Daily Darwin

[{"type":"text","text":"She's ready for the roller derby..."}]

Darwin 7 27 23

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

<title>Daily Darwin: Thursday, July 27, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

She's ready for the roller derby...

Daily Darwin: Thursday, July 27, 2023

Kerry Drake

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Cheyenne’s new vehicle noise ordinance was unanimously passed by the City Council to stop obnoxious motorists who drive their loud cars, trucks and motorcycles late at night, disrupting people’s sleep.

 soon after it went on the books in late September was auto mechanic Geno Stecks, who was driving a fairly unassuming 2006 Subaru with a modified muffler. 

It also wasn’t in the middle of the night or in a residential section of the capital city. Stecks said it was on a main thoroughfare at the intersection of East Lincolnway and Hugur Avenue at 2:45 in the afternoon.

“Communists. Control freaks!” is how Stecks responded when asked what he thought about the City Council members who approved the ordinance after many people opposed it during public testimony at three council meetings.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"He Wasn’t Speeding"}]

Stecks was on the job when he got busted, transporting auto parts for FM Automotive when he heard the police siren.

He told the officer that he didn’t think he’d been speeding, but was informed the stop was made because of excessive noise.

This how the encounter went, according to Stecks:

“I couldn’t hear my radio for your exhaust,” the officer told him.

“I said, ‘Turn your volume knob up,’” Stecks said he replied. "I couldn’t hear my exhaust because of my radio, because I’ve got a kick-ass stereo in it.”

In hindsight, Stecks said he’s since though of some other creative responses.

“I wish I had told him, ‘What are you going to tell the Hells Angels if they come roaring through town? Are you going to pull them over and cite them for having too loud exhaust? You probably wouldn’t live through it,’” said the bearded Stecks, wearing a T-shirt that depicted a full mug with the word “Beer – It’s What’s for Dinner.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Too Few Tickets"}]

A spokesperson for the Cheyenne Police Department said that after Stecks broke the ice as the first to be ticketed for driving too loudly, 43 other motorists were given noise violation citations in 2025, and 33 more so far this year.

Even those are way too few, said a council member who supported the noise ordinance.

“They should be writing 300 or 400,” said City Council Vice President Pete Laybourn. “The problem is immense, and I’m very disappointed with how it’s being handled. The ordinance hasn’t been effective at all.”

Laybourn said residents are purposely modifying their mufflers and making noise in all parts of the city, at all hours day and night, and also deliberately speeding.

“They tried to disrupt Friday Night at the Plaza last week, driving up Capitol (Avenue) and backfiring,” he said. “It was really, really bad.”

City Council President Tom Segrave was one of several councilmen who brought up the issue last summer because ​he was getting so many complaints from Cheyenne residents about excessive noise from motorists.

“I live off Yellowstone Road, and I can tell you it’s quite a sight to see a pack of people riding these loud little motorcycles down Yellowstone at night, often up until 1 a.m., popping wheelies,” Segrave said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Too Early To Tell"}]

He said it’s too early to know if the ordinance is making a difference. 

Segrave said he hasn’t been receiving complaints, but figures that will change during the summer when more people have their windows open.

The main difference between the new ordinance and a previous one is that it allows a police officer to use his or her judgment about whether a vehicle is too loud. 

The former regulation required a meter to be used at least 25 feet away, which Segrave said made it unenforceable.

Stecks said he paid the $100 fine, which would be increased to $200 if he breaks the ordinance again within a year. 

Possible jail time is on the books for a third offense, plus a $500 fine, but City Attorney John Brodie told Cowboy State Daily when the ordinance was passed last year that it’s 

“If anything, jail is maybe an imposed part of the sentence that would then be suspended,” he said.

“People told me, ‘You could have fought this,’” Steck said. “I said I’d be in worse trouble because I would have ended up in jail after I told the judge and the court how crooked they are. 

"There would have been F-bombs involved. When you’re a mechanic, F-bombs are the terminology of the trade.”

The ordinance requires all vehicles driven within city limits to be equipped with a muffler. It prohibits vehicles that bypass or cut out their mufflers to be louder and those that create “excessive smoke.”

Stecks said he agrees with the idea that people who drive small motorcycles known as “crotch rockets” up and down the street after 10 p.m. need to be ticketed. 

But he emphasized, “Not drivers who are just doing their job in the middle of the day.”

