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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>You Still Here? Tuesday, January 10, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Should probably look for another line of work...

You Still Here? Tuesday, January 10, 2023

One More For The Road

Ever the entrepreneurs, Andrew Rossi and Bill Sniffin launch an auto detail company.....

One more for 8 4 26

<title>One More For The Road: Tuesday, August 4, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

One More For The Road: Tuesday, August 4, 2026

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Around Wyoming

[{"type":"text","text":"The room Roman Parra left behind still looks much the way he left it."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"His Bible remains on the coffee table at his home in Worland. "}]

His truck still needs a suspension repair he never got to finish with his father.

And in the days since the 20-year-old former Worland athlete died from injuries suffered in a northern Colorado rollover crash, family members say those ordinary reminders have become priceless.

, Colorado State Patrol said Parra was critically injured July 25 when the Chevrolet Tahoe he was driving rolled on Weld County Road 80 near Eaton, ejecting all five occupants. Three Colorado passengers died at the scene. A fourth passenger survived with minor injuries. Parra remained hospitalized for eight days before dying Sunday. 

Cowboy State Daily requested the official crash summary from the Colorado State Patrol but had not received the report before publication. 

 that the State Patrol said that speed and impairment contributed to the crash, though a cause hasn’t yet been determined.

Now, those who knew Roman best say they hope he is remembered not for the crash but for the life he lived.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Mother's Worst Call"}]

Roman's mother, Alyssa McDonald, said Saturday had been an ordinary summer day.

She had taken Roman's younger sister to the fair parade before returning home to surprise her oldest son by cleaning his bedroom.

[{"type":"text","text":"Roman had driven to Colorado the night before for a concert with friends."}]

As she folded clothes and straightened his room, she expected him to walk back through the front door the next day.

[{"type":"text","text":"Instead, at about 5:15 p.m., her phone buzzed."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The Life360 app she used to keep track of Roman showed a collision."}]

"I texted, called, panicked when I saw there was no movement," said McDonald. 

She hoped his phone had simply fallen to the floor or been tossed across the vehicle.

[{"type":"text","text":"When the location never changed, she called police and waited."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Nearly two hours later, the hospital called."}]

"They told me there had been a bad accident and my son was involved," she said. "Three had passed away at the scene, but Roman had survived."

[{"type":"text","text":"Doctors rushed him into emergency brain surgery."}]

"The chance of him making it off the table was very unlikely," she said.

[{"type":"text","text":"For over a week, his family remained by his bedside before Parra died."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Faith Before Football"}]

Long before he became one of Wyoming's top linebackers, Parra was the little boy who wanted one thing more than anything else.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"He just never wanted to let me down,\" McDonald said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"His faith grew naturally alongside him, she added. "}]

As a second-grader, teachers noticed he signed the bottom of school assignments with the words "God is Good." 

Near graduation, one of his teachers asked what he wanted to do with his life.

"My first priority is my relationship with Christ," he replied, according to his mother.

Looking back, McDonald said she believes that answer explained the way he lived.

"I think that was probably his purpose in life — to spread that kindness, that joy and Christ's love," she said.

[{"type":"text","text":"His aunt, Daniela Parra, saw the same thing."}]

If someone challenged Roman's beliefs, she said, he didn't argue emotionally.

"He would fight for God all the time," she said. "If somebody said something, he could back it up with Scripture."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Competitor On Every Field"}]

In his final high school football game in the fall of 2024, McDonald said Parra tore his meniscus.

[{"type":"text","text":"Coaches wanted to pull him from the game."}]

He finished the game and scored the final touchdown of his high school career.

In the spring of 2025, he again played through the same injury during the state soccer tournament because he didn't want to leave his teammates behind.

When football ended, Roman spent the summer working construction alongside his father while preparing to attend Laramie County Community College this fall to study automotive technology.

Asked what his son had taught him over the past 20 years, Armando Parra paused.

"He taught me peace and patience," he said. "As much as you raise a kid, a kid raises you."

[{"type":"text","text":"He credits Roman with helping him become a better man."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"He changed my life,\" Armando said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'He Was That Loved'"}]

The waiting room rarely emptied during Parra's eight days in the hospital.

[{"type":"text","text":"Friends drove from Cheyenne after work."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Football families stopped in."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Strangers from Eaton, Colorado, brought food, water and supplies."}]

One mother loaned the family a wagon so they could haul meals through the hospital.

[{"type":"text","text":"For Daniela, none of it came as a surprise."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I expected it,\" she said. \"He was that loved.\""}]

She remembers her nephew as the young man who encouraged everyone around him.

[{"type":"text","text":"His father said Roman never limited his friendships to teammates."}]

"He was friends with everybody," Armando said. "He fit in everywhere. He talked to everybody."

 to help cover Roman's medical and funeral expenses.

