Family of women killed in Martin City frustrated by pace of county prosecutors

It has been almost eight months since Kimberly Gilham’s accused killer, ex-husband Kenneth James Floyd, allegedly ran her over with his pickup truck and drove off into the night in Martin City. He was released on his own recognizance in December 2023.

Whisper Sellars’ accused murderer, Del Crawford, arrested in August 2022 for allegedly killing her and injuring her husband at the South Fork Saloon in Martin City, posted the $750,000 bond and was released from the Flathead County Detention Center that October. 

At the center of these violent events are the victims, a family now missing two of its mothers. 

Whisper Sellars left behind five children, Aiden (12), Carter (9), Olivia and Owen (6) and Calvin (4). Her husband, Doug Crosswhite, who she met when she was 14, now raises them on his own. 

Kimberly Gilham left behind children Andrea (14), Darren (10) and Isabella (3). Connecting these two women is Kimberly 

Gilham’s husband, Chris Gilham, is also Whisper Sellars’s older brother. 

The night Whisper died, Chris remembered going out to smoke and seeing the blue and red flashing lights of first responders at the South Fork Saloon kitty-corner to his house. He didn’t think much of it and went back inside to Kimberly. Then they heard a helicopter landing in the Martin City ballpark.

“Somebody must have gotten hurt real bad,” Kimberly commented. 

“Well let’s just hope whoever it is, they get to the hospital and get help,” Chris replied. At the time, he didn’t know they were air lifting his brother-in-law, Doug, who Crawford had allegedly shot in the shoulder and chest during an altercation about a golf cart. 

Chris opened his door to a knock from law enforcement.

“They were just blunt about it, like you see in the movies and stuff,” Chris remembered. “‘Your sister was shot and killed and Doug was shot also.’”

Not quite a year since Whisper’s death, on Father’s Day, Chris said he returned home from a closing shift to find Floyd parked on his property, talking to Kimberly in his truck. 

“Kim had an alcohol problem, and Ken was always fighting with his wife,” Chris recalled. “She had kicked him out or something, and he would give Kim alcohol a lot because… I knew she had alcohol problems, so I wouldn’t just leave her money... That’s what they were doing that night, I guess.”

Chris walked up to the truck and knocked on the window, asked, “What the f—?” 

“[Kimberly] had already gotten out and was walking around the truck, and [Floyd] looked at me… looked forward… and went,” Chris said. He mimicked the sound of the truck blowing over Kimberly’s body — one heavy thunk for each set of tires. “Then just drove away.”

The screaming that ensued, calling for help, telling Kimberly she would be OK, to just hold still — Chris alleges that was the yelling reported as an argument by police. A single responder’s truck arrived on the scene first. 

“That fire truck guy was asking me, ‘What happened? What happened?’ They just kept pulling on my arm, and I looked up and it was Doug. I don’t know how he got there that fast. There’s one fire truck and one fire guy… and Doug,” Chris said.

“They took me in the ambulance. [Kimberly] didn’t look like she was there. She was kind of moving, I figured because she was in the ambulance, she was going to be OK, it’s just her legs.”

Kimberly died in the hospital due to internal injuries. Chris went home alone to the kids. Father’s Day, he said, will never be the same. Andrea, the oldest, who had been in and out of the house as Kimberly and Floyd talked, quickly became angry when he told her what had happened. 

“The first words out of her mouth were, “Mom was just trying to help him get back into his house and he had to kill her?’” Chris remembered. It was a couple of days before Chris told Darren. He told him simply that there had been an accident, not that his father, Floyd, had been involved. 

“I just kept telling him it was an accident. Even though in my mind, I don’t think it was,” Chris said. 

Their family is split now. Andrea and Darren live with Kimberly’s sister, Nicole Stamp. Isabella lives with Chris, who is working 55-60 hours a week as a general manager at Domino’s. Doug raises his five children, unable to work full-time due to lasting injuries from being shot. 

“I always looked up to Doug, because Doug never accepted any handouts or help or anything. He was a guy that made his own way. If he couldn’t have it, he didn’t need it or he’d work to get it. I was just so proud of my sister for having a man like that,” Chris said, spinning his wedding ring on his finger as he spoke. “Then I found Kim, and I became that kind of man for Kim.”