He said it would have made more sense if he’d received a ticket for a machine that he knows is really noisy: a fast 1931 Model A rat rod named “Clyde” that he built several years ago. 

Several of Stecks’ co-workers smiled and nodded their heads as he said this, because they know exactly how loud Clyde can be cranked it up.

Stecks said his main problem with the ordinance is that it relies on a police officer to make a judgment call about how loud the noise is.

“They need to measure it,” he said. “That’s the only way they should ever do this.”

Geno breaks the sound barrier 6 15 26

<title>Meet The First Driver To Get A Ticket Under Cheyenne’s New Noise Ordinance | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Mechanic Geno Stecks got the first ticket under Cheyenne’s new noise ordinance while delivering a car part in the middle of the day. When the officer told him he couldn't hear his radio because of the exhaust, Stecks said, "Turn your volume knob up."

Meet The First Driver To Get A Ticket Under Cheyenne’s New Noise Ordinance

Dave Simpson

Opinion

CSD Columnists

 up high in the Snowy Range in Carbon County?

Cowboy State Daily did a couple swell stories about them last summer, and their progress building a cabin at 9,800 feet, with no heavy equipment, and at a combined age of 148 (both 74).

They met 57 years ago, on the eighth floor of Orr Hall at the University of Wyoming, and they've been friends ever since. One was an engineering major, the other didn't know what the heck he wanted to be. They've been friends since September of 1969.

Well, I'm one of those guys. And the cabin project came out of hibernation two weeks ago, our third summer on the job. Our combined age this year: 150.

The good news is that we had a mild winter (not even enough snow to knock down a chimney), and we got in two weeks earlier than normal this year.

The bad news was high winds knocked down a lot of trees, and the folks who got in first had to do plenty of chainsaw work to clear the road.

in the early 1980s, when neither of us had any money, using the smallest chainsaw Homelite made to cut up logs for the walls. And now, 45 years later, I'm helping him build his cabin on his land next door.

Two summers ago we cleared land that's about 90 percent boulders and rocks, and 10 percent sand and dirt. You dig with a pry bar up there, not a shovel. We used about 120 bags of concrete mix to pour footings, then built the floor structure out of box beams, joists, and OSB (like plywood).

Last summer we put up walls, built trusses at roof level (no heavy equipment to lift them up), and tilted them into place. Then our sons arrived to help put up the roof sheathing and install a metal roof.

This year we're building interior walls, tacking up house wrap, cutting out openings and installing windows and doors. And there's a heavy wood stove to haul in some week I'm hoping to be elsewhere.

(My old friend didn't plan to put in a fireplace, but you can't have a mountain cabin without a wood stove. Not possible. He relented.)

Most exciting, we now have a Starlink dish up on his roof, and total internet access. Never thought I'd see that.

Unfortunately, I'm what they call a “hangar queen” in aviation:

torn Achilles, prostatectomy, four-disc cervical spine surgery - nothing attributable to the cabin work. Through it all, I figured I'd need summers off, recuperating.

But, the great docs around here have managed to get me back in shape for construction seasons twice now, even just 12 weeks after complicated neck surgery.

As they say in Laramie, I'm “back in the game,” but in a reduced role, a “gofer” finding lost tools, driving to Laramie to get stuff, cooking, and the guy who calls 911 if something awful happens.

When those stories appeared in Cowboy State Daily last year, there were a lot of comments on Facebook about “being as young as you think,” and “of course” you can keep building cabins at 148 years old. “Who says you can't do that when you're 74?” someone asked.

But, in the process, we've both gotten a greater appreciation for why most 75 year olds won't be working on cabins at high altitude this summer. We agree that we couldn't do the digging and concrete work today that we did just two years ago, at a naive, youthful combined age of 146.

We have more respect for the ravages of age now, and thank our stars that at 150, we're doing interior work, not mixing concrete and putting up roof trusses.

[{"type":"text","text":"As Walter Cronkite used to say, “And that's the way it is.”"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"So far, so good, for the geezer-built cabin way up in the mountains."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Let's hope, like previous years, nobody has to call 911."}]

Simpson 6 16 26 small

<title>Dave Simpson: Those Two Old Guys Are At It Again | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Columnist Dave Simpson writes, "Remember those two old guys building a cabin up high in the Snowy Range? Well, I'm one of those guys. The cabin project came out of hibernation two weeks ago, our third summer on the job. Our combined age this year: 150."

