jury acquitted him of conspiracy to commit murder in September 2018.¹⁵ The district court originally sentenced him to life, but on August 22, 2019, the North Dakota Supreme Court vacated the life sentence, holding that his 2012 child-abuse conviction was not a “similar offense” that would trigger the state’s dangerous-special-offender statute. On October 7, 2019, he was resentenced to 20 years for the kidnapping conspiracy and one year for lying to police, to be served concurrently.¹⁴

Savanna’s Act and Public Memory

LaFontaine-Greywind’s murder became the catalyst for federal legislation on missing and murdered Indigenous people. Savanna’s Act, first introduced in 2017 by then-Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, passed the Senate unanimously in March 2020, cleared the House in September 2020, and was signed into law on October 10, 2020.¹⁶ The law requires U.S. Attorney’s Offices with tribal land to develop response guidelines for missing-person cases involving Indigenous people, directs the Department of Justice to train law enforcement on recording tribal enrollment in federal databases, improves tribal access to crime information systems, and requires annual reporting to Congress.¹⁷

In August 2024, Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney issued a proclamation declaring August 9, LaFontaine-Greywind’s birthday, as “Savanna Greywind Day.” The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa’s tribal council had already enacted its own Savanna Greywind Day in 2023. Family members, including Norberta Greywind, have led memorial walks on the anniversary of her disappearance, with balloon releases on her birthday and community members wearing red in her memory.¹⁸

1
The Dickinson Press. Tears of Joy: LaFontaine-Greywind’s Boyfriend Gains Legal Custody of Baby
2
KVRR. Father, Grandparents Working Together to Raise Haisley Jo, Daughter of Savanna Greywind
3
Twin Cities Pioneer Press. They Took My World From Me, Says Boyfriend of Missing Fargo Woman
4
Inforum. She’s My Miracle Baby: LaFontaine-Greywind’s Boyfriend Finally Sees Baby Taken From Slain Girlfriend
5
People. Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind’s Slain Mom: Baby Haisley Jo Loves Getting Gifts
6
CBS News. Petition: Savanna Greywind Apartment
7
Star Tribune. Pregnant Fargo Woman Was Alive When Baby Was Cut From Her Womb, Prosecutors Say
8
Star Tribune. DNA Tests Confirm Infant Belonged to Slain Fargo Woman
9
Oxygen. Savanna Greywind Stolen Baby: Haisley Jo, Ashton Matheny, Brooke Crews
10
High Plains Reader. Haisley Jo Comes Home
11
People. Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind Baby Says Mama During Trial of Second Suspect
12
Valley News Live. Remembering Savanna Greywind Four Years Later
13
Valley News Live. Brooke Crews Testifies Gruesome Details
14
MPR News. Accomplice in Killing of Savanna Greywind Gets 20 Years
15
Justia. State v. Hoehn, 2019 ND 222
16
U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell. Savanna’s Act Becomes Law
17
U.S. Department of Justice. Savanna’s Act
18
Inforum. City of Fargo Declares Aug. 9 as Savanna Greywind Day