FARGO (KFGO) – Just over three years ago, Craig Melton’s roommate reported him missing from Fargo. Melton’s co-workers at Kroll’s Diner said they saw him with two men in the restaurant’s parking lot on September 17, 2020. Melton said the men were homeless and he was giving them a ride. A friend saw Melton later that night, armed with an ax and pocketknife for protection. Melton, who was known by friends to use methamphetamine, said he was headed to Belcourt on a drug run. That was the last any of Melton’s loved ones saw of him. He was just shy of his 35th birthday when he disappeared.
The Fargo Police Department (FPD) sent detectives to the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation to interview potential witnesses in Melton’s disappearance. Eventually, though, the FPD handed its missing person’s investigation over to the FBI. Since 2021, the FBI has characterized Melton as a murder victim in a reward offer of $5000 for information leading to “the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the murder of Craig Melton and/or the location of Craig’s remains.”
Now, newly unsealed federal court documents are painting a picture of the days following Melton’s departure from Fargo, and the months and years of investigation into the murky circumstances surrounding his disappearance and death.
Search warrant applications for various Facebook accounts, a DNA swab, and a property search include harrowing accounts from a number of witnesses who saw and interacted with Melton while he was in Rolette County.
Witnesses say Melton drove a man named Jonas St. Claire to a known meth dealer’s trailer in rural Rolette County a day or so after he left Fargo. The men bought and smoked meth with a number of people who were at the trailer, and then got into a dispute about money. The owner of the trailer told investigators that Melton and St. Claire were angry with one another and that he kicked them off the property.
The next day, according to witnesses, St. Claire returned to the trailer, asking the people on site if they had any bleach to clean his car and if they wanted to help him bury a body. Witnesses said they saw dried blood on St. Claire’s hands.
In February of 2021, St. Claire’s brother Darrell was interviewed by FBI agents. He told investigators that he saw Jonas at their parents’ home tearing the back seat out of a car that matched the description of Melton’s and burning it “a few days” after the events at the trailer. Darrell said Jonas admitted to murdering “some guy” and claimed he’d left the body somewhere on a back road from I-29 going north between Fargo and Grand Forks. Darrell told agents he believed the person Jonas was referencing was Melton.
Darrell told investigators that drug dealers known as the “I-29 Boys,” and who he described as “the Mexican Mafia…affiliated with the Sinaloa Cartel,” had been complaining they’d been losing out on “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in drug sales since Melton’s disappearance because the “feds were up in the area digging around.”
Darrell claimed “people wanting answers” threatened him in December 2020 by writing his name on a piece of tape and putting it on a dog, then tying the dog up and shooting it next to Darrell. He told investigators the people told him to find Jonas and bring him to Belcourt. He said they would do “far worse” to Jonas because of the trouble killing Melton had caused.
In January of 2021, investigators applied for and served a warrant authorizing the collection of a DNA swab from Jonas St. Claire, claiming it would yield evidence of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
No charges appear to have been filed against Jonas St. Claire in the case since, and his whereabouts and status are not clear. He was arrested for failing to appear as a witness in a 2017 case in Pierce County in May of 2022 and served 23 days in the Rugby jail. The Tribal Enrollment Office for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and St. Claire’s attorney in the Pierce Co. case both declined comment.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the case. A spokeswoman for the FBI said the investigation is still active and the reward flyer for Melton is up-to-date.
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