The Amateur Sleuth Who Solved an Oil Worker's Disappearance

Summary

Lawless Planet – "The Amateur Sleuth Who Solved an Oil Worker's Disappearance"

Podcast: Lawless Planet (Wondery)
Host: Zach Goldbaum
Air Date: October 27, 2025

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Overview

This gripping episode of Lawless Planet explores the intersection of environmental devastation, Native American sovereignty, corporate greed, and true crime. Host Zach Goldbaum chronicles Lyssa Yellowbird Chase’s transformation from a “justice seeker” and amateur sleuth into a fearless advocate for the missing on the Fort Berthold Reservation. Through her relentless grassroots investigation, Lyssa not only exposes the disappearances and murders tied to the North Dakota oil boom, but also unearths the web of corruption connecting tribal leadership, oil company executives, and organized crime.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

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The Disappearance of Casey Clark and the Start of Lyssa's Investigation

[00:19–02:36]

• Meet Lyssa Yellowbird Chase:
  Lyssa introduces herself as Arikara, Mandan, Hidatsa, Lakota, and a “humble, pitiful human being who likes to try to do the right thing for other people.”
  • “Didn’t nobody want to admit that it was a short, chubby Indian chick with a bad mouth who broke this case.” (Lyssa, [02:55])
• Lyssa becomes obsessed with the case of missing oil worker Casey Clark after seeing his mother’s plea on Facebook.
• After the tribal oil boom transforms her home, Lyssa feels compelled to stand up for justice where law enforcement won't.

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The Economic Boom and Its Dark Consequences

[04:19–12:05]

• North Dakota’s Bakken oil formation turns the Fort Berthold Reservation into a boomtown, but also exposes residents to corporate exploitation and the hazards of fracking.
• Massive influx of outside oil workers brings increased crime and drug problems to the reservation.
• Tribal Chairman Tex Hall, also known as Red Tipped Arrow, preaches “sovereignty by the barrel,” steering the tribe to embrace oil money as a path to independence—yet his business dealings blur governance and personal enrichment.
• Quote from Tex Hall: “It’s hard to be sovereign on an empty stomach…” ([11:43])

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Rising Suspicion: Corruption and Violent Actors

[12:23–19:06]

• Lyssa documents how non-tribal companies, like James Henriksen’s Blackstone Trucking, circumvent tribal rules by partnering with insiders such as Tex Hall.
• James Henriksen, charismatic but deeply corrupt and violent, rises in the ranks through deals with tribal leadership and intimidation.
• Lyssa’s efforts at transparency lead her to confront Tex Hall and send repeated messages—he remains unresponsive.
  • “So when Tex didn’t answer me, my question was like, what do you gotta hide?” (Lyssa, [18:58])

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The Investigation, Breaks, and Bold Tactics

[19:06–23:19]

• Lyssa discovers James’s criminal past and spreads the word via professional-looking flyers warning businesses and tribal members:
  • “Consider them dangerous.”
• The campaign reaches reservation leadership; as pressure mounts, Tex Hall ends his business relationship with James, effectively driving Blackstone out.
  • “People said, ‘Lyssa, you’re going up against an empire.’ I said, ‘You know what an empire is built of? Bricks. You know how you dismantle one? Brick by fucking brick.’” (Lyssa, [23:19])

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Building the Case: Personal Risks and Unfolding Threats

[23:37–26:41]

• Lyssa befriends James’s wife, Sarah, gaining inside perspectives but also worrying for Sarah’s safety.
  • “She was a victim, too. So I was kind of worried about her safety because I by then had figured out James is a pretty rotten guy and anybody is disposable to him, including his wife.” ([25:04])
• Homeland Security’s investigation into phone records starts revealing movement patterns matching Casey’s disappearance.

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Murder for Hire and National Fallout

[26:41–36:18]

• Lyssa warns Doug Carlile, James’s new business partner, that he is at risk.
  • “Doug, would you not rather lose everything and walk away with your life? Because I'm telling you, these people aren’t to play with. You are next.” (Lyssa, [01:52])
• Despite warnings, Doug is murdered in his home. Lyssa’s suspicions are confirmed as evidence and witness confessions tie James to both murders—Casey Clark and Doug Carlile.
• The investigation exposes evidence of tribal chairman Tex Hall’s improper deals with Blackstone, kickbacks, and environmental violations, leading to his downfall.
  • “Casey was the scab, and once we plucked that off, it just started bleeding.” (Lyssa, [35:18])

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Justice and Aftermath

[36:18–38:42]