Dave Simpson: Those Two Old Guys Are At It Again

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Crime & Courts

Courts

After the state of Wyoming and a group of young men suing the Wyoming Boys' School sifted through several hours of testimony, video, and evidence, it now falls to a federal court judge to decide whether school staffers violated multiple boys’ rights.

They’re accused of restraining, confining, and using force on them — or if the staffers’ actions are protected by qualified immunity and other safeguards in the law.

 Blaise Chivers-King, Charles “Rees” Karn, and Dylan Tolar 

sued the Wyoming Department of Family Services

, the Wyoming Boys’ School in Worland, and 10 former and current employees in 2024.

The school is a facility to which courts send boys judged delinquent in Wyoming. 

The plaintiffs, all boys who had been committed to the school in 2018 and afterward, alleged that school staffers confined, beat, humiliated and abused them. More plaintiffs joined the case later that year: Haiden Willis, Koby Cranford, and a minor identified by the initials “DH.”

In the months that followed, parties on both sides of the case sifted through several hours of depositions and other evidence.

After that, the boys decided against continuing to sue two of the staffers: Margaret Dahlke and Clark Les Urbin.

U.S. District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl dismissed Dahlke and Urbin from the case on April 8 of this year, at the plaintiffs’ request.

Karn is serving a life sentence in the Wyoming Department of Corrections for 

[{"type":"text","text":"End This, State Says"}]

The government agencies and boys’ school staffers argued in a May 14 brief that Skavdahl should judge the case early in their favor.

The brief largely blames the boys’ behavior for the aggressive interactions between boys and staffers, and for the time some of the boys spent in restraint chairs, solitary confinement, or other disciplinary statuses.

It invokes qualified immunity, which is a legal principle shielding government officials who act reasonably and in good faith from being sued. 

The brief also says two of the defendants, Karn and DH, didn’t do enough to plead their grievances with school authorities before resorting to civil litigation, and that that nullifies their claims.

D.H. has failed to show he suffered physical injury, and the boys haven’t proved they suffered excessive force, deliberate indifference to their medical needs, undue punishment or discrimination based on certain disabilities, the state’s brief alleges.

The former inmates fired back in their own filing Friday, urging the judge to send the case to trial rather than judge it early in favor of the state and staffers.

Their response filing leads with an allegation that school security guard Thad Shaffer said, “The best part of the chair is watching the kids cry and scream like a f***ing child … that’s what makes it worth it.” 

The exhibit from which this quote reportedly stems is not yet open to public viewing, the case file says.

However, the Friday filing includes a photo that claims to show one of the plaintiffs lashed to a chair with a mask over his head and a caption that says he would be placed in the restraint chair “for up to 8 hours a day."

The boys’ counter-argument casts doubt on the records the boys’ school is using to make its case.

“The (staffers’) logbooks had large gaps in documentation, inaccurate entries, uncertain authorship, and no verification mechanism,” the filing says. “For example, the Dorm 3 detention logbook has no entries between Apr. 7, 2024, and May 9, 2024, despite DH being in solitary confinement during that time.”

The document asserts that, "Additionally, incident reports were regularly falsified."

Karn and DH did fulfill the grievance requirements, as their parents submitted complaints on their behalf, the filing argues. Also, the school didn’t provide the boys methods to file grievances once they were no loner housed there, says the document.

The boys’ filing calls the state’s claims for qualified immunity inadequate. It says, “Defendants’ legal analysis on these four claims consists entirely of 

[{"type":"text","text":"All These Differences"}]

The state’s brief in favor of early judgment and the boys’ counter-brief tell different stories.

[{"type":"text","text":"Karn was placed at WBS in 2018. "}]

He was placed on detention status numerous times, including for throwing personal items, breaking glasses, disclosing thoughts of hurting others, the state’s brief says.

He was detained for seven days in December 2018 after assaulting a student with a shower head. Court documents dispute whether staffer John Schwalbe shoved Karn’s face into broken glass at that time.

Schwalbe testified that he did not; while the boys’ argument says Schwalbe did restrain Karn on broken glass, and that Schwalbe said, “if you’re going to break shit, then this is pretty much what you’re going to get.”

Karn was restrained numerous times for hitting things in his room, harming himself, hurting others, being disruptive and damaging property, says the state’s brief.

During a second stay at the facility Karn was placed on detention for misbehaviors including acts of violence, pretending to shoot people, damaging property, trying to run away, threatening staff and making terroristic bomb threats on Facebook, says the document.

