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

<title>Daily Darwin: Friday, January 5, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Darwin: Friday, January 5, 2024

 Call this bowling technique what you will, we call it a thing of unparalleled beauty...

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

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Politics

The Green River City Council is considering whether to approve a nearly $112,000 grant it’s been awarded to install license-plate readers around the city.

Green River applied last year for two Wyoming Office of Homeland Security grants and in January was awarded one for $111,956 to buy and install license plate readers for the police department, says the 

As of this writing, the Green River City Council was set to consider approving the grant at its regular 

Mayor Pete Rust told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday the police department spearheaded the grant application.

The grant consists of federal funds from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the description says. Its goal is to enhance “the ability of governments and nonprofits to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks.”

Green River Police Chief Shawn Sturlaugson told Cowboy State Daily in a Tuesday phone interview that the license-plate readers could curb terrorism. He said he anticipates that their commoner use, however, will be expanding law enforcement’s ability to find vehicles implicated in criminal getaway situations or missing-or-vulnerable person cases.

[{"type":"text","text":"“They’re another tool for us,” Sturlaugson said."}]

Currently, officers are far less likely to find a vehicle flagged in the National Criminal Information Center unless they know about it, are looking for it specifically, and happen to cross paths with it, added the chief.

If the city mounts license-plate readers, “As soon as that vehicle rolls into town, my officers will immediately get an alert, start looking for it and hopefully find the vehicle.”

Sturlaugson said runaway Amber and Ashanti alerts and missing or vulnerable persons cases are just as vital a use as responding to criminal incidents.

He said he’s been surprised that, after the City Council agenda went public, people have been voicing criticism of the plan. He said the grant award, in January, was public information.

“We haven’t kept it a secret, I can tell you that,” Sturlaugson said. He said the readers will be Motorola brand, not Flock. He expects the grant to fund the installation and other costs for about four readers, to be placed generally at town entrances. 

Sturlaugson said he heard complaints Tuesday morning “that we’ll use this as some type of proactive, crime-stopping tool,” but that’s not the department’s intention. Nor does the department plan to use the system to stop people for expired registration “or anything like that,” the chief added.

“It’s strictly to identify vehicles or people that are already of some concern, in some way, for law enforcement,” Sturlaugson said.

[{"type":"text","text":"‘It’s Some Bull –“"}]

Marshall Burt, the former lawmaker whom Green River elected in 2020 as the state’s first Libertarian legislator, bristled in a Tuesday interview with Cowboy State Daily.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It’s some bullshit,” Burt said. "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"He cast the agreement’s stated goal of curbing terrorism as dubious."}]

“I mean, if we have that big a case of terrorism in Green River, I imagine we would have heard about it by now,” he said.

 and was deployed to the Anbar Province during the Iraq War, said the grant’s terrorism-related mission poses a false dichotomy.

“This is the argument you’re going to hear: you’re either for the cameras to be against terrorism or you’re against the cameras and you want to promote terrorism,” he said. “Because that’s how stupid politics arguments go all the time.”

Burt said the argument, rather, is about the slippery slope toward pervasive government tracking he says the cameras exacerbate.

“I don’t have an expectation for privacy on a public road. I don’t. My license plate is out there for anybody and everybody to see. I don’t care about that, I understand that when I drive,” he said.

But the growth of data centers, the increased capacity for data storage and transfer, coupled with the camera systems’ own abilities to compile and aggregate data over time, lend concerns about tracking, profiling and behavioral patterning, he added.

[{"type":"text","text":"Burt is not alone in that fear."}]

A number of lawsuits have surfaced nationally, including an April 15 filing in which the Institute for Justice derided the surveillance system in San Jose, California.

“Unlike a police officer posted at an intersection, the cameras see and remember everything,” says the complaint. “Day or night, they photograph every passing car and use AI to analyze the images … Officers can run searches based on a hunch, idle curiosity, or even personal animus.”

Sturlaugson told Cowboy State Daily he’s inclined toward crafting a policy, conversely, that deletes the data after 30 days. He said the policy is in progress.

The Institute for Justice offers draft legislation that would cement Fourth Amendment constraints into laws specifically pertaining to the cameras.

[{"type":"text","text":"Burt said that’s not enough."}]

“It’s a straight no,” he said of welcoming the cameras, with guardrails or without. “The problem with putting in guardrails like everybody talks about is, nothing ever becomes permanent. The next City Council or whoever decides (can) change policy.”

Burt said good intentions rarely hold the line. He referenced the post-9/11 Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law he called “the most abused surveillance system ever put in place against the American people.”