• James Henriksen is found guilty on all counts—two life sentences for murder for hire.
  • “The verdict: guilty on all counts.” (Lyssa, [36:51])
• Sarah Krevling, in exchange for testimony, receives probation and restitution, and divorces James.
• Lyssa’s behind-the-scenes work is crucial but goes uncredited:
  • “Didn’t nobody want to admit that it was a short, chubby Indian chick with a bad mouth who broke this case.” (Lyssa, [36:18])

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Lyssa’s Legacy and Continuing Work

[38:17–41:59]

• Lyssa becomes a beacon for other families seeking missing loved ones, launching the Saanish Scouts nonprofit and advocating against violence toward Indigenous people.
  • “Let’s not sugarcoat the idea. Our women were exploited from the very beginning...”
• The environmental cost of the Bakken—and oil booms like it—loom large: pollution, damaged land, radioactive waste, and a legacy of loss.
• Lyssa sums up the lasting damage:
  • “Mother Earth is going to be fine with or without us... We’ve kind of evolved into more of a parasite and we need to change that.” ([41:59])
• Despite personal sacrifice—missing family events and pieces of her own life—Lyssa remains committed to advocating for justice and searching for the missing.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|---------|-------| | 02:55 | Lyssa Yellowbird Chase | “Didn’t nobody want to admit that it was a short, chubby Indian chick with a bad mouth who broke this case.” | | 11:43 | Tex Hall | “It’s hard to be sovereign on an empty stomach.” | | 18:58 | Lyssa Yellowbird Chase | “So when Tex didn’t answer me, my question was like, what do you gotta hide?” | | 19:26 | Lyssa Yellowbird Chase | “Casey’s the one who finessed those relationships... If Casey was to go to another company, the chances are they would cancel the contract with James and Tex and go to wherever Casey was.” | | 23:19 | Lyssa Yellowbird Chase | “You know how you dismantle [an empire]? Brick by fucking brick.” | | 36:51 | Lyssa Yellowbird Chase | “The verdict: guilty on all counts.” | | 41:59 | Lyssa Yellowbird Chase | “Mother Earth is going to be fine with or without us... We’ve kind of evolved into more of a parasite and we need to change that.” |

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:19–02:36: Lyssa’s introduction and warning to Doug Carlile
• 04:19–12:05: Background on Fort Berthold Reservation and oil boom
• 17:22–23:19: Lyssa’s dedication, investigation tactics, and public flyer campaign
• 26:41–29:43: The murder of Doug Carlile
• 31:50–36:18: Confession of Casey’s killer and unraveling of the criminal conspiracy
• 38:17–41:59: Lyssa’s continuing advocacy and the environmental legacy of boomtown greed

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Tone and Takeaways

The episode is determined, clear-eyed, and at times mournful—reflecting Lyssa’s own mixture of grit, humor, and vulnerability. Goldbaum and the interviewees steer clear of sensationalism, focusing instead on the deep human cost of environmental harm and corruption. The story is as much about systemic failures and resilience as it is about individual crimes, reminding listeners that in places where “lawless” is the norm, real justice often comes from the most unexpected quarters—one brick, one act of courage, at a time.

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For more stories at the intersection of true crime and the climate crisis, follow Lawless Planet wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

[Zach Goldbaum]

Wondry subscribers can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad free right now. Join Wondry in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

My name is Lyssa Yellowbird Chase.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

I am a member of the Fort Berthold Reservation.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

I am Arikara, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Lakota. And I am just a humble, pitiful human being who likes to try to do the right thing for other people.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Lyssa Yellowbird Chase is an amateur detective, or she likes to call it, a justice seeker. And for over a year, she had been investigating the disappearance of an oil worker who went missing on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. And in February of 2012, she had discovered that the company that the missing man worked for had rebranded and was now registered to two people. The man she suspected was behind the missing person's disappearance and the man she feared would be his next victim, Doug Carlile.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

Nobody knew about Doug Carlile, but I found him on the Secretary of State records. He was the owner now. And I was like, oh, who is this guy?

[Zach Goldbaum]

So in early December 2013, Lissa picked up the phone and dialed a number in Spokane, Washington.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

And I said, doug, you don't know me, but do you know who you've entered contracts with? Do you know that the last person in your position is now missing? Do you know that you're next on the shopping list?

[Zach Goldbaum]

But no matter how many times Lissa tries to warn Doug, he's not interested in hearing it.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

He said, you know, Lyssa, everybody has a past. And from what I hear, you're not perfect either. No, I'm not. But nobody's missing on my watch either. Doug, by the end of that phone call, it was probably about a 30 minute phone call. He said, lyssa, I can't back out. I put my whole retirement, I put my whole mortgage and everything on this deal. And if I don't go through with it, I will lose everything. I said, doug, would you not rather lose everything and walk away with your life? Because I'm telling you, these people aren't to play with. You are next.