He was restrained during the second stay, allegedly after punching a staffer, trying to flip or throw a desk, “spinning around to face staff when they entered to clean the detention room camera,” damaging cameras, smearing feces on the detention room, and other misbehaviors.

[{"type":"text","text":"The plaintiffs deny many of these characterizations."}]

The brief points to staffers’ deposition testimonies, in saying that the facility didn’t have safeguards in place to ensure the accuracy of incident reports.

The boys’ brief admits that Karn was placed in solitary confinement after making threats on Facebook, but adds, “(We) Deny that 13 days in solitary confinement for alleged threats was appropriate or that he received meaningful social stimuli, exercise, or education.”

In response to the boys’ school claim that Rees was restrained for trying to harm himself with a sock, the boys’ counter-argument says, “The video shows Rees playing with a sock, not tying it around his  neck or refusing staff instructions. Indeed, one sock appears on his foot the entire time.”

To another claim that  Karn was moved to a vacant dorm after threatening to assault staff and hitting a camera, the response parries that, “The video does not show Rees hitting the camera or threatening to assault staff.”

While the state alleges Karn was restrained in April 2021 after tearing a pillow apart and trying to hit staffers who entered to retrieve the pieces, the boys’ argument counters that a staffer initiated force “without provocation because Rees withheld a piece of pillow stuffing.”

Where the state asserts that Chivers-King was placed on detention status in May of 2020 for threatening and cursing at staff, throwing a chair, kicking his door and punching his window and lights — the boys’ response says Chivers-King toppled, rather than threw a chair. 

The boys’ response denies that Chivers-King continued to escalate, and says there was no reason for a staffer to use force on him, “as the video depicts Blaise (Chivers-King) standing with arms crossed when WBS staff forced him to the ground.”

Where the state asserts that DH continuously refused to follow instructions or engage in programming, the boys’ response says, “The behaviors for which DH was punished were obvious symptoms of his disabilities.”

When DH was in solitary confinement, says the boys’ brief, it was “lonely, depressing, and I had a few bugs for company.”

The state had asserted, conversely, that staffers gave DH “highly individualized attention” during that time to get him on track with the programming.

[{"type":"text","text":"The Clash Continues"}]

Disagreements between what prompted restraints and other punishments pervade the state’s argument and the boys’ counterargument.

In the segment pertaining to how staffers treated DH, the boys’ argument relates from another staffer’s deposition that Coronado called DH a “retard” nearly every day.

The boys’ argument contends that they had known disabilities and staffers didn’t accommodate them, while the state’s argument says of the boys, they “did not request any accommodations for any mental health diagnoses or physical conditions, nor was it obvious (they) needed any.”

Here the state’s argument says, There’s no “evidence plaintiffs were discriminated against ‘by reason of’ their disabilities; rather, the record shows WBS staff’s actions were based on Plaintiffs’ conduct.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Plaintiffs are asking the court to send these claims to trial:"}]

• Excessive force claims that staffers used excessive force by confining Karn and Willis in a restraint chair “for long stretches” when not necessary for people’s safety.

• Excessive force claims that staffers unnecessarily tackled, shoved, slammed and attacked boys who were not resisting, who were already subdued, or whose conduct didn’t merit such force.

• A deliberate indifference claim, asserting staffers were deliberately indifferent to some boys’ risks and serious medical needs.

• A claim that two staffers deprived the boys of due process, by denying them meaningful and periodic reviews of their solitary confinement, and meaningful notice of what they could do to earn release.

• A claim that staffers discriminated against and failed to accommodate the boys due to their various disabilities.

Wyoming Boys School lawsuit 6 15 26

<title>Court Filings Say Wyoming Boys' School Staffers Restrained, Attacked Boys | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A group of young men suing the Wyoming Boys’ School claim they were attacked, confined in a chair and made to wear a mask. “The best part of the chair is watching the kids cry and scream,” a security guard is alleged to have said.

Court Filings Say Wyoming Boys' School Staffers Restrained, Attacked Boys

Jen kocher

Jen Kocher

Law Enforcement

Lt. Doug Fisher had been about a week away from flying to Wisconsin to arrest Roger Durkee when he got the news: Durkee was dead.

The cat-and-mouse game Durkee had been playing with Elko County Sheriff’s Office (ECSO) detectives for the past few years was officially over.