[{"type":"text","text":"A Little Surprised"}]

Rust told Cowboy State Daily he was surprised at the pushback ahead of Tuesday’s meeting.

“We’re very proud of the fact that we’re one of the safest cities in the nation,” he said. "Surveillance is a tool the police department uses. This is just another tool.” 

[{"type":"text","text":"He said he doesn’t know of any terrorism concerns in Green River."}]

But on the other hand, the city falls along an interstate, a railroad, and a river. One of the main regional power plants sits in the area.

“We’re in a strategic location because of all those things. So who knows?” Rust said. “Cameras are something that exist all over the place. Everywhere. It’s to help people observe things that could be a concern, so they can have information to take care of it, if it is – keep the community safe.”

Katie Roascio, the Wyoming Department of Homeland Security's public information officer, said in a Tuesday email that the Green River Police Department was the only Wyoming agency that applied for the grants made available last year for license-plate readers.

That was part of a larger, 167-grant application pool from the 2025 grant window, she said.

Other Wyoming towns and communities have license-plate readers. Those are the cities of Jackson and Cheyenne, the entrances to the town of Glenrock, and the entrances to the Wind River Indian Reservation.

The reservation cameras came about through an agreement between the 12-person Wind River Intertribal Council and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

It remains unclear whether any public meetings were held on the reservation cameras prior to their installation. The tribal governments of Wyoming don't fall under the state's public meeting or public record laws. 

Green river license plate reader 7 7 26

<title>Town Of Green River Considers Installing License Plate Readers To Curb 'Terrorism' | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The Green River City Council is considering finalizing a $112,000 grant it's been awarded to install license-plate readers in the city. The mayor said the cameras could curb terrorism while former Libertarian lawmaker Marshall Burt says it's all "bullshit."

Town Of Green River Considers Installing License Plate Readers To Curb 'Terrorism'

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Law Enforcement

For three days, rafts, jet skis, a jet boat, drones and search dogs have combed the Snake River below a popular cliff-jumping spot near Alpine, all with one goal: bring Tory J. Raether home.

The 55-year-old Charlotte, North Carolina, man disappeared Saturday night after leaping into the river at Jump Rock, about a quarter-mile east of the Sheep Gulch Boat Ramp. 

Authorities say he was not wearing a life jacket when the swift current pulled him under. Despite desperate attempts by others in his group to save him, he vanished into the water.

Now, as Star Valley Search & Rescue continues what authorities acknowledge has become a recovery mission, Raether's family and closest friends have gathered in Wyoming, hoping against hope that searchers can give them the one thing they still desperately want — the chance to bring him home.

"The goal is to find their family member and return him to them, so they can have closure," Lincoln County Sheriff M. Shane Johnson told Cowboy State Daily. "That's what we'll continue to work for." 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Searching Every Day"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"On Tuesday, specially trained search dogs joined the effort."}]

Johnson said Star Valley Search & Rescue remains the lead agency, assisted by the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Forest Service. Searchers continue working the river daily, looking for any sign of Raether. 

[{"type":"text","text":"The river itself presents constant challenges."}]

"The water is a little bit low, and it's moving swiftly," Johnson said, adding that wearing a life jacket "certainly increases your chance of survival if something does go wrong." 

Changing river conditions create underwater hazards that make recovery efforts difficult.

Johnson said eddies, submerged obstructions and fluctuating water levels mean certain areas become more likely places where a victim could become caught. Search & Rescue volunteers know the river well and focus on those locations while continuing to search the surrounding area. 

"As time goes by, the likelihood of having a positive outcome certainly goes down," Johnson said. "We certainly feel like it's a recovery at this point." 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Family And Friends Waiting"}]

While professional rescuers continue searching the river, Raether's loved ones have made their own journey west.

Among those joining them is Brad Johnson, Raether's best friend of 35 years.

Johnson said he learned what had happened when Raether's wife texted him Sunday evening.

"I went out there with him last year in August," Johnson said. "We rafted that very same river." 

[{"type":"text","text":"He said Wyoming was one of Raether's favorite places."}]

"He loved Jackson Hole," Johnson said. "It's one of his favorite spots in the country." 

Raether had traveled west to spend time with family. One of his daughters lives in the Jackson area, and he, his wife and another daughter had come to visit her. 

Johnson said he and another lifelong friend from Wisconsin are traveling to Wyoming to help search alongside Raether's daughter's boyfriend, who works as a rafting guide in Jackson.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"We're going to help ... as much as we can to search,\" Johnson said. "}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Like A Brother'"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"For Johnson, the search is about much more than recovering a missing man."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"It's about finding someone he considered family."}]

"Tory wasn't just a friend to me — he was like a brother," Johnson said. "We were friends for 35 years, and I talked to him almost every day."