[Zach Goldbaum]

From Wondry. I'm Zach Goldaum and this is Lawless Planet. We tell a new story about the true crimes fueling the climate crisis and the people fighting to save the planet or destroy it.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

Didn't nobody want to admit that it was a short, chubby Indian chick with a bad mouth who broke this case. Derry is a beautiful place, but things do happen from time to time.

[Zach Goldbaum]

A new age HBO original series. Folks are getting funny ideas.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

Keep the people you love close your.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Lives depend on begins here there's something.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

Here something bad.

[Zach Goldbaum]

It welcome to Dairy.

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[Zach Goldbaum]

The residents of the Fort Bertholdt Indian Reservation have a long history of being cheated by the US Government. The treaty that created the reservation was supposed to give them 12 million acres. It's since been chipped down to less than a million, and a quarter of that land was flooded when a dam was built in 1947, forcing nearly all of the reservation's inhabitants off their farms and onto dry prairies that were considered virtually worthless. Then, in the mid-2000s, a big industry came for what was under their land. Oil. Fort Berthold sits atop the Bakken formation, one of the biggest oil reserves in the U.S. when investors and oilmen started drilling wells in 2009, they stood to make enormous profits. And so did the three tribes who call Fort Berthold home. In the midst of this boom, Lyssa Yellowbird Chase began her search for a missing young oil worker. And what started as a side quest to help a distraught mother find her son evolved into something much deeper. Lissa would uncover a criminal conspiracy that implicated both white outsiders and tribal leaders alike and exposed the hidden cost of all that oil.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

Before the oil came, you could pull.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

Off a highway onto a dirt road.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

And all you would see is maybe some rolling hills, you know, different kinds of plant medicines growing. You wouldn't see anybody out on that roadway until you maybe left and hit the major highway again. I remember when we were younger, we'd go out there and camp for four or five days and not see another soul.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Lissa's in her late 50s, with a round face and world weary eyes. She lives in Fargo now, five hours away from Fort Berthold, but she has a lot of relatives and history on the reservation, so it's still her home. Every July, the Yellowbirds have a reunion on the reservation, and in 2009, when Lyssa was in her early 40s, it was a bigger deal than usual because for the first time in a while, Lissa could finally go.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

I had just gotten out of prison the year before, out of a halfway house, getting my kids back, trying to maintain some new norm, whatever that would be.

[Zach Goldbaum]

So, on a humid summer day, Lyssa got in her car to make the nearly 300 mile journey from Fargo to Fort Berthold. As she drove across North Dakota, Lissa watched the landscape shift. Yellow fields of wheat and rapeseed, green prairies of grass and corn. It was familiar, but there was something new about it, too, something Lissa had only heard about through relatives.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

People were starting to move in.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

One of my friends worked at one of the bars, and I remember him.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

Saying, there's a lot of oil field people here. That was when I noticed things were changing.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Over the course of two years, while Lissa was in prison, oil companies had snatched up the mineral rights to nearly every parcel of land on the reservation. They were all after the same thing, a piece of one of the biggest untapped oil fields in the country.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

It's called the Bakken formation. A vast 200,000 square mile area rich.

[Zach Goldbaum]

With more than 3 billion barrels of crude, the Bakken formation spans western North Dakota and continues into Montana and Canada. It's probably best known as the source of the oil in the Dakota Access pipeline and the protests that came with it. But in the mid-2000s, the area was suddenly in the spotlight, thanks to two relatively new innovations. Horizontal drilling and fracking. Oilmen drill at an angle to reach a horizontal layer of shale underground and and then pump a pressurized mix of sand, water and chemicals into the hollowed out well. The shale splinters from the pressure to release oil. And in the Bakken region, it is a lot of oil. With the arrival of fracking, the hills of Fort Berthold were transformed seemingly overnight.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

There was fracking pads all over the place, flares burning off gases. It was just crazy. It went from remote, desolate, like nothing to boom overnight. It was like going to the state fair and being forced to live there for the rest of your life.

[Zach Goldbaum]

More and more workers showed up to Fort Berthold to work in the fields, and some tribal members joined them, like Lissa's younger brother, Percy. While his sister was in prison, Percy had started working as a floor hand at one of the many new oil rigs. The job was brutal. 16 hours a day, low pay, and managers who discouraged him from reporting injuries on the job. By the time of the Yellowbird family reunion in 2009, Percy had quit for his own safety. But working the rigs wasn't the only way for Fort Berthold residents to profit from the oil boom. Many families signed away the mineral rights to their land. And it didn't take long for the profits to roll in.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

The minute that oil hit everybody's judgment, their values, their integrity, their honesty, everything went out the window. Because it was all about the dollar after that point.

