On August 23, 2017, the body of 20-year-old Sukakee Floydina Bullethead Yhides of Fort Duchesne, Utah, was found on a road northwest of Whiterocks on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation. Her death was treated as suspicious and investigated as a homicide by the Duchesne County Sheriff’s Office, the FBI, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Investigators focused on two people early in the probe. Zhondee Spring Nephi, 30, of Whiterocks and an enrolled member of the Ute Indian Tribe, was arrested and held in tribal custody on August 26, 2017. A second person of interest, 33-year-old Drew Black, also known as Drew Cuch, was taken into custody in Salt Lake County on August 30, 2017; no charges were filed against him in connection with Yhides’s death.

A federal grand jury indicted Zhondee Spring Nephi in February 2018 on second-degree murder and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence, alleging the killing occurred in Indian country. Court records show Nephi was later convicted and sentenced; a 2024 motion for a sentence reduction was denied, confirming the conviction and continued incarceration. Was anyone in the Whiterocks or Fort Duchesne community in contact with Sukakee in the days before August 23, 2017?