Armando also asked for prayers for the lone survivor of the crash, saying he believes the young man now faces an unimaginable burden.

"I feel worse for him than I feel for anybody," he said. "That poor boy that has to live through this is going to need more guidance than anybody I know."

Roman Wesley Parra and new Colorado crash location 8 3 26

<title>Worland Man Dies Sunday, Eight Days After Being Ejected From Car In Colorado | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Worland athlete Roman Parra died Sunday, eight days after being ejected from his vehicle in Colorado. His family said Roman's greatest gift wasn't in sports, but making everyone feel loved. "His purpose in life was to spread kindness," his mom said.

Worland Man Dies Sunday, Eight Days After Being Ejected From Car In Colorado

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's managing editor, Greg Johnson.

Greg Johnson

Crime & Courts

Courts

 an 87-pound elderly man with cerebral palsy in her care who’s mostly deaf, mostly blind and wears adult diapers that allegedly hadn’t been changed in 10-14 days has reached a plea agreement with prosecutors.

The deal would knock down a felony charge of intentional neglect of a vulnerable adult to a misdemeanor neglect charge.

Under the deal, Colleen Blakesley, 67, will plead guilty or no contest to the lesser charge and, if the judge follows the sentencing recommendation outlined in the agreement, avoid jail time and have a year of unsupervised probation.

A no-contest plea isn’t an admission of guilt, but acknowledges there’s enough evidence to secure a conviction.

Had she been convicted of the felony, Blakesley faced up to 10 years in prison.

She had a hearing on the plea Friday, but paperwork on whether the deal was accepted, and if so, if sentencing had been set, hadn’t been filed by Monday, according to the Hot Springs County District Court.

A call to the county attorney to clarify wasn’t immediately returned. This story will be updated when the results of Friday's hearing are available.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Started With A DFS Report"}]

The man’s condition came to the attention of the Thermopolis Police Department on Feb. 24 when a doctor doing a home visit for the man reported his condition to the Department of Family Services, according to an affidavit of probable cause written by Sgt. Nicole Andersen filed in the case.

Andersen and a DFS agent “received a complaint regarding an elderly male being neglected,” the affidavit says. “The complaint included that the male, who wears diapers, had not been changed for 10-14 days. This complaint came from a trained professional.”

They arrived to be hit with “a pungent, strong, foul smell in the home, although the living room area seemed relatively clean,” the affidavit says. “At this time, the victim … was in clean clothes.”

The elderly man isn’t vocal, and a family member told Andersen that he’s deaf, nearly blind and that they communicate with him by tracing letters in his hand, she wrote.

“I observed Robert was very skinny and not mobile,” she added, later documenting that at the hospital, the man “weighed approximately 87 pounds at the time of admission.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Man Was Combative"}]

Blakesley is the legal caregiver for the man, Andersen wrote, adding that Blakesley said he was last changed three days before.

“Upon speaking with Colleen, she advised she had last changed his diaper on Sunday afternoon, but also stated that he had been in the clothing he was observed in by the complainant for approximately two weeks due to him being combative and her not being able to change him,” according to the affidavit.

Blakesley also told police she was aware that the man had multiple sores on his body and had not seen a doctor since August 2024.

While Andersen observed the man in clean clothes, that wasn’t the case when the visiting doctor was at the home earlier that day, the affidavit says. The doctor also provided a photo of the man’s condition.

“In this photo, I observed (the man’s) pants to be extremely soiled and having the appearance of being wet, along with stains on his shirt — to include what appears to be staining near the bottom of the shirt of urine, feces, or both,” the affidavit says.

As the man was transported to a local hospital by ambulance, “I was advised that his condition was highly concerning to both EMS staff and the doctor,” Sergeant Andersen wrote. “I took photos of his wounds while in the hospital, while wearing protective gear as there was a concern of scabies.”

Thermopolis sign and police vehicle 8 3 26

<title>Deal Calls For No Jail For Thermopolis Caregiver Accused Of Neglecting Elderly Man | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Thermopolis woman accused of neglecting an 87-pound elderly man who’s mostly deaf and blind, and wears diapers that allegedly hadn’t been changed in 10-14 days has reached a plea agreement. The deal calls for no jail time and a year of probation.

Deal Calls For No Jail For Thermopolis Caregiver Accused Of Neglecting Elderly Man

Public Safety

Inside Rawlins Family Church on Sunday afternoon, worshippers paused when the sound of blaring sirens rushed toward East State Street. 

[{"type":"text","text":"No one inside knew exactly what had happened."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"But Michelle Greer said she knew it was serious."}]

"We started hearing police cars," Greer told Cowboy State Daily. "Then I stepped outside."