[Zach Goldbaum]

In only five years, the three affiliated tribes of Fort Bertholdt collect a billion dollars in taxes and royalties, making them one of the richest tribal nations in the country. With less than 100 wells drilled and hundreds more permits pending, the future looks bright. The US Government has not been kind to the three tribes. Maybe this will mark the beginning of a new chapter. And a big source of their optimism is their tribal chairman, a man who sees North Dakota's oil as a path to native financial independence, what he calls sovereignty by the barrel. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce you to our chairman, red tip arrow, Mr. Tex Hall. Tex hall has heavy eyebrows, a salt and pepper ponytail, and. And almost always wears a black Stetson. He's also known as Red Tipped Arrow, a name inherited from his father, meaning first to draw blood.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

Tex hall was the tribal chairman at that time. And to be clear, he is actually a relative of mine.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

I'm pretty much related to everybody on this reservation.

[Zach Goldbaum]

In 1998, Tex began serving as the tribal chairman for the Three Affiliated Tribes, or MHA Nation, as they're officially known as. In 2006, he took a break from public office and founded a company called Mahishu Energy. And soon enough, he was profiting off the oil boom, too. But the way Tech saw it, his efforts were benefiting everyone on the reservation, not just himself. Here he is in 2014 talking to the New York Times.

[Tex Hall]

It's hard to be sovereign on an empty stomach. And so he said, the more oil that is produced on Fort Berthel Indian Reservation, the more revenue we can create to create our own regulatory scheme. We'll develop it and will protect the environment our way. We won't depend on the great white father in Washington, D.C. tex returned to.

[Zach Goldbaum]

His chairman post in 2010, which opened up some complicated questions about his business interests. And it was right around that time that Lyssa Yellowbird Chase started to notice that the oil boom was bringing some new characters to the reservation.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

This guy was kind of driving erratically in the casino parking lot. And so I stopped and I got in his way, and I'm like, you.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

Know that parking lot interaction people have like, what the hell are you doing? Throw your hands up. And I started walking to him and.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

He got in his truck and left. And then one of the people coming out of the casino came up and he said, you don't want to mess with that guy. And I said, who is he? That's your tribal chairman's right hand man. His name is James.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The man driving out of the casino like a bat out of hell was James Henriksen. He's in his early 30s, with a soul patch and blindingly white teeth. He and his girlfriend, Sarah Creveling, moved to North Dakota on the heels of the oil boom to start a trucking company called Blackstone. People on the reservation call them Ken and Barbie. But despite their confidence and good looks, James and Sarah face one major obstacle. To get a contract on the reservation, you need to be a tribal member. So James sets out to make a deal with the most powerful tribal member around, Tex Hall. They land on a deal that ends up being pretty cushy for both parties. In exchange for access to lucrative contracts, James shares a part of his profits with Tex. But Tex hall didn't know and didn't care to find out who he just gotten into bed with.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

James is kind of a tyrant. He was overbearing.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

It was all money, money, money.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

You know, time and money was of.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

The essence for him.

[Zach Goldbaum]

As James Co. Blackstone took off, he worked his staff to the bone, including an old friend from off the res named Christopher Casey Clark.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

Casey was the frontman. Casey was the finesser. He had the gorgeous smile, and he just had a natural way of blending.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

In with people and being very friendly.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

And he was very transparent. He never tried to misrepresent himself. He was just a guy out there trying to make some money and pay for a nice truck.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Casey is 29 years old with gelled hair, pierced ears, and a contagious smile. James had lured him to North Dakota to make easy money in the oil boom. And for Casey, the Blackstone gig was great. At first, it was good money, and James was pulling in contract after contract, which became a lot easier when he had the chairman's name to drop. But thanks to all that new business, Casey found himself working almost constantly. And soon enough, he was looking for a way out. Behind James back, Casey starts talking about leaving Blackstone to launch a rival trucking company. On February 22, 2012, Casey stops by the Blackstone offices before heading off on a much needed vacation. He says hello to Sarah briefly and mentions a plan to visit his grandpa in Oregon. And then Casey drives away. That's the last day he's ever seen alive. In the summer of 2012, Lissa yellowbird chase is scrolling through Facebook when she sees a post from a woman named Jill Williams. Her post is one of many in a group she created to find her son Casey, who went missing in the oil fields three months ago. Lissa is sad, but not surprised. People in the oil fields go missing all the time. With these new jobs and non native men coming in to fill them, crime and drug use on the reservation have skyrocketed. And because tribal police generally don't have criminal jurisdiction over anyone who isn't a tribal member, many cases go unsolved. But something about Jill makes Lyssa want to help, and she's uniquely qualified to do so. Before her own issues with drug addiction derailed her life, Lyssa earned a degree in criminal justice. She worked as a tribal court advocate on the reservation, so she knows how hard it can be to solve crime on tribal land. She sends a message to Jill to offer to help, signing off by saying, I'm sorry to hear about your boy. I'm a mother, too. My prayers are with you. A couple months later, on August 11, Lissa gets a response from Jill. She's in. And just like that, Lissa is on the case. Lissa has always had a string of obsessions. Gardening, piano, documentary, film. In recent years, sobriety has only intensified her focus.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

