A convicted Montana killer with ties to the region was recently returned to custody after he escaped from the state hospital in Warm Springs.

According to the Anaconda Deer Lodge County 911 Dispatch Facebook page, Christopher Michael Kepler, 54, walked away from a group home at the Montana State Hospital on Sept. 28. Officials said not to engage, approach or attempt to detain the man.

In an updated post the evening of Sept. 29, officials said Kepler was found and returned to custody after area residents identified him. According to prison records, Kepler was taken to the Montana State Prison Oct. 2.

Kepler’s Montana history dates to 2013. The native Californian pleaded guilty, but mentally ill, to negligent homicide and criminal endangerment before being sentenced in 2022 in Powell County. Kepler, then a resident of Sandpoint, Idaho, killed a St. Ignatius woman in a wrong-way crash on Interstate 90 in January 2013.

According to prior reporting in the Bonner County Daily Bee, Kepler was ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation after he was initially charged with deliberate homicide.

Montana Highway Patrol said Kepler was traveling west in the eastbound lane of the interstate when he collided with a pickup truck pulling a horse trailer. Patricia Graves, a 57-year-old passenger in the pickup, was killed. Graves’ husband, Benjamin, survived the collision.

At the time, Powell County Attorney Lewis Smith told a Deer Lodge district judge that the couple bought property in Circle and were in the process of moving from the Ronan-St. Ignatius area when the crash happened.

Barely two months before the fatal crash in Montana, an Idaho State Police trooper encountered Kepler on U.S. Highway 95 in November 2012. Kepler told the trooper he had run out of gas and a Bonner County sheriff’s deputy discovered that Kepler appeared to be hallucinating. Several days after that encounter, Kepler was arrested for unlawful entry after he was discovered in a stranger’s home on Pine Street. Kepler told Sandpoint Police that he went into the home to escape the devil, according to the arrest report. He was later released.

The Montana Standard reported that Kepler consented to a blood test following the fatal crash, but said there was no indication in the record that he was drunk or had drugs in his system.

In a sentencing hearing in 2014 for the fatal crash, Graves, the husband of the woman Kepler killed in the 2013 crash, testified. 

“I’m just saying from what I’ve observed, I’ve observed at least five of these hearings and they’ve all failed,” Graves said. "He’s a danger. He’s a danger not only to himself, but to other people when he gets out on the street.”

In the court filing, Graves also told officers he tried to avoid Kepler’s vehicle, but Kepler kept swerving to mirror his evasive maneuvers. No evidence at the scene showed that Kepler slowed down or tried to avoid the collision. A subsequent blood draw revealed the presence of marijuana and methamphetamine.

Kepler received a 40-year term, with 30 years suspended, in 2014. 

But Kepler’s journey through the legal system was far from over following his commitment to Warm Springs. In addition, Montana Supreme Court filings revealed more details about the fatal crash as well as extremely questionable decision-making by state hospital officials.

Early in 2017, the state Department of Public Health and Human Safety Forensic Review Board said Kepler suffered from a mental defect but was no longer a danger as long as he continued treatment in a community setting.

The DPPHS director asked the district court to place Kepler on supervised release and allow him to live with his parents. The court approved it in March 2017, and he was released from the facility. Four years later, the state sought to revoke his suspended sentence after Kepler was admitted into a recovery facility in Peoria, Ariz., after a traffic incident involving a car driven by his mother.

Kepler’s probation officer noted in his revocation affidavit that Kepler had numerous substance abuse violations. The accused was arrested in July 2021 and returned to Montana five months later. In early 2022, Dr. Bowman Smelko evaluated Kepler. Dr. Smelko testified at Kepler’s revocation proceeding that Kepler was stable at the time of the hearing because he had been taking his medications for an extended period and wasn’t using unprescribed drugs or alcohol. Dr. Smelko indicated Kepler was a low risk to the community.

Probation Officer Sean Daly painted a very different picture. He testified that before absconding, Kepler had extensive violations including drug and alcohol use, an unverified report to law enforcement that Kepler made threats to a school in Big Sky, and that he was running various unapproved businesses. 

The district court concluded that Kepler posed a danger to himself or others and revoked his suspended sentences. Kepler appealed, but the Montana Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling in August 2024.