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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Mom receives diploma belonging to slain girl

Associated Press

PABLO, Mont. – The high school diploma for a young woman murdered early this year went to her mother in a ceremony at Two Eagle River School.

“All she wanted to do was graduate from high school,” Carolyn Malatare Mad Plume said of her daughter, Catherine Mad Plume, 20 when she was shot and killed in February. “Her dream was walking down the aisle and getting her diploma.”

Her mother accepted the diploma Sunday from Clarice King, the school superintendent, and later hugged some of the 18 members of the graduating class.

Three men remain in custody in the deaths of Catherine Mad Plume and Gerald Sirucek, a 20-year-old student at Salish Kootenai College in Pablo. Their bodies were found in a home between Ronan and St. Ignatius on the Flathead Indian Reservation.

The accused men are awaiting trial on charges of murder and murder accountability.

Investigators said it appeared the two victims were shot as part of a plan to steal student-loan money one of them had just received.

Mad Plume, who has five surviving children, said her daughter would have been her first child to graduate from high school.

Catherine planned to study nursing at Salish Kootenai College, said her mother, who lives in Heart Butte.