A dead teenager. A freed killer. A governor’s pen. These three things collided in the dirt outside Brookings, South Dakota, where the body of 14-year-old McKenna Wendel was dumped this spring. Now, her uncle, Mark Milk, is back in handcuffs, facing federal charges for her death just a year after former Governor Kristi Noem handed him a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Wendel vanished on March 13 from Sioux Falls. She was last seen alive the next morning. Five days later, her body was found an hour’s drive north. She was a Rosebud Sioux Tribe member, raised by her grandparents, a kid who loved the thrum of powwow drums and had a vibrant spark. That spark was snuffed out.
The feds are keeping the autopsy details under wraps. But the charges filed in Iowa tell a sickening story. Milk, 51, faces five counts, including trafficking cocaine that killed the girl and transporting a minor for sex. Another man, 38-year-old Jon Rogness, allegedly helped sweep up the mess, facing conspiracy and accessory charges.
Milk should have been behind bars. In 1993, at age 19, he stabbed Shawn Peneaux to death in Winner, South Dakota. He got life for manslaughter. He served nearly three decades until February 2023, when Noem commuted his sentence. Why? Nobody knows. The paperwork is sealed. South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley washed his hands of it, noting dryly that cops usually hate commutations and that this was entirely Noem’s call.
When Wendel’s body was found, Milk was already sitting in a jail cell on unrelated DUI and police-eluding charges. His name was whispered immediately, but it took prosecutors until late May to nail down the evidence. Meanwhile, Noem has moved on. Fired from her gig as Trump’s Homeland Security secretary in March, she is now a ‘special envoy’ for a new Western Hemisphere group and advises a Canadian mining firm. She did not return calls for comment.
No lawyers are listed for the accused. No family members are talking. Just another tragedy in the heartland, wrapped in political grease and sealed court files.
