The disappearance of someone close leaves a void that warps everything around it. As Ann Howell can tell you, life never looks the same.
Now, when she leaves her home, she scans the city sidewalks and parks for signs of her brother. She can’t move or change her phone number out of fear that one day he’ll call as she continues what feels like a futile search for her brother who has been missing for five years
Rupert Leo Brown, then 42 and a Northern Arapahoe tribal member, disappeared on December 31, 2020.
He had dropped by Howell’s home that morning in the Beaver Creek housing community outside Riverton wanting a ride to their older brother’s home off 17 Mile Road. It’s about a 10-to 15-minute drive to get there, Howell estimated, across the Wind River Reservation.
It was common for Brown to drop by wanting rides, Howell said, and this day was no exception.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, she added. In fact, Brown sounded great and spoke eagerly about spending time with their brother for the New Year’s holiday.
Howell said she was happy to take him but explained that she and her husband were getting ready to go to his medical appointment, which would be about an hour wait.
He seemed impatient, Howell said, but agreed to hang out with Howell’s sons as he waited.
When it was time to go, however, Howell couldn’t find him. Her sons, too, weren’t sure where he’d gone.
“They said he was here, and I was like, ‘Where?’” she said. “He wasn’t in any of the rooms, and I just couldn’t find him.”
Weirder yet, he’d left his winter coat, which he wouldn’t have done on that cold, frigid day, Howell said, unless he was just stepping out momentarily.
After looking outside for him, Howell and her husband left for the clinic, thinking he likely just caught another ride or changed his mind.
At the time, Brown had been staying with friends and did not have a cell phone or bank account by which to track him. It was not uncommon not to hear from him for a few days at a time, though he always checked in with Howell and the two spoke frequently.
After nearly two weeks passed by with no word from her brother, Howell became concerned and started asking family and people around town for Brown.
“Everybody knew Rupert,” Howell said. “People really like him. He’s kind, you know? The type of guy who didn’t have much but would give you the shirt off his back.”
Concerned, Howell called family and friends and began trying to piece together where he’d gone that day and if anyone had seen him.
Potential Last Sighting In Riverton
One of her cousins told Howell that she’d spotted Brown in a downtown park that same day he disappeared. It would have been after he’d left Howell’s home, so it would have tracked timewise that it was him.
The cousin had been driving by the park with her mother when she spotted Brown, and the two turned around to give him a ride. When they got back just minutes later, Brown was gone.
“So that was a witness to him being in the park that day,” Howell said, but still, his trail ended there.
Worried that something happened to him, Howell reported her brother missing and she and her family began searching.
The community also stepped in to help. Volunteers, along with the Wind River Police Department, FBI, and Shoshone and Arapaho Fish and Game conducted a search of the rugged wilderness behind the Beaver Creek housing on Jan. 20, 2021, according to reporting at the time by County 10.
A member of the Riverton Police Department, former detective Billy Whiteplume, also a Northern Arapaho tribal member, called Howell and offered to help search for places in Riverton that people were known to gather.
“He got permission to do this in his spare time,” Howell said. “I was really grateful that he reached out to me and offered his services.”
She also had help from her friend in Montana, who works in search and rescue, who advised Howell on how to create a poster and share it on social media and work with the BIA.
She also connected her with a Montana-based missing person nonprofit, the Snowbird Fund, which provides financial assistance to indigenous families or individuals searching for missing loved ones in urban and reservation areas.
Despite all these efforts, no trace of Brown has been found as the months and years tick by.
Tips Lead Nowhere
Rumors and innuendo, however, continue to trickle in still to this day.
After he disappeared, Howell said she received many tips, including stories of Brown being murdered — all of which she shared with the Wind River Police Department, who has jurisdiction of the case, along with the Bureau of Indian Affairs which oversees the department.
In a small, tight-knit community people talk, but thus far, none of the tips or leads have panned out, Howell said.
She’s optimistic, however, that it’s not too late to find answers of what happened to Brown.
Now, it appears Brown’s case may be receiving renewed attention from the federal agencies.
Roughly a year ago, Howell was contacted by Jolene Makeshine, a special agent assigned to Brown’s case following the creation of a new Missing and Murdered Unit that was established by the BIA Office of Justice Services in 2021, according to a release by the U.S. Department of the Interior for Indian Affairs.
As of 2024, there were 26 MMU offices across 15 states with one agent in Riverton, Wyoming.
Makeshine did not respond to Cowboy State Daily’s request for an update, nor did the BIA or Wind River Police Department return requests for comment.
High Rates Of Missing And Murdered
Brown is one of four people who are currently reported missing from the Wind River Reservation dating back to 1993 and one of 15 people missing from Fremont County, according to the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation’s missing person database.
Along with Brown, others reported missing from the Wind River Reservation include Daren Dixon, who last seen in 1993, as well as Jose Dejesus Pereda who disappeared from Arapahoe in 2018. Most recently, 15-year-old Katerry Walks was reported missing in November 2025.
Data shows that murder and missing rates among Indigenous people are disproportionately high in Wyoming compared to white people despite accounting for only 3% of the state’s population, according to a 2025 report by the Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center at the University of Wyoming.
In 2024, the five-year homicide rate for Indigenous people was 23.2 per 100,000 residents, which is eight times higher than the murder rate for white Wyomingites, despite the slight decrease in murders between 2021 and 2023.
Likewise, Indigenous people are much more likely to go missing in the Cowboy State. In 2024, of the 151 missing person cases entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) by Wyoming law enforcement agencies, 19% of those were indigenous people.
This is in comparison to the 76% white people reported missing during the same period despite white people making up 92% of the population.
Both the state and federal government have acknowledged these disparities and are attempting to tackle the problem, including Gov. Mark Gordon who created the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) Task Force in 2019.
Federal efforts are also being done. Along with implementing the Missing and Murdered Units, the FBI also launched Operation Not Forgotten, which is an ongoing effort to address violence impacting Indigenous communities, including the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.
Coming Together To Do The Right Thing
Howell appreciates increased efforts by law enforcement but thinks the solution rests within the community and people caring enough to come together to help find her brother and do the right thing.
She’s seen incidents where individuals and concerned citizens have banded together to root out tips and information that can then be vetted by law enforcement who are the only ones who have the authority to solve these missing person cases.
But community members can be a big help, she noted, especially those who have vital information and feel compelled to finally come forward to do the right thing.
“It just takes caring,” Howell said. “It doesn’t take a million people to solve it.”
She just wants people to see her brother as a person who is much loved and missed by his friends and family.
“He’s not a throw-away person,” she said. “He’s very loved and missed.”
Victoria Brown, another of Rupert’s sisters, also misses her brother dearly and hopes that it’s not too late to finally bring him home.
“I would like to see more assistance in investigating how he disappeared,” Victoria Brown said.
Like her sister, Victoria believes that the answers are out there and that someone just needs to come forward to share what they know, even if it might seem like a small thing to them.
Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the Wind River Agency at 307-332-7810 or DCI at 307-777-7181. Tips can also be submitted anonymously on DCI’s website.
In addition to these state agencies, tips can be submitted to the BIA at 833-560-2065 or by email at: OJS_MMU@bia.gov or by text by typing keyword “BIAMMU” with location/tip to 847411.
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
