2 dead in standoff

Two Reed Point residents were found dead on their property Feb. 27, nearly 10 hours after Sweet Grass County Sheriff’s deputies responded to an initial report of shots fired in the Stephens Hill area.
James “Jim” Dunakin, 59, was found in his home at 6:40 p.m. by the Gallatin County Special Response Team after a six-hour standoff with law enforcement.
Jim Dunakin’s wife, Margaret “Maggi” Dunakin, 58, was also found at the home and is believed to have died before her husband.
Initial incident
The Sweet Grass County Sheriff’s Office dispatch received a 911 call at 8:55 a.m. Feb. 27 from Barbara Terenzio reporting that the home she shared with her husband Ronald Terenzio on Dry Hole Trail Road was under gunfire.
According to dispatch logs, Terenzio said bullets were hitting the house and the propane tank was hissing. The Terenzios said they were concerned about dogs they had outside, but agreed to stay on the floor in the room they were in when they made the call.
At 9:36 a.m., the dispatcher indicated Lt. Ron Swanson was en route to get the Terenzios out the house, located approximately 36 miles away with a mapped drive time of 56 minutes. Swanson arrived at the residence at 9:57 a.m.
At 10:29 a.m., Franchesca Watson, of Texas, called the sheriff’s office to report a “frantic” message she received from Jim Dunakin on Facebook. Ten minutes later, the dispatcher advised a deputy on scene of reports indicating Maggi Dunakin had killed herself and “Mr. Jim Dunakin is going to shoot everyone he comes in contact with,” according to dispatch logs.
Sheriff Dan Tronrud ordered a deputy to “hook up” another neighbor, Bob Straight, and bring him to the sheriff’s office “for questioning and for safety.”
Around that same time, a Stillwater County Sheriff’s deputy called to report their dispatch center also received two calls concerning Jim Dunakin “who is going to kill all the cops he can and commit suicide by cop,” according to dispatch logs.
Standoff
Nearly an hour later, at 11:48 a.m., a Montana Highway Patrol trooper reported seeing a male wearing blue jeans and a green shirt walking to the Dunakin residence at 41 Skunkbelly Lane, located approximately a half-mile from the Terenzio home. The trooper said the male, later identified as Jim Dunakin, was screaming.
The dispatch transcription reads: “Looks like this might be a body up here// Say again// Hard to tell might be a body up here// ok…”
Two minutes later, Michelle Babcock, of Lawrence, Kan., called to report another Facebook post from Jim Dunakin indicating that Maggi Dunakin was dead and he was going to kill all the cats except one and then kill himself and all the cops he could.
“He can hear them coming over the hill and he is going to shoot them all,” the transcript reads.
At 12:05 p.m., the MHP trooper reported he had a visual on Jim Dunakin and said, “he is at the house, screaming nothing in his hands and he went back inside the house.”
Around the same time, Jim Dunakin published a Facebook post thanking those reading his previous messages for their kind comments.
“Thank you all! We ARE good people. That is what makes this so wrong,” he wrote. “I know nothing will ever be done, beyond what I do here today, to bring the REAL criminals to justice, but those of you who have the strength, please pesue (sic) it as far as the corrupt system will allow you to, if not further.”
Meanwhile, officers from Sweet Grass, Stillwater, Wheatland, Gallatin and Park counties, as well as MHP, were setting up an incident staging center. The Sweet Grass Ambulance Service was also on scene.
More than a dozen nearby residents were also evacuated from the area. All attempts made by law enforcment to communicate wtih Jim Dunakin were unsuccessful.

Cause of Death
Jim Dunakin died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and Maggi Dunakin died as result of two gunshot wounds to the head, one of which was self-inflicted, according to the sheriff’s office. Social media posts on Jim Dunakin’s Facebook page indicate that Maggi Dunakin attempted suicide and was shot a second time by her husband as a result of a suicide pact.
At 11:16 a.m. Feb. 27, Jim Dunakin wrote an impassioned post saying the pair only had control over how they would die and blaming law enforcement for pushing them to that point.
Jim Dunakin wrote he found his wife lying on the ground and barely moving and knew that she had attempted to take her own life. He wrote that he had to keep a promise he had made to her and make sure she was deceased. At noon, he published a post asking for prayer that God would give him the strength “to do what lies ahead.”
End of the incident
Dispatch logs indicate several calls from the Dunakins’ Facebook friends and family members as well as the media and other responding agencies between noon and 6:45 p.m. Nine hours and 54 minutes after the initial call, at 6:49 p.m., Undersheriff Alan Ronneberg advised dispatch that Jim Dunakin was deceased and everyone else on scene was OK. No shots were fired by law enforcement during the incident and no officers or bystanders were injured, according to the last press release.
The ambulance cleared the staging area at 7:01 p.m. MHP troopers and Sweet Grass County Sheriff reserve deputies stayed on scene throughout the night.
Sheriff Dan Tronrud referred all media questions to the Montana Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI).
DCI Investigations Bureau Chief John Strandell confirmed Feb. 29 that two agents were on scene conducting an independent investigation of the Feb. 27 incident at Tronrud’s request.
Strandell said he believed the agents would be on scene through the day March 1 collecting evidence. That evidence will then be sent to the Montana Crime Lab.

BTGS drug case
According to the final press release issued, Jim Dunakin was served a search warrant Feb. 25 by Montana Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) drug diversion agents. That warrant pertained to the drug investigation of a bluish-white, powdery substance found at Big Timber Grade School and Sweet Grass County High School in mid-September.
The substance was tested in a federal lab and determined to be a combination of prescription and non-prescription drugs.
According to a press release issued March 1 by the Sweet Grass County Sheriff’s Office, surveillance footage from Sept. 13, 2015, showed an individual matching Jim Dunakin’s description throw the then-unidentified packages on the BTGS steps at 10:06 p.m. Nine minutes later, SGHS surveillance showed a vehicle, later identified as Jim Dunakin’s, enter the parking lot and exit a short time later.
DCI agents sought Jim Dunakin’s fingerprints to determine whether his match those retrieved from the packages, according to the release.
“While the suspect’s motives were unclear, law enforcement has never investigated this incident as part of a larger-scale network of drug sales,” the release states.
According to a letter Jim Dunakin sent to friends at 10:02 a.m. Feb. 27 — the day of the incident — several officers served the warrant for Jim Dunakin’s fingerprints while the couple was dropping off trash at the Reed Point Transfer Station.
Jim Dunakin alleges that the warrant cited an Aug. 13 date of the incident, though it has been previously reported to have happened on Sept. 13.
“I asked Maggi if she was ready to leave, as we had previously discussed, and she replied that she was,” he wrote. “I asked again, just to be sure she understood exactly what I meant, and she nodded and said, yes.”
Jim Dunakin went on to express outrage at the drug allegation, again citing law enforcement corruption.
“I have no idea what the hell they are claiming I did, specifically, although they alluded to some ‘packets of a blue substance’ that was supposedly dropped at some school several months ago,” he wrote. “Anyone who knows me knows damn well that I have NEVER once in my life used any illegal drugs, and I sure as hell have never ‘distributed’ them! Clearly this is another, far worse set-up by these --------.”
The sheriff’s office clarified in their press release that they were not at the Dunakin residence Feb. 27 in response to the drug investigation. Tronrud said March 2 that this case will remain under investigation and Jim Dunakin’s fingerprints will be sent to a crime lab for analysis.