To our highly valued readers and evidence sleuths:
As Team Leader and co-author of Innocent Behind Bars, I have devoted eleven years (and counting) to uncovering the truth behind the manufactured evidence in Buggz Ironman-Whitecow’s case. My background and law career up to 2013 are covered in my two prior books (Courthouse Cowboys and Courthouse Rebels under P.A. Moore), so I won’t repeat those details here. In my long legal career representing thousands of crime victims, or those accused of everything from drunk driving to murder, I have never seen a miscarriage of justice like the one our team exposed in this case.
As a lawyer, an investigator, a trial jockey, and Buggz’s friend and number two fan (after his mom, Mary Whitecow), I ask you to read our book, look at the evidence in our database, consult with other true crime sleuths, and tell us whether or not our conclusions are correct about who killed Lloyd “Lucky” Kvelstad and how he really died. To date, the local Havre, Montana cops, the local judge, and the prosecutor who has handled this case and the evidence since 2008, have thwarted our every effort to expose the truth and free Buggz. We even struck out at the Montana Supreme Court (but note the curious backgrounds of the justices on that bench). Now we are in federal court before a judge and magistrate who at least want to look at the evidence. That gives us a glimmer of hope.
While we wait … and wait and wait … for justice to find Buggz and release him from his 17 year ordeal, please help us. Add your fresh eyes to this evidence. Comment. Offer alternative theories if you don’t agree with ours. Let us know if you need other pieces of information not in the database or book, and we will provide them if they aren’t privileged or protected by statute.
Most of all, share Buggz’s story with as many people as you can. By shining your own light on this corruption, you will expose those involved and hopefully get the attention of those in authority who have the power to dive deeply into this morass of wrongdoing.
From Buggz, from his family, from me and my family, THANK YOU!
Buggz Ironman-Whitecow, aka Kim Norquay, Jr., was born in 1979, into abject poverty, alcoholism, and violence. He is a member of the A’aninin nation, people of the White Clay whose proud people inhabit the desolate Fort Belknap reservation along Montana’s High Line, hundreds of miles from anywhere well-known. By Buggz’s eighth birthday, he’d experienced more beatings than most kids ever know, and by the age of twelve he’d edged much closer to the alcoholic he would become before his twentieth birthday. He never graduated from high school, fathered three girls before he reached twenty-two, and accomplished almost nothing before his arrest for murder when he was twenty-seven. He’s been in the continuous custody of Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge since his conviction in 2008 for the deliberate homicide of Lloyd “Lucky” Kvelstad, a crime he neither committed nor facilitated in any way.
I first met Buggz in 2013 when Montana’s Office of the State Public Defender assigned me to represent him on his post-conviction investigation. In the last eleven years, Buggz has grown into a warrior – a man with more patience, grace, and kindness than I’ll ever possess. Every day that he sits in custody as an innocent man, he manages to meditate, pray, work out, run, bead amazing objects, stay current with the news and world, and most importantly, not get caught up in the sometimes violent dramas that ensue daily in that prison. Now, at 45, he is a dedicated father, grandfather, and soon-to-be husband. His only goal is to tell the world his story through this book and website, while he prays for readers to help corroborate the truth. To that end, he asks everyone to scrutinize the facts and evidence carefully, to look behind the obvious lies the State prosecutors presented and the Havre police fabricated, and to use their common sense by pointing out anything we have missed in our efforts to free him. From Buggz, a huge THANK YOU to all who read the book and review the evidence.
Caiti Carpenter finished her first year of law school in 2013. To kill time that summer, she wanted to job-shadow my spouse and me when we went to court. She had planned to become an environmental lawyer before her summer internship with us. It took only one trip to Deer Lodge, just one meeting with Buggz, to steer her career path toward criminal law. She worked on Buggz’s case intermittently from that summer until 2019 when she accepted her current job as Legal Director for the Montana Innocence Project in Missoula. Even through the Covid pandemic and the birth of her first child, Caiti stayed engaged with Buggz’s case as much as she could, until she finally quit in March 2022.
Pete Barretta (a pseudonym with invented character traits to protect this person’s privacy), graduated from college as a photography major with an art history minor. I hired Pete because she was brilliant in a savant-like way. As an artist, she had an uncanny ability to ferret out details we left-brained lawyers missed, so I knew she’d make an excellent investigator. She didn’t disappoint. Without question, Pete saved this case, and (again, we hope) Buggz’s life and freedom, when she clicked on the metadata embedded in the crime scene photos and video. As you read this true account, pay attention to Pete’s discoveries and analysis, even to her ability to persist when I questioned the relevance of her conclusions about the photos, cleaning supplies, and people present at the crime scene. Currently, Pete relies on solitude to stay balanced in this crazy life we all lead and has no wish for contact or credit. But trust me, without her, I’m not sure I would have found the corrupted evidence that the cops manufactured to implicate Buggz and his co-defendant, James Main. Besides Buggz, she is the real hero in this story.