Emergency vehicles from surrounded the intersection where a small bicycle lay twisted on the pavement. Nearby, a black tarp answered everyone's immediate question. 

"I was devastated," Greer said. "I work at the school, and I knew it was one of our kids. My heart was just so broken all day yesterday. I just couldn't even really function." 

The Rawlins Police Department confirmed an 8-year-old boy died Sunday after a collision involving a bicycle and a vehicle around 12:21 p.m. near East State Street and Jefferson Avenue. 

Officers from the Rawlins Fire Department, Carbon County Sheriff's Office, Carbon County EMS and the Wyoming Highway Patrol also responded.

A preliminary Wyoming Highway Patrol report says the boy was riding north on Jefferson Street when he possibly failed to stop at a posted stop sign before entering the intersection with East State Street. A Ram 2500 traveling east on State Street struck the child.

Investigators reported the roads were dry, the weather was clear, and the pickup driver was not injured. 

The crash remains under investigation and authorities have not released additional details.

For Greer, the facts mattered less in the immediate aftermath than the overwhelming sense of loss.

[{"type":"text","text":"As emergency crews worked, people gathered quietly nearby."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"They were coming down. They were standing on the street,\" she said. "}]

Roads around the scene were blocked for hours while investigators documented what happened. 

[{"type":"text","text":"'Happy-Go-Lucky' "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The crash happened in an area where children are a common sight."}]

"State Street is pretty busy," Greer said. "Jefferson is not, but there's a park right behind our church, so there's always kids at the park." 

Only a week earlier, Greer had watched neighborhood children laughing together during a family event at that same spot.

[{"type":"text","text":"The child who died was among them. "}]

"He was there all day playing with all the kids," she recalled. "He was just happy-go-lucky, and he just had a great time the whole day." 

[{"type":"text","text":"That memory has replayed in her mind ever since."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"'We're Praying For Them'"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Greer is also a mother."}]

Her daughter recently turned 18, and her son is 30. She said thinking about the victim's parents has been almost unbearable.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Oh my gosh,\" she said. \"I can't even imagine that phone call.\" "}]

She said members of Rawlins Family Church are praying for the family and want them to know they are ready to help however they can.

"Our hearts go out to them," she said. "We're praying for them, and our church is there if they need any help or counseling." 

As police continue investigating what led to Sunday's tragedy, Greer hopes at least one lesson reaches other families.

Watching children ride bicycles and scooters through town has always made her nervous.

[{"type":"text","text":"Now, she says, it carries a different weight."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It can be gone so fast,\" she said. "}]

Rawlins 20240525 rawlins 1104 4 18 26 1

<title>Rawlins Boy, 8, Dies When Hit By Truck While Riding Bicycle Outside Of Church | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Rawlins churchgoer says her "heart was just so broken" after worshippers stepped outside of Sunday service to find remnants of a bicycle crash that killed an 8-year-old boy. "I work at the school, and I knew it was one of our kids," she said.

Rawlins Boy, 8, Dies When Hit By Truck While Riding Bicycle Outside Of Church

Hilarious rodeo event competition. The ladies had to find their own shoes to get a prize.....

You still here 8 3 26

<title>You Still Here? Monday, August 3, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

You Still Here? Monday, August 3, 2026

Jen Kocher - Headshot CSD

Jen Kocher

The initial pass missed it completely. The drone touched down almost directly in front of it — that close, but still they didn’t see it.

It wasn’t until days after the search, combing through video frame by frame, that Bill Dohse and his team found what they were looking for last month: A metal barrel can wedged on its side at the bottom of Fremont Lake, obscured beneath a swirling veil of sediment and algae more than 430 feet deep.

Dohse, president of the nonprofit Organized Search and Rescue (O-SAR), couldn’t believe his eyes.

“I was like, ‘Holy crap, how did we miss it?’” he told Cowboy State Daily.

Then the weight of it hit him. Had they just found the final piece of a decades-old murder mystery?

[{"type":"text","text":"The pieces were falling into place."}]

along with a barrel spotted two weeks earlier from the same lakebed —

 might finally shed light on what Gerald Uden did with the bodies of his ex-wife and his two adopted sons.

Uden has already confessed to the killings. In 2013, he told Wyoming investigators he shot Virginia Uden and the boys — Richard, 11, and Regan, 10 — in September 1980, luring them out under the pretense of a hunting trip. Their bodies have never been found.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"At The Bottom Of The Lake"}]

Uden told authorities he initially concealed the bodies in a nearby mine before discarding them in receptacles in the lake. He said he put Virginia in a sealed 55-gallon steel drum, into which he had either shot or drilled holes to help it sink. The boys were put together in a 35-gallon steel garbage can and sunk alongside it.

