BILLINGS, Mont. \u2014 A former federal law enforcement officer pleaded guilty Thursday to sexual abuse after prosecutors said he raped an intoxicated 14-year-old girl on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation and tried to cover it up.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said defendant Murrell Deela, who was then an officer with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, encountered the girl at a gas station on the reservation in southern Montana in August 2024.<\/p>\n
When the girl tried to run, Deela performed a \u201ctakedown maneuver\u201d on her, put her in the back of his patrol car and drove to an unlit park where he sexually assaulted her, according to court documents.<\/p>\n
Deela later took the girl to her grandmother’s house. The girl reported the assault the next day, the documents said.<\/p>\n
After Deela was asked by investigators to download video footage from his patrol car from the night of the assault, he reported that his patrol car had burned in a fire, the documents said.<\/p>\n
Investigators determined the fire had been intentionally lit, and Deela’s fingerprints were the only ones found on the vehicle, the documents said.<\/p>\n
The Bureau of Indian Affairs conducts law enforcement on Native American reservations across the U.S.<\/p>\n
FBI Special Agent in Charge Justin Gerken said in a statement that the outcome of the case reflected the victim’s courage in coming forward. Gerken described Durrell’s actions as \u201ca betrayal of everything law enforcement stands for.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sexual abuse charge carries a maximum punishment of life in prison and a $250,000 fine. He also pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, which carries a maximum of eight years in prison.<\/p>\n
However, Deela could serve a shorter sentence under a plea deal with prosecutors.<\/p>\n
A sentencing date before U.S. District Judge Bill Mercer was not immediately scheduled.<\/p>\n
The Associated Press left a telephone message with Deela’s attorneys seeking comment.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BILLINGS, Mont. \u2014 A former federal law enforcement officer pleaded guilty Thursday to sexual abuse after prosecutors said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[98884,1107,1108,477,4100,98885,116,118,117,1598,1105,1431,12497,1311,4940,1110],"class_list":{"0":"post-217256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-bia-officer-rape-guilty-plea","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-criminal-punishment","11":"tag-general-news","12":"tag-indictments","13":"tag-indigenous-people","14":"tag-jacksonville","15":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","16":"tag-jacksonville-news","17":"tag-law-enforcement","18":"tag-legal-proceedings","19":"tag-race-and-ethnicity","20":"tag-sexual-abuse","21":"tag-sexual-assault","22":"tag-teens","23":"tag-u-s-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}