A man with reported Mexican cartel ties accused of torturing a Lander, Wyoming, woman in his Montana home says the federal government was wrong to search his storage shed and backpack to unearth about 15 pounds of drugs and one Mexican peso.
Adolfo Vargas Lepe originally faced a kidnapping charge in the U.S. District of Montana, on evidence he kidnapped his ex-girlfriend from her mother’s home in Lander; confined her for six hellish weeks; and pistol-whipped, shot, beat, stabbed and choked her.
He’s since been indicted with four more counts, including a charge of kidnapping a child from Mexico and other states in 2018, one drug-delivery charge, one firearm charge and another charge of kidnapping the Lander woman back in 2018 as well.
He could receive a life sentence if convicted.
The Getaway, The Chase
Lepe’s ex-girlfriend was able to escape his home (where she sometimes was locked in a dog kennel) May 29, 2023, by running behind some bushes, burying her bright-pink shorts and lying in the dirt for hours until Lepe was gone from the area, says a prosecutor’s motion filed last week.
When the sound of his truck faded away, she reportedly stood on her bullet-riddled legs and walked to the nearby Cooney Bar to call 911.
Lepe was wanted for two days.
Carbon County (Montana) Sheriff’s deputies found him driving a silver Dodge truck near the Toy Box storage facility in Boyd, Montana, on May 31, 2023. They conducted a high-risk felony stop, but Lepe sped off into a high-speed chase onto dirt roads abutting a canal. When he rolled his vehicle, agents arrested him.
Investigators confirmed that day that Lepe rented a unit at the storage facility.
Finding ‘Cookies’
Authorities would soon learn, by listening to Lepe’s phone calls from jail, that Lepe threw a backpack out of his window while fleeing law enforcement on the dirt canal roads.
Lepe made “numerous cryptic statements” to others between June 2, 2023, and June 25, 2023, about “cookies” he threw on the side of the road, and “toys” he wanted someone to check on, says the prosecutor’s motion.
Police asked a federal judge July 7, 2023, for a warrant to search the warehouse. They executed that warrant July 10, 2023, and allegedly found a pound of cocaine and almost 2 pounds of methamphetamine, says the filing.
That same day, agents walked along the ditch alongside Carbonado Road in Boyd, and reportedly found a grey-and-black Nike backpack under a tree.
Inside it they allegedly found 12.5 pounds of meth, one Mexican peso and receipts.
Those Were Mine
In a March 13 filing, Lepe (via his attorney Edward Werner) asked the federal judge overseeing his case to suppress evidence found in the warehouse and backpack. He alleges investigators violated his Fourth Amendments rights with these searches.
An unreasonable delay between police seizing a package and obtaining a search warrant may violate a defendant’s Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures, Lepe’s argument relates from a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals case.
Investigators waited 38 days to get a warrant for the warehouse.
“While an individual’s incarceration at the hands of the state may impact one’s ability to use property, the person’s underlying right to the property has not been surrendered,” says Lepe’s argument.
The government launched the opposite argument, saying because Lepe was stuck in jail during that time, his “possessory interest” in his property diminished — and he would have lost his property anyway due to not paying his storage rent after his arrest.
No Warrant For Backpack
Investigators didn’t have a warrant for the backpack. The government considers that abandoned property, and therefore fair game for a search, according to court documents.
People often throw illegal items out of moving vehicles to avoid law-enforcement detection, says the prosecutor’s motion, adding that’s a “classic form of abandonment” that negates the need for a warrant.
Lepe tried to get others to retrieve the backpack for him, an effort that backfired and led investigators to its location.
Lepe’s filing says he was trying to exercise his right of possession over the backpack and therefore he hadn’t fully abandoned it.
Agents should have gotten a search warrant, the filing argues.
“Both of the identified searches violated the Fourth Amendment, and the resulting fruits should be suppressed,” says the filing.
