Seana Fisher, a 54-year-old white woman, was killed on March 29, 2020, in the small Sheridan County community of Big Horn, where deputies were sent to a home on Willow Street after an alarming call came in that evening. Investigators said the message was blunt: a man had contacted a family member and claimed he had killed someone. When sheriff's deputies arrived, they stepped into a scene that quickly widened from a single act of violence into a triple homicide—one adult male and two adult
females found dead inside the residence.
Authorities soon identified the suspect as Dana Beartusk of Big Horn, a relative of the victims. Prosecutors filed three counts of first-degree murder, and the case began as an urgent, multi-agency investigation involving the Sheridan County Sheriff's Office, Wyoming's Division of Criminal Investigation, and the county coroner. While deputies worked the crime scene back in Wyoming, Beartusk had already fled north; he was apprehended in Montana later that night and held there as the warrant and charging process moved forward.
As the case developed, investigators and courts filled in the grim aftermath. Reporting from Sheridan Media said Beartusk called his brother immediately after the killings and confessed before driving away, stopping at convenience stores in Sheridan on his way out of town. Months later, three firearms linked to Beartusk—including what was described as the murder weapon, a. 40-caliber Glock pistol—were found alongside a roadway near Kirby, Montana, adding a concrete trail to what had already looked like a hurried escape.
The prosecution's initial first-degree murder charges did not remain the endpoint. In February 2021, Beartusk changed his plea, admitting guilt to three amended counts of second-degree murder. In court, he told the judge he was intoxicated when the killings happened and said he did not remember disposing of the guns in Montana. The guilty pleas narrowed the legal questions from whether he did it to how he should be punished for it, while the case record still pointed back to the same night in March when three family members were found dead in his home.
Sentencing came in April 2021 in Fourth Judicial District Court in Sheridan. After hours of testimony and emotional statements from relatives of the victims, Judge John Fenn imposed three consecutive sentences of 45 years to life in prison—functionally ensuring Beartusk would spend the rest of his life incarcerated. Accounts of the hearing described prosecutors arguing the killings showed planning, while the defense emphasized intoxication and a claimed lack of memory; the sentence, delivered at the end of that long day, made clear the court's conclusion that the damage done could not be undone.
