---

On June 7, 2019, my son Josiah Hilderbrand was murdered when he and Jon Cleary, the driver of the vehicle he was traveling in, stopped to help two men stranded on the side of Hwy 97, south of Toppenish, WA. Both were shot in the head, their bodies dumped and their car stolen, only to be driven 20 miles and then abandoned after attempting to light it on fire in an effort to destroy evidence. Fourteen hours later, five more people were murdered in a brutal massacre in White Swan, WA. Although there is evidence linking both killings including matching bullet casings, to this day no charges have been filed in relationship to my son’s murder.

In early 2022, James and Donovan Cloud were to be tried separately for the White Swan Murders. On March 9, 2022, James Cloud was found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder as well as other charges that included carjacking and kidnapping.

After James’ guilty verdict was given, Donovan Cloud accepted a plea agreement that included never being charged for my son’s murder in exchange for his pleading guilty to multiple lesser charges. Whether or not James Cloud will ever be charged remains to be seen.

They will both be sentenced on October 12, 2022, for the crimes committed in White Swan. I have been allowed to submit a Victims Impact Statement to be provided to the judge and both defendants, but will not be allowed to read it in court like other victims’ families.

I am sharing my Victims Impact Statement here so that it can be heard, allowing my son’s story and my voice to have a place in the court of public opinion.

Lastly, my Victims Impact Statement was addressed to Judge Mendoza who tried the case, but will not hand down the sentence as he was appointed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after the trial and subsequently replaced by Judge Bastian.

---

June 17, 2022

Dear Judge Mendoza,

I have said many times throughout this process that what happened to my son, Josiah, deserves to be discussed in a court of law, but thus far I have had to settle for him being referred to by his initials in plea agreements and pretrial hearings. I have pictured myself getting our day in court by being able to read my Victim’s Impact Statement aloud to you, counsel and James and Donovan Cloud. However, I discovered this week that that would not take place either. It’s been a lot to swallow. The powerlessness over what happened on June 7th, 2019, and what has subsequently taken place since has been at times, debilitating and at others, invigorating, awakening the place within me that can never be separated from my child and the love that we shared. 

Josiah was my only child. Throughout our lives, it was just the two of us. I was a single mom and he was my inspiration, so much so that I was terrified of losing him. I would sometimes say to him, “Just don’t die on me, Josiah.” He would chuckle in response and say, “I won’t die on you, Mom.” I must’ve somehow known how difficult, if not near impossible, it would be to continue on without him.

Josiah was the biggest hearted person I’ve ever met. Incredibly loving, considerate and also, forgiving. He didn’t like to carry anger towards people. He often questioned me when I did. The position I find myself in now, how to continue on in life without being swallowed up by the despair of losing my son to a brutal and senseless murder, is the greatest challenge I will ever face in my life. In knowing that, there is some freedom. I feel confident that the worst thing that will ever happen to me already has. There is no reason to be afraid anymore.

As to how this has affected me in the past three years, I must speak to some of the details of my son’s case. Josiah was on his way to a concert at the Gorge Amphitheater with a friend of his when they saw two people stranded on the side of the road. Stopping to help them would be the end of their lives, their bodies dumped like garbage on the side of the highway for 14 months before their remains were eventually found. The levels of terror, despair and helplessness that I experienced during that time defies words, so I have a hard time expressing to you what that has done to me on a mental and emotional level. I like to use the example of losing one’s keys. We all know that feeling. At first it’s the question, “Where are they?” We begin to look in all of the normal places and then, after exhausting those, we start to panic, looking in places that defy logic, desperately trying to locate an inanimate object that belong to something so easily replaced. It’s kind of ridiculous when you think of it. Now, imagine that what you are looking for is your child or someone you love dearly, that you don’t know where they are or if you will ever see them again. Imagine where a situation like that might take you. 

During those 14 months, I experienced absolute terror, images of my son bloated in the summer sun, flies and maggots on his body, or submerged in a body of water, never to be seen again. I spent countless hours tirelessly searching for him by reaching out on social media, fielding messages and calls about bodies being found in freezers, hop fields and so on. Taking calls on the way to childrens’ birthday parties asking if my son had any metal in his back because remains had been found with surgical pins present. That was my life then, and then, eventually he was found.

I traveled to where he had lain for those 14 months. I felt the crusted ground, hardened with the remnants of his decomposing body. I could smell him there, not the smell I used to drink in when I kissed his soft cheeks, but the smell of what became of him after he was left there. This past September, I returned for the third time, but this time because his remains were finally being released to me. I brought my boyfriend with me. I told him to smell the ground because 27 months later, you could still smell him there. My boyfriend wasn’t sure what to believe, but when we arrived at the mortuary and they unzipped the bag containing his bones, his skull with a bullet hole through it and small paper bags containing brain matter and teeth, the smell rushed out and he then turned to me and said, “You were right.” 