Adolph Allen Secher was a late comer to Team Buggz. Born in 1935, he continues to live his most amazing life. ‘Secher,’ as he calls himself, is a rabbi and a hero—a sacred rebel fighting for civil rights and a living reminder of “never-again” Holocaust advocacy. He marched with Martin Luther King. He married, had three kids, divorced, married again, and continues to be a dedicated spouse and father. A well-respected rabbi for five decades, Secher holds seven Emmy awards for his work in broadcasting. He met Team Buggz in 2018 when he came to eulogize our son. Since then, he has become an avenging angel in Buggz’s fight for justice. He has became a huge advocate for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) after it helped his daughter overcome suicidal ideations she’d experienced for over ten years. Secher helped raise over $350K to purchase a TMS machine for our local hospital and to fund treatments for hundreds of patients in our valley. He and his daughter made a YouTube video about this for our local Nate Chute Foundation which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oex8NacWX9k The treatment is lifesaving. Had we known about it before our son’s death, we would have sent him out of state for it. I still believe it would have saved him from his depression and eventual suicide. Secher remains a dear friend and prayer warrior for Buggz and our family.
John R. “Jack” Quatman, my law partner and life partner, began his legal career in 1972 as a prosecutor in Alameda County, where he spent twenty-five years “putting the bad guys in jail.” Just after moving with *our* family to Whitefish, Montana in 1997, *we* started the mom-and-pop law firm of Quatman & Quatman, PC. In that practice, Jack helped countless people in Flathead County with an eclectic range of cases and issues, from criminal defense, to landlord-tenant disputes, and much civil litigation in between. He retired from law in 2015 after forty-two very dedicated and busy years. As of now, he is an expert at puttering. As my law partner and the father of our children, Jack has given me his unfailing support and expertise as I continue to devote this last part of my career to Buggz’s freedom.
Lyndsey Quatman Marshall, our daughter, inadvertently joined Team Buggz, as did her family, by her very presence in our lives throughout this case. She has been a rock through the tragedy of her brother’s death (even organizing his memorial gathering) and the ongoing stress that permeates Buggz’s battle for justice. While raising two wonderful sons, Lyndsey obtained her master’s degree in school counseling, hired on as a counselor at our local high school, supported hundreds of students through the Covid pandemic and now through their daily challenges, withstood a tough divorce, and then helped build a house for herself and her boys near our home. She remains a brilliant, strong, dedicated mother, counselor, and daughter, supporting me through this very long legal battle for Buggz’s freedom. Buggz’s has spoken to her occasionally, as he has to her boys. He knows our entire family stands beside him and will be here for him when he is released, and that knowledge fuels his hope.
John William “Jack” Quatman, our wonderful son, phoned me nearly every day until his death in July 2018, even when he was piloting helicopters in foreign countries, traveling for pleasure, or studying in college. He never met Buggz, but he supported my efforts to free Buggz and expose the corruption in Havre Montana law enforcement. Jack asked me to update him on this case every time we spoke, always encouraging me to keep going, no matter what was happening in our family. I know in my heart he still supports Buggz, and me, from wherever he now journeys.
Brian Hulme, who died from cancer in 2021, was one of the finest humans, and investigators, I have had the privilege to know. He was career law enforcement for many years before he signed on as an investigator with the newly created Office of the State Public Defender. He joined Team Buggz with the idea that his work would be short term and not too interesting. Instead, he drove us, sat with us in interviews, asked questions, provided his expertise, and tracked down many witnesses for us. After his cancer diagnosis in October 2019, he retired and I felt his loss on many levels.
Ty Massey began as our investigator for Buggz and acted in that role for two years. He met Buggz, reviewed the evidence that we had discovered at that time, and added his own expertise to the investigation. He never doubted Buggz’s innocence. He also never trusted the cops because his years as a homicide investigator in the LA area gave him special insight into “The Brotherhood.” Nothing surprised Ty in any of Quatman & Quatman’s cases. He was an all star investigator and remains an all star dad and spouse in retirement.
Jessie McQuillan (now Schandelson) began as the executive director of the Montana Innocence Project before working as a private investigator at Mark Fullerton Investigations. A former journalist, Jessie brought keen insights to Team Buggz. She only stayed on for a short time due to her other cases and her own busy family life, but the help she brought to the team is immeasurable. She, too, met Buggz at the prison, as well as James Main, and both immediately trusted her – not an easy ‘get’ from the incarcerated.
