Biography
Ruby Montoya, raised in Phoenix, Arizona, was a preschool teacher in Boulder, Colorado before quitting her job in 2016 to join the Mississippi Stand encampment against the Dakota Access Pipeline in southeast Iowa. With Jessica Reznicek - her friend and Des Moines Catholic Worker housemate - she set fire to oil-soaked rags and used oxyacetylene torches to disable construction equipment and burn through exposed pipeline valves at multiple Iowa sites between November 2016 and May 2017, attempting to halt completion of a pipeline that crosses Standing Rock Sioux water sources. The two publicly claimed responsibility at a July 2017 press conference at the Iowa Utilities Board. Montoya pleaded guilty in 2021 to conspiracy to damage an energy facility, was sentenced in September 2022 to 72 months in federal prison (with the federal terrorism enhancement applied) and roughly three million dollars in restitution joint with Reznicek. She was released from federal custody in October 2025.
Six-year sentence and contemporary prison-status source
The August 2023 Catholic Agitator individually lists Ruby K. Montoya, register25915-508, at FMC Carswell and reports a six-year sentence. The same notice distinguishes Jessica Reznicek’s eight-year term and Waseca address. This supports filling the otherwise blank case-sentence field with six years, without changing the separately sourced arrest, sentencing, intake or later release dates. The newsletter’s general statement that both were convicted of Domestic Terrorism is not substituted for Montoya’s actual separately recorded conspiracy/energy-facility charges or treated as an additional conviction. Its mailing address is an in-prison status observation, not an exact first-admission or discharge day; an imposed six-year term is not six years actually served.
Catholic Agitator, August2023, volume53no4, original PDF pages7 (printed7).
The October 4 report describes arrest and indictment over Dakota Access Pipeline sabotage following public responsibility claims. One hundred ten years was maximum potential exposure across charges, not an imposed sentence, and the excerpt does not establish a new exact custody period.