I literally found a new addiction, and that was this. Helping people. And it set me on an obsessive path to find answers and justice for Casey.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Two weeks later, Lyssa gets back in her car and drives to Fort Berthold. Her first stop is the Blackstone trucking offices, where Casey was last seen. When she arrives, she's surprised at the size of the operation. The metal buildings are huge. Semi trucks line the yard, and dozens of workers, mostly white, are working on the vehicles. Under the hot summer sun, Lissa approaches a worker and asks about Casey. He doesn't know him, but before they part ways, he mentions the man who owns the shop that houses Blackstone's offices, Tex Hall. Lissa had no idea that her distant relative, the tribal chairman, also owned an oil company. So she makes a note to call him and ask about his missing worker.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

Nobody wanted to confront Tex, and I figured it would take something as simple as a phone call. Hey, what happened to this kid?

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

What do you know? You know, everybody's afraid to ask you and just be real about it, because that's pretty much how I approach everything. Well, I did call him at his office.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

No answer. Then I got his private number. No answer. I text him.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

Then I start sending emails. Then we started faxing. Every Number over at the tribal office, and still no answers.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Lissa's pretty bothered by Tex's silence. After all, he's not just a business owner, he's a public official.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

So when Tex didn't answer me, my question was like, what do you gotta hide?

[Zach Goldbaum]

Lissa keeps searching Google Earth for possible burial spots and talking to Casey's old coworkers, Rick, to see if he remembers anything useful. And eventually, Rick does reveal an important detail. Casey's old boss, James, had found out that Casey was about to leave Blackstone for a rival company.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

Casey's the one who finessed those relationships with these contractors. If Casey was to go to another company, the chances are they would cancel contract with James and Tex and go to wherever Casey was.

[Zach Goldbaum]

That's when Lissa starts looking more into James. And what she finds is shocking. James is a five time convicted felon with charges ranging from theft and burglary to attempted assault. And he's still currently on probation, which is why Blackstone is registered in the name of his wife, Sarah Krevling.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

When it comes to a missing person.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

Everybody'S a suspect until you're not a suspect. And I was able to eliminate a lot of people out of my pool. And it just kept focusing on James and Sarah.

[Zach Goldbaum]

A year after Casey went missing, Lissa's investigation is moving slowly. There's been one break in the case so far. The Department of Homeland Security subpoenaed James phone records after noticing his previous drug charges. Maybe there's something there, but it'll take 12 weeks for DHS agents to parse through all the calls. Lissa was the one who'd brought James criminal record to the attention of dhs, and she's been sharing intel with them for months, so she cannot wait to hear what they find. In the meantime, in late February 2013, Lissa has an idea. She decides to create a flyer, a friendly public service announcement so companies working with Blackstone know who they're doing business with. At the top, it reads, beware con artists and thieves. Beneath a headshot of James and Sarah, the flyer suggests they may be involved in Casey's disappearance. It ends with a warning. Consider them dangerous.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

They weren't just like some cheap printout on a regular printer. Like these were on glossy paper, and they look legit.

[Zach Goldbaum]

With two giant cardboard boxes filled with thousands of flyers, Lissa and her brother Percy stuff the mailers. They mark them with a custom stamp, directing readers to a website that lists James's criminal history and gives details about Casey's case. They do all of this anonymously, so James Won't know who's responsible. And then they mail the flyers out.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

And as a return address, we put Blackstone, so any of them that got returned will go to their mailbox.

[Zach Goldbaum]

A month later, when Percy is home on the reservation, he sees the flyers everywhere. Taped inside businesses, on walls, in tribal offices, on telephone poles, and on pumps at the gas station.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

Even the post office had those beware posters. And the post office wouldn't even let us put a missing flyer of Casey in there. But they put the beware posters up of James and Sarah because they looked that official.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Everyone on the reservation knows James and Sarah, and now they know about their dark side, too. When people talk to Percy about how crazy it all is, he just nods along. And soon, Lissa finds out that the flyers reached the one person she'd hoped they would.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

People took it to tribal council, and they were like, hey, Tex, you have a business with these guys. You want to explain? And then he had to start taking notice and backpedaling and distancing himself from them.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Tex hall cancels his partnership with Blackstone, severing his relationship with James and Sarah. It is exactly the outcome that Lissa wanted. Without a tribal member fronting the company, Blackstone can no longer operate on the Fort Berthold reservation.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

People said, lissa, you're going up against an empire. I said, you know what an empire is built of? Bricks. You know how you dismantle one brick by fucking brick?