These are just some of the things I still carry with me. These are the thoughts that fill my mind as I move through my life, when I sit at my desk and try to concentrate on my work, when I try to enjoy family functions with loved ones and their still living children. My life is forever changed and will never be the same. I will never share a moment, a conversation or a special day with my child ever again. I have been given a death sentence. I have been sentenced to living a life which has been enveloped by the murder of my child. I will  never see my child find true love, get married or have the children he eagerly looked forward to having. I will never have grandchildren or great grandchildren. All of that is over for me now. He will never finish fire academy and get to realize his dream of being a firefighter so that he could do “the best thing he could ever do which is help people”. 

During the first year of Josiah’s absence, I had to seek out a trauma therapist and was diagnosed with PTSD after falling into a mental crisis so deep that suicide seemed my only way out. I had been in grief counseling since the beginning but it just wasn’t enough. I am still in trauma therapy to this day. I had to close a successful business after taking what I thought would be a 3 month hiatus, but was unable to return to work. I was then out of work for two full years. I am now employed part time because that is all I am able to handle. I hope this improves over time because at present, I am living on less money than I have in the last 25 years.

I suffer flashbacks. I have panic attacks. I still wake up from nightmares. I get triggered when I see vultures on the side of the road. I have developed an over active shudder response which means that I jerk and shudder, sometimes gasp for air or make noises as my body tightens in fright to thoughts that pass through my mind. As you can imagine, it makes for awkward social interactions and is distressing to those close to me. It has presented hardships in my relationships because no matter how loving or understanding someone is, being in the presence of such complex pain is difficult for people with even the best of intentions.

In mid-May, my mother died. I spent the previous six weeks with her in the hospital writhing in unimaginable pain which ended in me hospicing her in her home. I had to sit with my mother on her death bed as she cried about losing Josiah and how she just couldn’t get over it. She cried about how her illness had prevented her from traveling to his memorial and the guilt she felt over it. I was tasked at comforting my mother in her final hours over the horrific nature of my son’s death and explain to her that it wasn’t her fault. When she finally died, I couldn’t help but be comforted by the fact that I was with her when she died, she didn’t die alone like my child did.

My father, who just turned 80, has been drug through this whole experience as well. It has not been easy on him either. He withdrew Josiah’s college fund and put it towards the reward we offered to find him. He had to take the hope he had invested in Josiah’s future and use it towards hope of finding his remains. I remember having a conversation with him about the PTSD I was experiencing from the trauma of the onslaught of information regarding my son’s case where he told me that it was similar to what he experienced in Vietnam. He then spent the better part of two years calling me twice a day, every morning and every night, in fear that he might lose me too.

It has also caused great strain on my relationship with my siblings. My sister traveled with me to Yakima when Josiah was first found and went to the site where his skeleton was discovered. She is forever changed. My brother has experienced so much anger about what happened that he and I rarely speak. Homicide affects victims in ways that time, space, and even the best of therapy just can’t fix.

But in my mind, maybe worst of all, here I am reducing the 25 years that I spent with my son on this earth talking about the horrific nature of his death. I acknowledge more days throughout the year that have to do with his murder than have to do with his life. It’s an unspeakable travesty. And those 25 years that Josiah Michael Hilderbrand spent on this earth have been reduced to initials in a plea agreement. His name is not spoken. What happened to him is not talked about. It takes my breath away when I think about it for too long. 

What I am asking you, the court to do, is to prevent this from ever happening again, at least by these hands. I remember looking at James and Donovan’s mugshots shortly after Josiah went missing and thinking to myself, “What happened to them? What happened that could allow a person to be so cruel?” I imagine the simplest answer is cruelty. Somewhere along the way, something went terribly wrong and the lack of compassion that was modeled for them was then shared with their community at large. In that, I am asking for compassion for the public that the judicial system is tasked to protect. I hope that some modicum of peace can come to the families and community affected in knowing that people who caused so much harm cannot cause harm anymore. 

Donovan was able to use my son’s death to his benefit, as a caveat to a plea agreement which in my mind turns my son into a pawn in a highly calculated chess move. Whether or not James will be charged remains to be seen, but even more distressing is that he should not have been on the streets to begin with. After being granted an early release in 2016, James had multiple supervised release violations including resisting arrest, carrying a concealed weapon, obstruction of justice, and a high speed police chase among others. Why these probation violations were then signed off on by Judge Malouf Peterson is beyond me. I think in this case specifically, the courts have failed to protect the public. Had his probation been revoked, James would not have been free when these crimes took place. I hope that James’ history is taken into consideration when he is sentenced. 

Please remember that no time limit can be set on what happened to Josiah. What happened to him will never change. What happened to me will never change. I will live the rest of my life without my child with no time off for time served. I will spend the rest of my life childless, dealing with the after affects of the trauma incurred. 

Thank you for your time and consideration to me, my child and my family. 

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Hilderbrand

---