According to a number of published sources as well as my own research, Bernard Red Cherries/Robert Coltte is dead.
The Social Security Death Index (SSDI) listing:
| Name: | Robert Coltte |
| State of Issue: | Montana |
| Date of Birth: | Wednesday September 05, 1962 |
| Date of Death: | Saturday August 18, 2012 |
| Est. Age at Death: | 49 years, 11 months, 13 days |
| Confirmation: | Verified |
At least one published source lists August 16, 2012 as the date of death but I tend to believe the SSDI listing is probably more accurate. All listings seem to agree he died somewhere in North Carolina, possibly Winston-Salem or Mooresville.
Those are the bare facts. I’m not going to link to his obituary because it is full of misinformation and outright lies. Obituaries and memorial webpages are not factchecked. Even I can see much of the information in the obituary is false.
While I have very high confidence that Coltte/Red Cherries is indeed deceased considering the number of sources reporting it, I’m still looking for firsthand information or primary documents such as a death certificate. If anyone can provide these, please contact me at: cjames964@gmail.com. All emails and documents will be considered confidential unless you give me explicit permission to post or republish. I will also publish information without naming my source, if that is desired.
Lest my readers think I’m being overly cautious, I will just note that sometime after Red Cherries did prison time in Nebraska in 1987-88 and before the next arrest (that I know of) in 1997, he legally changed his name to Robert Coltte. I don’t have concrete proof but I suspect this was, at least in part, an attempt to hide his previous criminal record. Other court documents show he has used additional aliases that I had not previously listed and had petitioned the court to have those documents sealed. Some of the threats that Coltte directed at people were to keep all his aliases from being known. Given his history of deception and violence, I am unwilling to give a definitive and final opinion about his death until I see valid documentation.
In the last decade of his life, he was wanted on serious felony charges, yet during that time period he was repeatedly released from custody and even had parts of his criminal record suspiciously removed from legal databases. There are only a few situations where law enforcement is willing to do this sort of favor for violent felons. It’s unlikely that conclusive evidence will show up on this matter but COINTELPRO provides an instructive context, particularly the parts of the program which implement informants and agents provocateurs.
The Abuse Papers 
Two of Coltte’s / Red Cherries’ victims commented here https://abusepapers.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/part-7-comments-from-pudgy-indian-2-apologies/#comment-725
that they turned to the FBI for help. They were able to press charges and get warrants and restraining orders. Some of the agents were pleasant and seemed helpful, but despite being arrested and released over and over again, they never rendited Coltte to stand charges.
It wasn’t that he “got away,” it’s that he was on their team.
I don’t think all his victims know that the reason the only justice they found was his death was because Coltte was staying out of prison by spying on AIM meetings, and disrupting Native communities by raping and beating other activists. He was a classic Confidential Informant (CI) and provocateur, but he lost his value to the Feds because his reputation as a rapist and batterer was catching up with him, and because it looks like he was lying in his reports. In order to justify his continued use to them, he fabricated things on other activists. They came to see him as an unreliable informant and a liability, a loose cannon.
He sold out his own people and he paid the price for it.