Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Sentencing brings some closure to families of slain Nevada tribal women

Man receives 2 life terms for killings on reservation

Northern Nevada Indigeneous

Contributed

Adeline “Gug” Sam, left, and her cousin Amy Hinkey are pictured on the Fort McDermitt Shoshone Paiute Tribe Reservation before their slaying in January 2018.

Donning red T-shirts that read “Justice for Gug and Amy,” friends and family of the two Fort McDermitt Shoshone Paiute women who were killed in 2018 sat on the sixth-floor benches inside the U.S. District Court in Reno on Tuesday waiting for the judge to sentence the man convicted of the murders.

“I believe this man should spend the rest of his life in prison,” U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks said in sentencing Stoney Prior, 43, to two life sentences that will be served consecutively for shotgun slayings of the two women.

The family of Adeline “Gug” Sam, 31, and 40-year-old Amy Hinkey, cousins who were killed in 2018 on the tribal reservation along the Nevada-Oregon state line, exchanged grateful glances. One family member raised her fist in triumph.

“I’m relieved,” said Hinkey’s mother Evelina Bell, who says she often cries herself to sleep and couldn’t sleep Monday night before the sentencing. “Hopefully, especially with our girls, they’ll be OK. I know they are. But deep down, there’s always going to be an emptiness. No matter what. … It’s pretty hard to lose a child.”

While giving an emotional victim impact statement, Bell said that through the court hearings, she could feel a tap on her shoulder and could smell her daughter’s perfume, and she knew it was Hinkey there with her.

“After today, that closure would come so our girls could rest in peace,” Bell said in court, pausing to blow her nose. “Amy left us with wonderful, precious memories.”

In August 2020, a jury found Prior guilty on two counts of second-degree murder for the killing of the women. Prior, who is also a member of the tribe, had told multiple witnesses he killed the women.

He told someone he had “blown their heads off,” and after he was arrested, he called himself a “natural born killer,” Judge Hicks said as he went over the facts of the case that led to the life sentences.

Hinkey was dropped off by her brother the night she was killed to spend the night with her cousin, telling him to pick her up at 8 the next morning. When that morning came, her brother arrived to no one answering the door.

He opened it to find his sister lying on the couch clutching a blanket with a wound to her head. Sam was lying on the floor motionless, with gunshot wounds to the neck and head.

“I suspect they were asleep or at least going to bed when Prior arrived,” Hicks said. “He stepped into that home, and those two ladies did absolutely nothing to provoke him.”

Court record indicate Prior’s motive for killing the women was because they called him a “rapist” and a “molester,” referring to Prior’s previous arrest records, which included battery and rape.

The women were “killed for no reason at all,” Hicks said.

Autopsies showed that Sam was shot once in the neck and once in the head at close range with a shotgun. Hinkey was shot once in the head, once in the stomach, and twice in the arm at close range.

Their family and friends are happy that Prior received the sentence he did. Prior's attorneys argued he should receive 360 months in prison for both counts of second-degree murder that would be run concurrently, so that he could be released when he was 73.

“Prior is not a cognitively normal person,” his attorney Christopher Frey said during the sentencing. Prior was raised in a substance-abuse affected household where domestic violence was common, and he also has a history of alcohol and drug abuse and was incapable of keeping a job, Frey said.

He argued that the life expectancy for a Native American male in 2019 is 68.6 years, so Prior would be “unlikely to survive a sentence of 360 months.”

If he did survive that sentence, Frey said, he would return to his reservation and continue to help his tribe and would be unlikely to hurt anyone else in his old age.

Prior, who was dressed in a gray prison jumpsuit and had his hair tied back into a ponytail, sat quietly by his attorney. He glanced back at his cousin, who was there to testify on his behalf. When Judge Hicks asked Prior if he had anything to say prior to his sentencing, he declined.

Esther Sam, Gug’s mother, said in court that as an Indigenous community they have suffered “many kinds of abuse.” But she has never suffered more than when her daughter was killed.

Her daughter was a protector, Sam said. If they walked on the street, she would make sure her mother walked on the inside, saying she would push her out of the way in case of a car crash.

“There are no words to describe the ache and heartbreak of losing a child,” Sam said. “Our family was torn apart.”

Hinkey loved animals and would always bring home a cat or a dog to stay with her, Bell said. She was a daddy’s girl, who learned from him how to care for horses. She loved her nieces and nephews and cared for her family, cooking them meals and preparing snacks.

Hinkey and Sam are two of the many Indigenous women who either have been killed or have gone missing — an issue many advocates refer to as an “epidemic.”

A 2020 report documented about 2,306 Indigenous women and girls who have gone missing in the U.S., and 58% of those are homicide cases, but in reality, there are probably more, as advocates and federal officials are still working to get the most accurate data.

This case came with some closure for the family.

As court officers handcuffed Prior and led him away, Gug and Amy’s family gathered outside the courtroom, a small sea of red, hugging each other and wiping away tears.

“I feel good,” Bell said.