Sixteen months ago—Sunday, Sept. 25, 2022—was the first day of the only homicide investigation led that year by the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office. Little has been said about the murder of Delphine Farmer since.
A press release did go out that week. It let people know a reported assault in Clinton was being investigated as a homicide and that there were no threats to others near where it happened, which was inside Farmer’s house, a little over a mile up Donovan Creek Road. That’s about 20 miles from downtown Missoula, past the signs warning people that only residents should keep going up.
In October 2023, another press release stated there were “no new leads” in the case, more than a year after Farmer’s death.
A death certificate puts her death at around noon on Sept. 25, 2022, and its cause as multiple blunt force injuries. In another box on the form, it states, “decedent bludgeoned multiple times with an elk antler.”
Search warrants, publicly filed, help fill in the narrative. Two deputies arrived around 12:30 p.m., after a 911 call where the man on the line said his sister had beaten their mother, badly, and she was unconscious. The deputies walked in to find an elderly woman on the floor, blood pooling around her head. They tried to revive her using CPR and a defibrillator and then called for medical backup. She was pronounced dead while the deputies talked to Farmer’s son and located his sister.
Farmer’s son told them his sister had gone to their brother’s house nearby. Google maps show his house sits behind their mom’s place, on the other side of Donovan Creek. When deputies went there, they learned Farmer’s daughter communicates with some American Sign Language and, mostly, in writing. They asked someone else for an overshirt she’d taken off in her brother’s house. It appeared to have blood on it. “It was also reported to deputies that [she] had a small cut on her forehead,” according to law enforcement documents filed in the case.
The Pulp is not naming the two siblings, who are named in the warrants, because they haven’t been charged. The sheriff’s office identified Farmer and gave her age.
Documents say Farmer’s son told deputies his sister “had beaten their mother with an antler.” A deputy “noticed an antler at the residence.” A search warrant for Farmer’s house lists a cribbage board punched into an antler, found in the kitchen sink.
Before leaving Clinton, a deputy “got the consent from the people at [the brother’s] residence to retrieve the bloody garment.”
A detective filed the search warrant for the house that day, digitally signed by Judge Jason Marks. Two more warrants followed that week. One requested DNA and other clothing from Farmer’s daughter, including what was removed during an exam in St. Patrick Hospital.
The other warrant came after detectives questioned Farmer’s son, the one who’d called 911, at the sheriff’s office the day his mother died. It states they noticed what looked like blood on his wheelchair and “a significant amount of red liquid consistent with blood on [his] clothing.” They also noticed it on his shoes, according to the warrant filed on Sept. 27, 2022, two days after the murder.
What happened after the interview with Farmer’s son is alleged in a request for a protective order against him, also a public document.
That request came from a different sister, who alleged an incident in a courthouse parking lot after her brother left the sheriff’s office. She wrote in a request filed that same week: “We had picked him up. My mom was murdered. He was one of the suspects and my sister. … He was very verbally abusive and relentlessly ranting. He is saying my sister did this. He claims he couldn’t get to them to stop them. But my sister tells a different story.”
The request for a protective order for both sisters was granted after a hearing; the brother named in the order did not attend.
Farmer, who was 88 when she died, had six children, according to a list of heirs of her estate and other documents. Two sons preceded her in death, as did her husband, who died in 2014 at the age of 77, according to his published obituary. He was not the father of Farmer’s six children, and had adult kids, also. His obit states, “He fell in love with the love of his life, Delphine, the moment he first met her.”
Delphine Farmer’s family did not publish an obit about her life and little is known about her. The death certificate lists her place of birth as Ogema, Minnesota, which is inside the White Earth Nation, land reserved for the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. The son who lives behind her house did not answer a mailed letter requesting an interview. A voicemail left at a phone number belonging to his wife was not returned. The two sisters’ addresses in documents were the same as their mother’s. Phone numbers listed through whitepages.com were incorrect or non-working.
Zillow.com indicates the house where the sisters lived with their mother, in the 5600 block of Donovan Creek Road, sold in December. The listing shows a two-car garage attached to a two-bed/two-bath house on nearly 12 acres “with the soothing presence of Donovan Creek gently flowing through the land.”
Photos from inside show a house cleared of furnishings, save for a piano in the corner of the main room. That’s the room where warrants indicate Farmer died.
The warrant requesting blood samples lists swabs taken from the floor of the main room, described as “hallway, dining room, front door area,” as well as the kitchen counter and a bathroom, among other places. The inventory also lists an “antler cribbage board from the kitchen sink” and two cribbage pegs, “1 black-1 blue.”
Officers took two washcloths, including one found in the sink with the cribbage board, “wet,” and another found under Farmer’s head, where they also found gauze. They took a Verizon flip phone, a trash bag and a written note from a basement bedroom (it does not include who wrote it or what it said).
The inventory from the warrant issued to search Farmer’s son’s wheelchair after his interview with detectives included seven photos “documenting the application of Blu Star.” That likely refers to cleaning agents made by Texas-based Blue Star, makers of “powerful cleaning gels,” according to its website.
The Pulp talked on the phone with and emailed general and specific questions to the lead detective on this case, Kelan Larson. He answered the email more than a week later by directing further questions to Public Information Officer Jeannette Smith.
Smith said there would be a meeting this week with county attorneys to decide what could be released about the Clinton homicide, but did not offer further comments. She wrote, “Please note that we have not stated, ‘no comment.’ Because this is an active and ongoing investigation there are specifics to the case that, if published, could jeopardize the investigation and any possible charges that may be brought in the future. Thus, our meeting on Thursday with the County Attorney’s office [is] to consider the questions you have posed and determine information that may be available to answer those questions.”
Smith also emailed statistics about homicide investigations. The sheriff’s office led one in 2022, confirmed as the death of Delphine Farmer, and one in 2023. The identity of the 2023 victim was not disclosed.