The problem, until now, was that nobody could find either the barrel or can.

Searches in 2013 and 2014 turned up nothing — including one in which Uden himself accompanied Sublette County Tip Top Search and Rescue (TTSAR), which scoured the lake with their side-scan sonars, thermal-imaging drone and other underwater search equipment. 

That fact, combined with Uden’s shifting stories — he initially claimed to have dumped the bodies in the Pacific Ocean off the Oregon Coast — had long cast doubt on his credibility.

But his account has remained consistent in the years since, and authorities now have good reason to believe the two found objects are no coincidence.

“It’s a fantastic feeling,” Dohse said. “After 45 years, the families of Virginia, Richard and Reagan Uden may finally be close to the closure they deserve.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Letters From Prison"}]

None of it would be possible without new information that arose from an unlikely pen-pal relationship between a private citizen and Uden, Dohse said.

president of the Gillette-based missing person nonprofit 

, began writing to Uden four months ago after learning about Virginia and the boys as part of her 

nonprofit’s coffee sleeve campaign launched this spring

 featuring the faces of Wyoming’s missing.

She and her volunteers have assisted in a half-dozen missing-person cases over the past four years, of which this reporter has taken part, 

including the search for a missing Kenyan nursing student in Gillette

Koester’s group offers a host of free services for families and loved ones of the missing, including poster sharing, media, investigative help, support with funeral expenses, and searches and recoveries, all with the sign-off of law enforcement.

She’s tried a lot of techniques for garnering information but never attempted writing to a convicted murderer in prison for his help, but figured it was worth a try.

“It’s part of our determination to bring home the missing, which led to our working on cold cases,” Koester said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bringing Them Home"}]

Uden, now 84, is serving three life sentences at the medium correctional facility in Torrington.

This is where Koester found him after writing in May to ask if he’d killed them and, if so, specifically in the lake where he dumped the bodies.

[{"type":"text","text":"Koester explained that was her primary purpose."}]

“I was 100% honest with Gerald from my very first letter that my goal was to bring Virginia, Richard and Reagan to a proper rest and burial,” Koester said.

 before the Wyoming Supreme Court in which he recanted those earlier confessions, claiming they were made under coercion.

But he eventually opened up to Koester in his second letter, admitting to their murders and repeating his story about putting them in Fremont Lake, in the foothills of the Wind River Range just north of Pinedale.

He had since picked up painting in prison, he wrote, and wanted her help in selling those paintings, with all proceeds going to his stepdaughter.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Two Maps"}]

Koester sensed a bargaining chip and pressed Uden for a specific location in Fremont Lake. She further appealed to his conscience, sharing her remorse that the two boys – with their lives already unfairly cut short – were left in a watery grave without a proper burial.

She implored Uden to tell the truth about where he stashed their bodies. When he repeated they were in Fremont Lake, she sent him two maps.

Both he marked in roughly the place where he put in his boat and about where in the lake he dropped the bodies.

It turned out the spot now marked by Uden was outside the perimeter of the original search area.

Koester believed Uden was telling the truth. She took the letters and maps to Dohse and his team, and shared the information with Ryan Cox, commander and head of cold cases with the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI).

Dohse, after much deliberation with the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office, DCI, local search and rescue groups and his O-SAR partner, Eric Butt of 

information was worth launching a new search

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Infamous Enough"}]

Uden knows about the discovery of the barrel and told Koester he has mixed feelings about their bodies being recovered.

[{"type":"text","text":"He’s already “famous\/infamous” enough, he told her.  "}]

“I really do not need any more attention,” Uden wrote. “I do understand why any of their family would want recovery, but that does not concern me.”

Koester had further reason to believe Uden would now truthfully confess after the death of his wife, Alice, who he told Koester was the love of his life.

She, too, had been serving a life sentence, in a separate and unrelated case, for the 1974 murder of her third husband, Ronald Holtz, who was 25 at the time. She claimed he was abusive and she killed him in self-defense.

The case went cold for nearly four decades until 2013, when her son came forward and turned her in. His body was recovered from a mineshaft on a ranch property where she’d once been lived as a caregiver. 

It was Alice’s arrest that prompted Uden’s confession.

Uden, then 71 and living with Alice in Missouri, had no knowledge of her arrest. When state and federal authorities flew out to question him, he cooperated fully — confessing to the killings under the mistaken belief Alice had been implicated in the deaths of Virginia and the boys, wanting to make clear she had played no part.

Searchers are optimistic that the barrel and a trash can they found two weeks ago at the bottom of Fremont Lake contain the bodies of a young mother and her two sons murdered by notorious killer Gerald Uden. Their next step is to recover the barrels.

You Still Here? Tuesday, January 10, 2023

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