Chris still lives in Martin City, both his wife and sister lost their lives within half a block of his house. It was the house he and Kimberly bought together. 

“I try to avoid Columbia Falls now. Because I see [Floyd], and every time I see him I see the back of his truck,” Chris said. 

“There’s all kinds of stupid, violent stuff that happens around here now. There’s so many victims that are just expected to go on. The majority of them don’t. They slowly fall apart.”

Floyd has drunk driving convictions in 2008 and 2017, as well as past charges of partner or family member assault and two orders of protection against him. He was charged with negligent homicide for Kimberly’s death, with a penalty of up to 20 years in prison and a $50,000 fine. Bail was originally set at $100,000; during his second attempt at a lower bond, Flathead Disctrict Court Judge Dan Wilson released him on his own recognizance with the conditions that he submit to GPS tracking and abstain from alcohol as well as bars, taverns and casinos. He is also restricted from possessing firearms.

“When I met [Kimberly], she had a black eye from Ken. A couple weeks later she came back over and she had scratches. Apparently Ken had held a knife to her neck and held her down,” Chris alleged. 

During Floyd’s Nov. 2 arraignment, Kimberly’s sister, Stamp, attested, “It’s unfortunate that it took my sister dying for Kenny to be charged for hurting a woman. He is not a good person, judge … He needs to stay incarcerated.”

“I don’t know how he’s free,” Chris said. “Pretty much everybody that kills somebody, they don’t get out on their own recognizance until trial. Most people have to pay a bail when they kill someone.”

It will be two years in August since Crawford killed Whisper and shot Doug. He was charged with deliberate homicide, attempted deliberate homicide and tampering charges with a $750,000 bond. Attempted deliberate homicide is punishable by between 10 and 100 years imprisonment; prosecutors can seek additional time owing to the use of a gun.

The tampering charge, which stems from his alleged hiding of the firearm, carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in state prison and a fine of $50,000. Crawford was also released with GPS monitoring. Both cases are in Judge Wilson’s court. 

“It just felt like nothing was happening,” Chris said. 

Flathead County Attorney’s Office recently received approval to draw on the State Department of Justice for help prosecuting Floyd, Crawford and Kaleb Fleck — charged with deliberate homicide for the May 2023 death of Scott E. Bryan, a homeless man. Fleck was released on a $500,000 property bond in July 2023. 

In an interview with the Daily Inter Lake, County Attorney Travis Ahner cited a staffing shortage for the arrangement, with four attorney positions, soon to be five, open in the county office. 

“We’re down to less than 50% of our felony attorneys and struggling to retain people,” Ahner said. “There’s a lot of stresses, obviously, with this job but some are unique to the Flathead.” Scheduling practices in the county courthouse, as well as lower pay than other municipalities and the private sector were noted. 

Chris said current prosecutors — Thorin Geist for defendant Crawford and Dan Guyzinski for defendant Floyd — estimated about year or so before the case could get to the sentencing phase if convicted. He pointed to the facts of the cases — Crawford, a white man with more financial resources who killed a Native woman, and Floyd, a Native man who killed the wife of a Native man and a Native descendant — as part of the reason the two cases, nearly a year apart, could possibly see sentencing around the same time. 

“I guess it’s good that I know that could happen… Doug hopes that Del goes to jail before Ken. He said, ‘If he doesn’t, that’s just not right.’ I said, ‘I know it’s not right. There’s one way they do things for lower income people and one way they do things for people with higher income.’ When it’s the law, it should be the same for both,” he said. Chris expects more with the new prosecutors. He saw the threat of a lighter sentence for Crawford with county prosecutors. Now, he said there is hope Crawford will get that 100 years if convicted.

The families hope for closure. 

“I know where they’re going. I’ve been where they’re going,” said Chris, who was incarcerated for most of his 20s. “You know, I never thought that I would wish that on someone, even my worst enemy, I would never wish them to go to prison. But these guys, it’s what they deserve.”

“I just want… I don’t know what I want. I had what I wanted.”

    Whisper Sellars and family; left to right, Olivia, Whisper, Calvin, Doug Crosswhite, Owen, Carter and Aiden. (Photo provided)
  

    Kimberly and Chris Gilham (Photo provided)