South Dakota man's prison sentence comes 32 years after Lake Traverse killing
Witness account stokes 1992 cold case
A 58-year-old Sisseton man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and three years probation this week for killing a child more than three decades ago.
The office of United States Attorney Alison J. Ramsdell announced Tuesday that U.S. District Judge Charles B. Kornmann has sentenced Jay Adams for a conviction of voluntary manslaughter, stemming from the 1992 killing of an unidentified minor on the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation.
According to a news release recounting findings of years of investigation, Adams killed a young person by slamming the victim’s head on a hard concrete floor. Afterward, he placed her back on the bed and returned to his bedroom. The crime occurred in the early morning hours of Sept. 4, 1992, and was referred to by the U.S. Attorney’s Office as done “in the heat of passion.”
Adams did not seek medical attention for the victim and later the same day discovered she had died. Adams feigned ignorance as to the cause of the victim’s injury. An initial investigation failed to identify Adams as the assailant and the case remained unsolved until 2023.
That’s when a witness to the crime came forward and identified Adams as being responsible for the death of the victim in 1992. Law enforcement officers from the Sisseton-Wahpeton Tribal Police Department and the FBI continued the investigation. Prior to indictment in April of 2023, investigators conducted interviews of other individuals associated with Adams and consulted with a pathologist to review the 1992 autopsy performed on the victim. The medical evidence corroborated Adams’ eventual statement related to his guilty plea that he injured the child, which caused blunt force trauma and caused the child’s death.
“Tragically this matter took thirty years to resolve,” Ramsdell said in a statement. “But the resolution nonetheless demonstrates law enforcement’s relentless commitment to cracking these cases so that perpetrators can be held to account.”
Adams' sentencing took place Monday, being given 10 years in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised probation and a $50 assessment to the Federal Crime Victims Fund.