[Zach Goldbaum]

Later that March, Lissa writes an email directly to James wife Sarah. In a careful message, Lissa frames herself as an innocent Facebook bystander who. Who fell for the conspiracies against Blackstone. She's trying to get Sarah to see her as an ally. So she writes, I truly would like to hear your side of the story so that I can set the record straight. My goal is to find Casey. Two days later, Sarah responds, and they start talking online regularly, which turns into texts and then phone calls. Sarah shares that she's upset about the flyers and wants to know who's behind them, so Lissa offers to help. It's the perfect way to throw Sarah off the scent. Over the next few months, Lissa keeps finding ways to ask Sarah about Casey's disappearance. But Sarah's story is consistent. All she knows is he stopped by the Blackstone offices, dropped off his company credit card, and talked briefly about visiting his grandfather in Oregon. And that was the last anyone saw him. Lissa isn't sure whether to trust Sarah, but eventually she decides that Sarah is probably telling her everything she knows about Casey's disappearance. And she even feels some Sympathy for Sarah. She knows how easy it is for a smart, independent woman to get caught up in a relationship with the wrong guy. And by now, she's convinced James is all kinds of wrong.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

She was a victim, too. So I was kind of worried about her safety because I by then had figured out that James is a pretty rotten guy and anybody is disposable to him, including his wife.

[Zach Goldbaum]

As spring drags on, Lissa makes frequent trips back to the reservation to search for Casey. By now, it's clear to her that they won't find him alive. They're looking for a body. And though she's disappointed they haven't found one, she's not surprised. Remember, the Fort Berthold Reservation covers almost a million acres. Then that summer, she gets an update from DHS about James's phone records and Casey's, too. The day Casey disappeared, his phone was active until it got near James's phone. For a while, he kept receiving calls and texts, though he never replied. The two phones then traveled together to another part of the reservation that night, and once they got there, Casey's phone was deactivated. But to Lissa's frustration, even with this new information, there's not much investigators can do to arrest James. They still don't have a body. It's around this time in early December that Lissa discovered James Henriksen has a new business partner, a guy in Spokane, Washington, named Doug Carlisle. That is when Lissa called to warn him about James's shady past. What she didn't know was that Doug was already on high alert.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

I called him three times. His wife told me that he would sit there in a chair. She said he used to sit there with a gun, just like, waiting for a sound or something, you know?

[Zach Goldbaum]

It's a chilly Sunday evening in Spokane, Washington. 10 days before Christmas 2013. Doug Carlisle and his wife Alberta are returning from church to settle in for a quiet night at home. After raising six kids, Doug and Alberta are empty nesters, looking forward to retirement. Doug is in his early 60s, with blond hair and oval glasses. He spent the day before decorating their Christmas tree, tying gold stars one by one to its branches. As Alberta goes upstairs, Doug walks into the kitchen and stops in his tracks. Standing there is a man dressed in all black, wearing gloves and a mask and holding a pistol. From the top of the stairs, Alberta hears two voices, Doug's and another she doesn't recognize. Wondering who her husband is talking to, she comes back downstairs, and that is when she sees the intruder with his gun pointed at Doug. The man turns to look at Alberta. And Doug shouts at him, don't do anything. Alberta flees back upstairs. She locks herself in a closet just as she hears eight gunshots ring out below her. Alberta still hiding in the upstairs closet. When police and first responders arrive, they discover Doug lying dead on the cold kitchen floor, surrounded by shell casings. And while there's no sign of the intruder, they do find a few things he left behind. A leather glove and a footprint in the mud behind the house. As they gather evidence and zero in on the killer, police interview Doug's family, and they learn that he'd been working with a guy from North Dakota on an oil development deal. When things went south, his business partner started threatening him. Doug had shared his worries with one of his sons, telling him, if I disappear or wake up with bullets in my back, promise me you will let everyone know that James Henriksen did it. On December 16, 2013, Lissa Yellowbird Chase wakes up early to a text message. It's from Tex Hall. They've barely been in touch, but he has important news he thinks she'll want to hear. Doug Carlile is dead.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