Johnson described Raether as someone whose personality drew people in almost instantly.

"He was one of those rare people who made life brighter simply by walking into a room," he said. "I've never known anyone who could make people laugh the way Tory could. Within minutes of meeting him, people felt like they had known him for years."

He said Raether built a successful career as an investment professional but never allowed money to define him.

"Whether he had a dollar or a million dollars, he was exactly the same person," Johnson said. "Success never changed him."

Instead, he devoted his time to mentoring others, volunteering through Kiwanis and Rotary, helping friends build businesses and looking for ways to lift up those around him.

[{"type":"text","text":"More than anything, Johnson said, Raether loved his family."}]

"His wife and his three children were the center of his world, and he spoke about them with tremendous pride and love," he said.

"He's hard to capture in one word," he said, holding back tears. "I'm not kidding. He's the most special person you've ever met." 

Later, he added, "You can't capture Tory in one sentence. It's impossible." 

Tory Raether right Jean Raether left

<title>Search For North Carolina Man Who Disappeared On Snake River Now A Recovery Mission | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The family of a North Carolina man who disappeared after jumping into the Snake River on Saturday shared photos of the 55-year-old that were taken just hours before he was swept away. Authorities have changed the mission from search and rescue to recovery.

Search For North Carolina Man Who Disappeared On Snake River Now A Recovery Mission

After Wyoming’s most famous diesel delete mechanic Troy Lake 

 Nov. 7 from President Donald Trump, he started advocating for other mechanics who, like him, were hit with prison time, fines or both for tampering with diesel emissions systems.

[{"type":"text","text":"Trump pardoned nine more diesel delete mechanics Friday."}]

 before he was pardoned, had advocated for six of those:

Ryan and Wade LaLone, Tim Clancy, Matt Geouge, Mac Spurlock, and Joshua Davis.

Wyoming-based lobbyist Jeff Daugherty and Colorado-based attorney Stewart Cables, who work with Lake and his fledgling group Diesel Freedom Coalition, had represented five of those six (not Davis).

Besides pardon-related advocacy, Lake said his group is working to provide sound emissions evidence and mechanical strategies to policymakers, to persuade them to pivot toward emissions regulations that don’t crush small-time trucking businesses and other fleets.

“Sometimes it makes you think, are we really making any traction? Are we really going anywhere? Because government moves at a snail pace,” Lake reflected in his Monday interview.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then came Friday, and the news of pardons. "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“And all of a sudden, it’s there,” the Cheyenne man said.  "}]

Lake said U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, is another key advocate. Sullivan had taken up Spurlock’s case and written a March 12 letter to the president urging a pardon.

The other three delete mechanics pardoned Friday were: Jonathan Achtemeyer, Aaron Rudolf, and Barry Pierce.

“It’s a small community,” said Daugherty of the diesel mechanic world. “A lot of these folks know each other.”

Daugherty and Cables, who work together, both told Cowboy State Daily they search specifically for small-business techs with non-notable or zero criminal history who have been convicted of Clean Air Act violations under an interpretation that they call invalid.

The Biden administration invoked a statute long used to prosecute people for tampering with big stationary emissions monitoring systems – such as on a chemical plant – to charge people who’d tweaked or reprogrammed trucks’ computers instead.

The Trump administration withdrew from that interpretation earlier this year, and told the U.S. Department of Justice to stop charging delete mechanics criminally. Civil penalties may still apply.

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge always loved diesel pickup trucks."}]

He told Cowboy State Daily he started tinkering with diesel engines because his first vehicle was a Ford with a six-liter Power Stroke engine. He learned to tune it at age 17, which would have been in about 2004.

[{"type":"text","text":"He was hooked."}]

In June 2007, at age 20, he started his own repair business, Spartan Diesel Technologies, in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

One year later, manufacturers started adding diesel particulate filters to the stock engines.  

Expensive, recurring repair jobs limped into Geouge’s business, he recalled.

“Small business owners, farmers, emergency service people, hot shot haulers that had these trucks – these were failing left and right,” said Geouge. “They were defective from the moment they rolled off the assembly line.”

Geoge helped by installing alternative software – a process called “tuning.”

Back then, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency didn’t pursue criminal charges against delete and tune mechanics who worked around emissions systems.

Emissions systems grew more complex and expansive. Trucks kept breaking down, Geouge said. Looking back, he said, the timing was “both great and terrible.”

