Kalispel Tribe identifies suspect in moccasin theft, offers $25,000 reward

In the middle of the night four years ago, a man stole five baby moccasins and a leather glove from a display case at Northern Quest Resort & Casino in Airway Heights. The Kalispel Tribe and the family that owns the items want them back.

Annie Bluff, a Kalispel elder and matriarch, made the moccasins for her children in the 1940s. Her grandson, JR Bluff, said she often made things like that for people in the community.

“She was really a different generation, representing that way where they would make things,” Bluff said. “If someone was born, she would make them something.”

The gauntlet and one of the moccasin pairs are embroidered with colorful beads. They weren’t ceremonial objects, but practical gear for cold winters. She made the hide herself.

“She was a very simple woman,” said Bluff, who is the tribe’s director of language and culture. “Salish was her first language.”

The two pairs, along with an extra single moccasin and glove, were arranged in a shadow box shown in the Heritage Hall at Northern Quest. The corridor linking the hotel to the casino rotates items loaned from Kalispel members like the Bluffs to highlight the tribe’s culture.

At about 12:30 a.m. Oct. 30, 2020, the thief arrived at the casino parking garage as a passenger in a Nissan Titan pickup truck, according to a Kalispel police report of surveillance footage. Along with the driver, the thief walked through the Heritage Hall.

The thief stopped at the sliding glass display case and fumbled with the lock, the police report said. He then walked with the driver to the gaming floor. At about 3 a.m., the thief walked alone back to the case, slipped the lock and the display window to remove the shadow box containing the items. He hid the box under his coat and rode away with the driver.

Kalispel Tribal Police and the FBI have identified a suspect, but have been unable to locate him.

Kevin William Wissman, a 61-year-old white man, was indicted with a misdemeanor charge – theft from an Indian tribal organization – by a grand jury in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington in October 2023.

Wissman, whose last known residence was in the Yakima area, has a criminal history dating to 1989, including convictions of burglary, theft of a firearm, forgery, possession of stolen property and kidnapping.

“We would consider him armed and dangerous, due to his history,” Kalispel police Detective Dan Dice said.

In 1996, Spokane sheriff’s deputies identified Wissman as the driver of a stolen Toyota Corolla who led a high-speed chase through Spokane Valley, The Spokesman-Review reported at the time.

Kalispel police believe Wissman was most recently working in construction somewhere near the Washington coast and commuting back to Yakima.

Detectives located the owner of the truck in Ellensburg. He told them he doesn’t know Wissman well and that he believed Wissman might have discarded of the artifacts because they were hard to sell, Dice said.

Since the moccasins are less than 100 years old, they aren’t covered under the federal Archaeological Resources Protection Act for Native American artifacts. Because it is only a misdemeanor warrant, federal law enforcement hasn’t prioritized it.

Yet it remains a priority for the Kalispel Tribe of Indians, which is offering a $25,000 reward for information that leads to the safe return of the stolen shadowbox containing the moccasins, said Julie Holland, spokeswoman for the tribe and casino.

Anyone with information is urged to contact the Kalispel Tribal Police Department at (509) 481-4444 or the U.S. Marshals Service Communications Center at (800) 336-0102 or online at usmarshals.gov/tips.

Kalispel police hope that if they locate Wissman, they can learn what happened to the moccasins – whether he still has them, sold them, lent them to someone else to hold onto or threw them away.

Because the items are so specific, there would likely be questions about where they came from. That’s why Kalispel Police Chief Rodney Schurger thinks it might have been a targeted job.

“Maybe someone wanted them, hired him to come in and get them, but we can’t confirm that,” Schurger said.

Police scoured local pawn shops, but few deal in Native artifacts.

Bluff said there is a black market for Native American heirlooms like these. The shadow box is probably on someone’s wall or in their closet as a personal piece, he said.

But the moccasins seem like a strange choice, being relatively unremarkable.

“I don’t know who would steal this,” Bluff said. “To me, I would want to steal something that I knew the value of, that I knew I could flip.”

Perhaps the moccasins weren’t targeted specifically.

Maybe the thief just knew where he could sell items like it.

While the moccasins don’t have a large monetary value, they are priceless to the family for their link to the past.

“It’s not so much the item as the connection of the item to the person who made it,” Bluff said.

Moccasins like these weren’t meant for display, he said; they were meant to be used.

“I have grandkids right now that would wear those, for sure,” Bluff said.