The court has not yet ruled on Lepe’s motion to suppress the drug evidence. His trial is set for April 29 in Billings.
Punching Bag
Lepe commanded his ex-girlfriend in April to leave her mother’s Lander home, saying if she didn’t come out peacefully he’d get her himself, according to a slew of allegations FBI Special Agent Wyatt Garber listed in an evidentiary affidavit filed June 5, 2023.
“Me and my boys ar coming to (L)ander to see whats up with you,” Lepe texted the woman, reportedly.
The woman did not want to go with Lepe. She’d come to Lander to get away from him because he physically and mentally abused her while they were together, the affidavit alleges, adding that Lepe had been treating her like a “punching bag.”
But she thought if she didn’t go with Lepe he’d either kill her or take her by force, and she couldn’t go anywhere to escape him, the affidavit says.
The prosecutor’s motion from last week says the woman had also started dating a former boyfriend, and Lepe was jealous.
“Lepe had also made statements to (her) that he could utilize his connections with the Mexican cartel to have her and her family ‘taken care of,’” wrote Garber in the affidavit.
No Phone, No Freedom
Within one or two days of returning to Montana, Lepe started physically and mentally abusing his victim, the affidavit claims. She didn’t have a cellphone and she wasn’t free to leave Lepe’s home, allegedly, at any time unless he was with her.
The affidavit says Lepe bought her a new cellphone at some point, but he took it away that same day after getting angry with her. She was allowed to use his phone May 21 to call her adult son, and Lepe was on the call the whole time and controlled the conversation, allegedly.
In mid-May, Lepe reportedly pointed a black 9 mm semiautomatic handgun at the woman and threatened to shoot her.
The affidavit says he then smacked her on the top of the head with the bottom of the handgun grip, breaking the flesh of her skull so she bled, and hit her on the back with the gun.
Holes In Both Legs
Then he picked up a black .22-caliber rifle, pointed at the woman and threatened to shoot her, the affidavit says. It claims that he poked her with the end of the rifle barrel and held it against her head, then fired three rounds in rapid succession.
One of those rounds, the document claims, went through the woman’s right thigh, the second went through her left thigh, and the third hit the wall after just missing her head.
“Lepe became angry because she bled on the floor,” wrote Garber.
The affidavit says the woman looked down at her thighs and saw entry and exit wounds in both legs.
Hellish Allegations
During the weeks in Lepe’s home, Lepe allegedly beat the woman with an electric drill and an electric grinder, whipped her legs with long USB charging cables, stuck a tuning fork-like object into her nostrils, smacked and broke her nose, blackened her eyes, stabbed her in the belly and gut with nails and screws, poked her with a metal stake, bashed her with a heavy wooden lamp, tried to gouge her eyes out with his hands, choked her, hit her with a knife and punched her while she was sleeping, according to the affidavit.
Lepe’s daughter and son-in-law came to the home to borrow something May 29, 2023, says the affidavit.
While the three stood outside talking the victim stepped outside and announced she’d been shot and needed medical attention.
Lepe’s daughter yelled at Lepe to take the woman to the doctor. Lepe then got angry and threw a rock at his daughter, telling her to mind her own business, allegedly.
The son-in-law charged Lepe and the pair got into a fight, the affidavit claims.
The woman used this chance to run from the home. She crawled under a chain-link fence and ran toward Cooney Reservoir; she hid in the bushes for two hours until she could no longer hear Lepe’s vehicle driving around the area, or see Lepe looking for her, says the affidavit.
Then she walked to the Cooney Bar, where she called her mother and 911.
Checks Out, FBI Says
Garber wrote that the woman’s injuries corroborate her story.
A judge issued a June 1, 2023, search warrant and the (Montana) Carbon County Sheriff’s Office and FBI searched Lepe’s home.
The windows and doors were screwed shut, as the woman had reported, the affidavit says. There were bullet holes and bullet fragments in the walls, and clothes and carpet stained with blood.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