He got into diesel work because it was fun. But problems from what he called volatile and problematic emissions systems found him.  

“It wasn’t where I expected the business to go. But it went there out of necessity,” Geouge said.

In 2013 the EPA filed a civil case against him, which continued for about a year and a half.

[{"type":"text","text":"“That was incredibly expensive,” said Geouge."}]

 A notice of violation hit him in 2015. Spartan Diesel shut down in 2017.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office of North Carolina charged Geouge in 2021 with two felonies: conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act, and another charge of tax evasion.

Geouge maintains he did not commit tax evasion. He and Cables both cast that charge as a leverage move by prosecutors to get him to plead guilty.

“That was great evidence of weaponization,” Cables said. “I think the U.S. Attorneys will use whatever leverage they can to bully people into taking a plea deal.”

Cables said the “tax evasion” comprised past-due IRS obligations – normally something that would prompt a repayment plan or civil penalty.

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge said it was fallout from his business going broke."}]

“They also threatened to charge his fiancée with felonies for aiding and abetting and tax evasion to get Matt to plead guilty to the felonies,” said Cables.

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge did plead guilty, in early 2022."}]

He was sentenced to one year and one day in prison. He was also fined about $2.5 million, he said Monday.

One month before his June 2022 sentencing hearing, Geouge’s and his fiancée, Caroline, learned that she was pregnant, Geouge recalled.

He checked into prison at USP Lee, Virginia, July 28, and prepared to miss his baby’s birth.

But at the end of August 2022, Geouge’s body went into diabetic ketoacidosis and he was hospitalized in intensive care for eight days, he said.

After the medical incident he returned to prison and learned there how to use insulin. He was 35.

Geouge was released to home confinement on Dec. 13, 2022. Forty-three days later, his son was born.

[{"type":"text","text":"The fallout from being a convicted felon brought surprises."}]

Geouge went to start a new business with a colleague once he was out of prison, and found banks were hesitant to work with him. Unable to possess firearms, he also lost his gun-building business, which he had run out of Spartan Diesel while the shop still lived.

Ryan LaLone had a similar experience, he told Cowboy State Daily in his own interview Monday.

He lives in northern Michigan. Hunting affinity runs in his blood, he said.

“And I think I’ve voted in every election since I’ve been able to vote. I’m proud to be an American; I want to vote,” said LaLone.

He said he walked into a bank with an 810 credit score after his conviction, hoping to buy a camper.

[{"type":"text","text":"“And they were like, well, but you’ve got a felony,” LaLone said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge’s shop wasn’t raided."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Ryan LaLone’s was, on Nov. 2, 2018, he said."}]

“Probably 30 agents, I mean, guns blazing, riot gear, I mean you’d have thought we were cooking meth in there. It was unreal,” LaLone said.

That got his small hometown of Gaylord, Michigan, stirring, he recalled. The reputational hit hurt his shop, Diesel Freak, as did the criminal case, he said.

LaLone started his shop in 2007 in Gaylord – a small, conservative-leaning town. His brother Wade came to work for him in 2012, LaLone said.  

Ryan said his goal was “just keep the trucks running. We didn’t blow smoke. We weren’t into this crazy stuff you see on the internet.” He said the Michigan Department of Transportation hired him one spring to repair striper trucks for the short work season.

But the criminal case didn’t start until after Trump’s first administration ended.

That’s a similar account to Lake. His wife, Holly, told Cowboy State Daily in an interview last year that the investigators essentially vanished after federal agents raided their shop – which was then in northern Colorado – in late 2018.

Pressure from the federal prosecutor’s office mounted in the autumn of 2022 and LaLone was formally charged April 26, 2023, with one count of conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act and two counts of violating it – all felonies.

LaLone said his attorney told him Vice President Kamala Harris had made such violations a priority, and that it was futile to fight. He took a plea deal as soon as his charge surfaced publicly.

LaLone didn’t do time in prison. He said he was offered the choice between prison or a hefty fine and took the fine: $750,000 for his business and $7,500 for him.

[{"type":"text","text":"Voided Warranty Tuning"}]

Achtemeier learned how to tune a vehicle, meaning reprogram its on-board diagnostic system, remotely.

He told Cowboy State Daily that he started reconfiguring diesel systems to ignore emissions flags because some of the emissions sensors and parts shot to eight times their normal price during COVID, or became unavailable. Tractors stalled in the field during harvest time, he said. 

Through his shop Voided Warranty Tuning he gained a national following as an expert engine tuner and the nickname “diesel engine software god,” says a prosecutor’s Feb. 7, 2025, filing urging a judge to give him a harsher sentence, in part because of his sophistication in the trade.

