Ashley Syrena Nagy, 29, was a White woman whose last night ended in the still, dark quiet of Thompson Park in Rapid City, South Dakota. On August 24, 2020, a nearby resident reported hearing several gunshots, and officers arrived to find a parked Chevrolet Tahoe with two people inside suffering gunshot wounds. Charles Red Willow was in the passenger seat with multiple wounds and appeared dead.
Ashley was in the driver's seat, still showing faint, involuntary “agonal” breathing after a catastrophic gunshot injury to her head, but medics said it was not compatible with life and she could not be saved.
At first, investigators had no obvious witnesses and no immediate suspect. They worked outward from the scene, gathering surveillance video from surrounding homes and businesses, and the grainy movement on those screens began to shape the case: a dark Chevrolet Malibu drove near the park, two men got out and headed toward the Tahoe, and then both ran back and fled in the same car. Detectives traced their search to a rental lot and learned that, on the morning of the shootings, a Malibu had been rented by Arnson Absolu. Video from the rental business matched him to the figure in white shoes, and a GPS tracker on the vehicle helped investigators follow the Malibu's movements as it left South Dakota and traveled back toward the East Coast in the days after the killings.
As detectives dug into why Ashley and Red Willow had been targeted, the investigation turned toward the local drug trade. Interview after interview painted a picture of Absolu arriving from New York to sell fentanyl-laced heroin in Rapid City through local dealers, and of Red Willow's growing reputation for unpaid debts. Investigators developed evidence that Red Willow owed Absolu a significant amount of money for drugs, and that threats had been made over that debt—motive, in the State's telling, for a planned killing rather than a random act. Cell-phone location evidence and the Malibu's tracked movements were later used to place Absolu in the area of Thompson Park around the time of the shooting.
The case widened from a double homicide into a triple murder investigation when attention turned to Dakota Zaiser, a man detectives believed matched another person seen in the park surveillance, and who had been released from the Pennington County Jail only hours before the shooting in a red shirt. Zaiser's mother reported him missing the next day when he stopped his usual daily contact. Investigators later learned of frantic late-night calls and requests for shovels, and a witness eventually admitted helping conceal a body. About a month after the Thompson Park killings, that witness led detectives to a shallow grave near Sheridan Lake, where Zaiser's remains were recovered. Text messages and a seized handgun, along with additional drug evidence, were among items authorities said were found as the case closed in around Absolu.
Police arrested Arnson Absolu on September 9, 2020, with assistance from the New York City Police Department, and he was transported back to South Dakota as the prosecution moved forward. A Pennington County grand jury later indicted him on three counts of first-degree murder, and he entered not-guilty pleas. Prosecutors initially treated the matter as a potential death-penalty case but ultimately chose not to seek execution, leaving life imprisonment as the top sentence if the charges were proven.
In January 2023, a jury convicted Absolu of three counts of first-degree murder. He later sought a new trial, arguing that information about a State witness had not been disclosed, but the South Dakota Supreme Court upheld the conviction and affirmed the denial of a new trial in an opinion issued October 30, 2024. According to later reporting, Absolu was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, along with substantial fines.