I know it was James. I know it was James. And they said, yeah, they think that, too.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Liss is tempted to reach out to Sarah, but she decides to wait. Less than a month later, on January 14, police raid James and Sarah's house while they're away. When they return, Sarah finds doors kicked in, her jewelry case destroyed, and all of her computers and cash gone. She texts Lissa to tell her she's scared. She thinks people are trying to hurt her and James, and she mentions that the authorities also took all of their guns. Alarm bells go off in Lissa's head. James is still on probation for his previous felonies, so he's not allowed to have guns. On the same day, thanks to a DNA match on the glove found at the Carlisle's home, investigators make an arrest in Washington. Timothy Succo is 50 years old, a white man with a shaved head, sunken eyes, and a record of assault and burglary. And when they search his phone, they find James's number saved under the contact James ND as in North Dakota. A few days later, authorities arrest James. When they bring him in for questioning, he stonewalls. An investigator presses him, saying, let's talk about Washington, how you hired someone to have a guy killed. But in response, James just laughs and says no. Timothy, however, is much more forthcoming. Wearing a red jumpsuit and stomach chains, he breaks down under questioning, admitting that James hired him to kill both Doug and Casey. In a videotaped Confession. Timothy tells investigators that on the morning of February 22, 2012, he met James at Blackstone's offices, which, remember, were housed in a garage owned by Tex Hall. James told him, I'll bring Casey back here, and you just put a chokehold on him. Timothy was uneasy about the whole thing, but he did what he was asked and more.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

And I walked up and I hit you back in the head. And he. He stumbled and fell and he tried to get up, you know, popped three, four more times.

[Zach Goldbaum]

In case you couldn't quite make that out, that is Timothy explaining how he beat Casey to death. Timothy weeps through the rest of the story. He tells police that after they'd cleaned up the murder scene at Blackstone, he and James drove Casey's body to the Badlands and buried him in a hole he dug in a ravine. And that was that. Liss is relieved to give Casey's mother closure about her son, even if they can't find his body. And now she's itching to make James pay for what he did and find out how much Tex hall really knew about it. In late January 2014, Lissa gets a hold of a court summary of witness interviews in the Carlisle case. And there on page eight, typed neatly, is the name Tex Hall. Tex had spoken to detectives after the murder, and he insisted that he'd never met Doug, but he'd heard that James stole half a million dollars from the company they shared. The report contains one other detail that gets Lissa's attention. A man from Spokane had visited James at the Blackstone offices back when they were partnered with Tex. An employee had overheard their conversation. The man asked James about a job that would pay the same as the last job. The employee suspected that the job they were referring to was killing Casey. Lissa can't believe what she's reading. Could Tex really have been involved in a murder? She posts the summary online so it reaches members of the three affiliated tribes. They deserve to know what their chairman is up to.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

In my opinion, if you're involving not just a tribal member, but a tribal leader in these acts that you're committing, that kind of makes not only my leader, but my tribe, and then me along with it, complicit with whatever's going on. And that's what pissed me off.

[Zach Goldbaum]

As more details of Tex's relationship with James come to light, many tribal members begin losing trust in their chairman. But Tex seems to believe he's bulletproof. So later that year, he runs for reelection. Just before the primaries, the tribal council releases a 66 page report investigating Tex. Tribal members aren't surprised by most of its contents. They knew Tex and Blackstone had been partners, but they didn't know that in 2012, Tex hired Blackstone to spray water on dusty roads for almost $600,000 without calling for bids from any tribal owned companies. The report also includes evidence that Tex used his office to get kickbacks from oil investors looking to drill on reservation land. And that he violated EPA regulations by dumping about 200 pieces of radioactive waste called frac socks on his property instead of properly disposing of them.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

It talked about all the things that we discovered during the Casey case. The contracts, the pollution, all these environmental issues, all these, like, business practice issues. I mean, Casey was the scab, and once we plucked that off, it just started bleeding.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Tex dismisses the report as a smear campaign by his fellow candidates for chairman. But when the primary election is held, to no one's surprise, Tex hall loses. And that same day, James Henriksen is charged with soliciting the murder for hire of Casey Clark and Doug Carlisle. In January 2016, Lissa travels to Washington to attend James trial. After all her work, she just wants to see justice. And throughout the trial, prosecutors mention how her flyers broke the case open. But they don't actually give Lyssa credit.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

My name was not mentioned. Once you got all these men with their coats feeling important, didn't nobody want to admit that it was a short, chubby Indian chick with a bad mouth who broke this case.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Over the course of 21 days, all of James's dirty laundry comes to light. And on February 25, the jury reaches a verdict. Other news tonight, the jury came to a decision in a high profile murder for hire case. James Henriksen heard his fate on all 11 charges.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

The verdict, guilty on all counts.

