It was around 7:30 in the morning of April 2016 when Devon Bateman was woken up and told to call the police station in New Town, North Dakota. Devon was in her Bismarck home when her brother, Danny Bateman, came home, asked about their sister Latasha and told her to call the New Town police, but she wasn’t sure what she was calling for.
Latasha was 22-years-old and a mother of two children, Taraya and Zayden McLeod. She worked as a certified nursing assistant after she completed her schooling in North Dakota. She lived in New Town for some time but the night before Devon and Danny called the police, Latasha asked Devon to pick her up to take her back home in Bismarck. She asked to be picked up several times from where she was staying with her boyfriend, Ediburt Good Bird.
“She called me and she said Devon can you come and get me? I’m in Mandaree. And I said okay, and I went to go pick her up. But she kept telling me please don’t knock on the door, I’ll come out,” Devon recalled picking her up multiple times from Mandaree, a town close New Town.
Latasha was in that relationship for a little over a year and a half, her sister said, and she noticed things that were concerning in her relationship. Latasha would tell her how Ediburt allegedly treated her and that he was controlling of her. Latasha never talked about her relationship with anyone, but Devon soon realized that it was turning into an abusive relationship. Multiple times Devon told her to get out of the relationship, but Latasha didn’t see a way out.
“A lot of the times, the women that this happens to cry out for help in some type of way. And they’re mislead, the signs go unnoticed. I saw the signs, I really did,” Devon said.
When Devon called the police station that day in April, she was asked to identify her sister’s name and how she looked before relaying any information. The police officer on the other line asked her if she was sitting down and told her that her sister had been killed.
“I was the one who buried her and I just want to know what happened,” Devon said.
Ediburt was never charged with the murder of Latasha. When police arrived on the scene, there was no evidence to prove that he killed her, according to Devon. Latasha’s body was found tucked in the cellar crawl space with her clothes changed, according to her, but there was no evidence to prove he murdered her and instead was charged with possession of a fire arm.
No investigator on Latasha’s case was available for comment despite repeated call seeking comment.
“There was a lot of evidence there. A lot of people that had something to do with this weren’t arrested, they weren’t even charged with it, they weren’t even looked at. How come the evidence was washed up? How come there was bleach all over? Why was there such a pungent smell of bleach in their house? Why was the mattress taken out? Why was everything cleaned up? Why was my sister in the crawl space in the cellar?” Devon said.
Julie McLeod is mother-in-law to Latasha and knew her the last five years of her life when she was still with her son and the father of her two kids, Kelly Allery. Julie said her life changed forever when she received the phone call from Jorge Mendoza, Latasha’s dad, when he told the news.
“I’ve been through a lot in my life, but I can’t get over this one,” McLeod said.
Latasha started seeing Ediburt when Kelly went back to prison for conspiracy to commit theft of propery, according to online court documents, but still kept a good relationship with her mother-in-law. Julie said she noticed the signs of trauma in her relationship because she lived through the same thing she did.
“She would come to my house and go hide. She wouldn’t tell me anything and she’d say ‘if anyone comes here, I’m not here’ and I said okay. One time she had a black eye. I went through that my whole entire life and I came to find how she would act when he was around,” Julie recalled.
Kelly was granted custody of the kids when Latasha was killed, but since he is prison, Julie and Jorge are caring for the kids. Julie says it is hard for all of them without Latasha, but the kids will have her until she is no longer here.
“He doesn’t realize what he did to the kids and to all our lives. My kids have to grow up without a mom and a dad,” Julie said in tears.
Latasha’s absence has marked their family, and no one will ever be the same now that she is gone, but her death has taught them to more resilient now. For Devon, she wants to change the way we look at domestic violence and how we can fix this problem that affects so many lives of women.
“A lot of what we need to do now is educate our women, even men, on the signs of abuse. It’s not just physical abuse, it’s emotional abuse, it’s mental abuse. And that’s where the cycle starts, from being abused to the point where our mental issues go unnoticed,” Devon said.