[{"type":"text","text":"Fisher called the news bittersweet."}]

He and ECSO Det. Alex Cox had been looking forward to finally putting the cuffs on Durkee, who had spent 32 years eluding authorities after allegedly murdering an unidentified woman and dumping her nude body at a remote desert exit off Interstate 80 in Nevada.

but both officers agree that identifying Durkee’s victim 

For decades, she was known only as “Shafter Jane Doe,” named for the highway exit where she was found in November 1993.

detectives finally identified her as Marion Hertha Alexander

, a 25-year-old German immigrant who had been living in Salt Lake City, Utah, when she crossed paths with Durkee.

The woman also had spent seven months in Afton, Wyoming, shortly before she was killed, which was determined in 2010 via a breakthrough isotope testing procedure. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Family Devastated"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Alexander’s mother was devastated, Fisher said."}]

He and Cox had driven to her California home in January to tell her in person. She had met her husband, a

She married him and returned to California with him and her children in 1972.

Alexander left home in her late teens — a free spirit, her mother told detectives, who drifted and grew distant from the family.

They had not known she was missing and were devastated 

Her mother is now working with the sheriff’s office to finalize the inscription on a new headstone 

 paid for by the Elko County Commissioners.

[{"type":"text","text":"After more than three decades, they finally has the answer."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“We want to make sure we finally get Mary laid to rest,” Fisher said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Little To Go On At First"}]

Many detectives have worked on Alexander’s case over the years. It was not their only cold case, Fisher said.

Along with Alexander, there are five other unidentified people in Elko County dating back to 1972, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs).

[{"type":"text","text":"At first, they had little to go on."}]

When Alexander’s body was discovered about a week after she was killed, it was already badly decomposed.  

She’d been shot in the chest and the back with a small

caliber firearm and had been severely beaten in the face.

There was little to no evidence left at the scene, leaving authorities to believe she’d been killed elsewhere and dumped afterward.

Apart from a partial right thumbprint that had no match in federal databases, detectives had little to go on. The only other identifiers were a tooth that was in the process of getting a root canal and a 2-by-4-inch burn scar or birthmark on her right calf.

To draw attention to the case, detectives reached out to the national media and also held a funeral for her.

Her story initially gained traction after it was picked up by the 

news program “Hard Copy.” but it ultimately yielded no results.

The sheriff’s office took advantage of technological advancements over the years, including having a forensic facial reconstruction done as well as stable isotope ratio analysis of a hair follicle that linked her to Afton, Wyoming, where it was suspected she’d spent the last seven months of her life.

Oddly, this was one detail that the detectives couldn’t track down upon finally learning her identity.

They found addresses for her in California, Oregon, Utah and southern Nevada, but nothing in Wyoming.

In fact, at the time of her murder, she had been living in downtown Salt Lake City near Durkee, Fisher said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Overlooked Evidence"}]

The biggest break in the case happened in April 2019 when detectives took a new look at existing evidence and realized they had DNA on a vaginal swab for both the victim and perpetrator.

It’s not clear how this evidence went overlooked for so long, Fisher said, but it appears to have been the result of a miscommunication between detectives and the crime lab.

still needed to figure out to whom they belonged.

Neither was found in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) or on genetic DNA databases, still leaving them with no answers, so they kept pulling threads, Fisher said.

approved a $10,000 expenditure that allowed the sheriff’s office to contract with Identifiers International for a forensic genetic 

This led investigators to Durkee in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who reached out to the FBI for help identifying him.

The FBI agents procured some items from Durkee’s trash and determined that profile could not be excluded from the one taken from the swab.

“Not being excluded” is as close as law enforcement and science can legally get to saying it’s a likely match.

[{"type":"text","text":"“That was a good indication that this is our guy,” Fisher said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Still, Alexander’s identity remained a mystery at that point."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Closing In On A Killer"}]

Even with Durkee’s identity as Alexander’s killer likely confirmed, it was not enough to collar him for the murder.

All it proved, Cox noted, is that the two had been intimate, but not that he killed her.

[{"type":"text","text":"So they kept digging, Fisher said."}]

In doing so, they learned Durkee moved quite a bit during the 1990s and early 2000s while working 

. This included stints in Nevada, Idaho and Colorado and Salt Lake City.

A detective was about to fly to Wisconsin to arrest the lead suspect in the 32-year cold case of a woman whose nude body was dumped along I-80 when he got the news the suspect was dead. The woman's time in Wyoming led to the breakthrough in the case.

Daily Darwin: Thursday, July 27, 2023

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