[Zach Goldbaum]

A few months later, in May. May 2016, James receives two life sentences, one for each man he had killed. As for Sarah Krevling, in exchange for testifying against James, she gets a reduced sentence for lesser charges, money laundering and conspiracy to commit mail fraud. It turns out that she and James had also embezzled $1.7 million from Blackstone investors. So while James goes to prison for Life, Sarah gets three years of supervised probation and pays almost $350,000 in restitution. She also gets a divorce. Even after his conviction, James still refuses to help authorities locate Casey's body. It's been 13 years since Casey was killed, and Lissa hasn't stopped searching for him. But now she has helped fellow tribal members join her in walking the sloping prairie. On Facebook Friends and neighbors repost her calls to action. There are a lot of places in the oil fields of Fort Berthold to hide a body. And Casey isn't the only one Lyssa is searching for. What was once an obsession is now a calling. And Lissa's role as a justice seeker has broadened into finding indigenous people who have gone missing as well.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

Once the news media got involved and whatnot, and the coverage was there, it gave a lot of families hope. Hey, there's somebody out here who cares.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Now families regularly reach out to Lyssa, asking for help to find their loved ones. She founded a nonprofit called Saanish Scouts, and she's spoken at forums that highlight the disproportionately high rate of Native American people that go missing.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

Let's not sugarcoat the idea. Our women were exploited from the very beginning and children were enslaved. The exploitation is the major cause of being missing and murdered. Peddling drugs on my reservation, bootleggers, selling alcohol to minors, and then later having these young people wind up with addictions, disappearances, and death.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Lyss has now helped over a hundred families search for their missing loved ones. It's the kind of work that would seem to require almost unlimited reserves of patience and empathy. But occasionally it pays off. In 2019, Lissa finally found the body of a young mother after a two year search. And when her own niece disappeared, Lissa coerced a confession from her killer.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

There's been a lot of sacrifices.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

I missed my kids growing up.

[Narrator / Interviewee (possibly a relative or tribal member)]

I can't get that back.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

I missed holidays, birthdays, mother's days, funerals. I've missed a lot because of the work I do. I never come to my own birthday parties.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Lissa turned 57 in 2025. And even though it was a week late, she did make it to this year's birthday party. After he testified in James trial, Tex hall returned to the reservation. He was determined to be chairman again, and in 2022, he ran for a fourth term. But by then, the MHA nation had had enough. Tex is no longer welcome as their leader. Texas idea of sovereignty by the barrel has faded away, too. The period between 2014 and 2016 saw one of the largest and most prolonged oil price declines in history. Prices dropped a staggering 70%, partly because of the boom. Once all that promising oil under the surface made it into barrels, there was simply too much supply and not enough demand.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

The two main denominators here was time and money. They want their stuff put in in the quickest of ways, and they want to get revenue from that. As quickly as possible because that's why they're here right now. Look at the aftermath. I saw animals drinking fracking fluid. Animals were dying. You could tell where spills were taking place. They leased the land. They think they owned it.

[Zach Goldbaum]

And the long term effects of the Bakken formation will be even worse. The Bakken is a so called carbon bomb which could emit 1 billion tons of CO2 over the course of its lifespan. Once the oil boom started in North Dakota, it brought with it a wave of crime, violence, drugs and even murder like the ones that took the lives of Casey Clark and Doug Carlisle. But the biggest crime of all might just be what's left in North Dakota when the oil finally stops flowing.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

Mother Earth is going to be fine with or without us. I mean, we were caretakers at one point, right by default, the caretakers of this land. We've kind of evolved into more of a parasite and we need to change that.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and and ad free right now by joining Wondry plus in the Wonder App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short [e-mail] survey on the next episode of Lawless Planet, the first in a special two part series on what led to the epic fail of of the Deepwater Horizon. I remember closing my eyes and saying a prayer and.

[Lyssa Yellowbird Chase]

Asking God to tell.

[Zach Goldbaum]

My wife, little girl, that Daddy did everything he could and if I survive this, it's for a reason. For today's episode we relied heavily on Sierra Crane Murdoch's amazing book Yellow Oil Murder and A Woman's Search for Justice in Indian country, as well as reporting by the New York Times and the Spokesman Review. Lawless Planet is produced and hosted by me, Zach Goldbaum. This episode was written by Olivia Briley. Our senior producer and senior story editor is Derek John. Senior producers for Wondry are Peter A.R. cooney and Andy Herman. Our senior managing producer is Nick Ryan. Our managing producer is Sarah Kenny Corrigan. Our associate producer is Alexi Perry. Sound design by Kyle Randall. Music by Kenny Kuziak. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frizz on Sync. Fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our legal counsel is Deb derues. Executive producers are Marshall Louie, Aaron o', Flaherty, n' Jeri Eaton and Jenny Lauer Beckman for Wandering. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Wondering.