In late 2025, Achtemeier spent four months in federal prison in Manchester, Kentucky, and was fined $25,000.

It could have been worse. His original charges called for up to 31 years in prison and potentially millions in fines.

He shuttered his diesel shop Voided Warranty Tuning years before his criminal prosecution started. He’d taken to driving a truck instead.

Achtemeier was still on supervised release until Friday, when he got news of his pardon. He cared for his horses, and cleaned out their stalls, in an unprecedented heat wave Friday afternoon, he told Cowboy State Daily. Then he collapsed onto the couch, sat with his dogs, and nodded off.

[{"type":"text","text":"The phone rang."}]

“I almost didn’t answer it. I thought it was spam,” said Achtemeier.

It was the White House. Achtemeier struggled to rationalize what the person was saying.

“It’s still kind of surreal, you know?” he said Monday. He said he never expected to be pardoned, adding, “I’m just some small-town guy.”

Like LaLone, Geouge and Lake, Achtemeier described his lost gun and civic rights as dear to him. He lives in New Jersey, but explains his rural environment as, “We’re in a big farm area. ‘Friday The 13th’ New Jersey not ‘Sopranos’ New Jersey.”

He’s from the West Coast, and was charged in the federal U.S. District Court for western Washington in March 2024.

While on probation he couldn’t leave the state, which makes it “hard to do oversized trucking.”

Achtemeier said he had filed his pardon request paperwork for himself. He said he’s unaware of anyone advocating for him but grateful if someone did.

Still, Achtemeier said he was inspired by Lake – whom he and others cast as a celebrity of the diesel tech world.

Without Lake and another mechanic and activist, Kory Willis, “I don’t think this would have happened,” said Achtemeier.

“Troy put a spotlight on how bad these (prosecutions) were,” he said. “I’m just thankful for Trump seeing this, and thankful for anybody that directly or indirectly made this happen.”

Each of the mechanics who spoke with Cowboy State Daily on Monday said they understand the air cleanliness objective. But the manufacturers’ emissions systems, which cripple small businesses, are a heartless way to chase it, they said.

“It’s not an either/or situation,” said Geouge. “Automotive technology has gotten to the point where the electronic controls are so accurate, you can have a clean-running truck without these excessive, unreliable, and expensive components bolted all over it.”

Cables echoed the mechanics’ gratitude, saying, “We are very thankful that the Trump administration is taking an interest in our cases and we are very thankful to President Trump for granting these pardons.”

The president, said Cables, “is rightfully spending his time and attention on these domestic issues, like the emissions weaponization cases.”

Troy Lake and Trump 7 6 26

<title>Wyoming's Famous Diesel Mechanic Gets Presidential Pardons For Others | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming's most famous diesel “delete" mechanic Troy Lake, who was pardoned by Trump after a prison stint, advocated for the president to pardon at least six more. On Friday, Trump pardoned those six, plus three others.

Wyoming's Famous Diesel Mechanic Gets Presidential Pardons For Others

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Energy

Economic developers have spent decades trying to diversify Wyoming’s economy away from the volatile boom-and-bust cycles of its coal, oil and gas industries. Tech infrastructure — data centers — seemed like the answer, and is something the state’s been pursuing for the last 20-plus years. 

Now that data centers are finally racing toward the state’s wide-open prairies and cheap power, however, the rush is forcing a choice. How much growth is Wyoming will to accept, and at what cost to power bills, water supplies, and its wide-open spaces? 

Wyoming wants high-paying jobs and more housing so it has a future for its children. It loses 70% of its youths by the time they’re 30, according to state officials. 

But, at the same time, it also wants quiet prairie, low power bills, and tight control over scarce water supplies. Each new data center is a tug on all those resources.

To longtime Cheyenne attorney and Councilman Larry Wolfe, this tension is actually nothing new. Wyoming has long been a place where its residents understand that boom almost always precedes bust and broken promises. Many have thus learned to be skeptical of promises and promise makers. 

In fact, the bigger the promise is, the higher the skepticism goes.

“This is exactly the discussion that went on all over the state as we’ve seen all of our energy booms and busts that we’ve endured,” Wolfe told Cowboy State Daily in a previous interview. “And I think people are a bit schizophrenic about this, because they live in Wyoming for a reason.”

The old Wyoming bumper sticker reads, “Dear God give me one more boom and I promise not to piss it all away next time.” Data centers may just be that next boom. So, how far to go in courting prosperity without losing the things that make Wyoming, Wyoming?

Daily Darwin: Friday, January 5, 2024

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