Oklahoma pair held in burial, reburial

HELENA – An Oklahoma couple has been arrested on suspicion of burying a young girl and then digging up her remains and moving the body from state to state for more than a year, authorities said Tuesday.

Abel Wolf, 35, and Denise Wolf, 40, were being held without bail in the Hill County jail in Havre, Mont., after being charged in Oklahoma with unlawful removal of a body, authorities said.

An autopsy will determine the cause of death and whether the remains are those of Abel Wolf’s 11-year-old daughter, Cheyenne, said Jessica Brown, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

Abel and Denise Wolf were arrested Thursday near Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation southwest of Havre.

Brown said relatives reported to Oklahoma police that Cheyenne Wolf was missing when her father and stepmother, Denise, moved to Montana and Oregon. Police discovered the remains in a storage unit in the Milton-Freewater area of Oregon.

A summary of an affidavit filed by an OSBI investigator indicated the family was upset with Cheyenne in April 2008 because she would not eat dinner one night. While Abel was outside smoking, he heard a thump, but Cheyenne seemed fine, the summary said. She was found dead the next day, according to the document.

“Abel Wolf put Cheyenne Wolf’s body in a sleeping bag and then put her body into a large plastic tub,” the summary said.

That tub was stored in a shed, buried under the deck and moved with the family in August 2008 to Havre, the document said.

When a sibling ran away in January, the couple worried began to worry that word would get out about Cheyenne, so they moved her remains to a chicken coop on property owned by inlaws in Oregon, the summary said.