Bill Janklow

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William John Janklow (September 13, 1939 – January 12, 2012) was an American lawyer and politician and member of the Republican Party. He holds the record for the longest tenure as the governor of South Dakota: sixteen years in office. Janklow had the third-longest gubernatorial tenure in post-Constitutional U.S. history at 5,851 days. He also served in the United States House of Representatives from 2003 until he resigned in 2004 following a conviction for manslaughter for a 2003 automobile crash. Janklow's career was tainted, but not significantly impeded, in 1974 by accusations of raping 15-year-old Native American Jancita Eagle Deer at gunpoint in 1967, an act for which Janklow was locally disbarred. The FBI reopened the case in 1975 when Janklow was appointed by Gerald Ford to the board of the Legal Services Corporation, but investigations were closed at the request of the White House. Jancita and her mother Delphine died shortly thereafter, of apparently unrelated homicides. Janklow...

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