A former Wyoming police officer is facing felony rape and assault charges in Colorado, accused of sexually torturing his 19-year-old extramarital girlfriend.
Sean Tatro, 33, is charged with strangulation assault, sexual assault, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, menacing, using stun guns and various misdemeanors in Garfield County Court, according to an evidentiary affidavit provided Wednesday to Cowboy State Daily.
He served a brief stint at the Riverton Police Department starting in 2020, but had most recently been a school resource officer for the Glenwood Springs Police Department in Colorado.
The investigation culminated April 24, when a Silt Police Department lieutenant gave an investigative packet to Garfield County sheriff’s agents that contained the lieutenant’s own written recollection of a “menacing” situation in which Tatro had allegedly tried to intimidate his girlfriend by circling her quickly in his car as she walked through the parking lot of Anytime Fitness in the Western Slope city of Rifle in early April.
Bad Idea
At a Thanksgiving dinner Nov. 23, the young woman told a female police agent who also happened to be there that she was dating Tatro. The agent said that was a bad idea because Tatro was married, the affidavit says.
Court documents say the pair first met each other at the young woman’s high school homecoming dance.
Despite the agent’s warning, Tatro and the woman kept hanging out and carrying on a sexual “parking lot” relationship where they spent time together in one another’s vehicles, reportedly.
The young woman’s written and verbal accounts of their relationship, related in the affidavit, say they were both jealous — him of her other contacts and she of his wife. Her accounts also say they drank alcohol and smoked marijuana together frequently and went on trips together, staying at Airbnbs in the later weeks of their relationship.
He allegedly first pushed her to the ground Jan. 14 after answering a call to the woman’s phone from a person the affidavit calls a friend of hers. That was around the time he became aggressive during sex, pulling her hair and choking her, the document says.
Around Feb. 16-18, she looked through his phone and found he was talking to other women, and she said she was going to leave him. He called her crazy, threatened to kill himself and hurled his phone at her leg, causing it to shatter when it hit the ground, the affidavit says.
Around March 22-24, Tatro stayed in his estranged wife’s house to take care of the dogs and had his girlfriend over, reportedly. They had a “strange” discussion about Tatro’s wife; he got drunk and went to bed. The next day, his mood changed after his phone rang around lunchtime, and he told his girlfriend, “If you ever hurt me again, I will kill you,” says the document.
The girlfriend acted as if he’d just made a joke.
The affidavit says he replied he was “not playing,” and retrieved his taser and tased his girlfriend with it in the leg.
While she lay on the floor clutching her leg, he put the taser away, says the affidavit.
‘I Want To Make You Pass Out’
On March 30, he reportedly slapped the left side of her face several times, bruising her cheek. That was also the month they’d been play fighting and he got too rough with her, the document says.
At one point, Tatro sent the woman’s mother a photo of the woman’s facial bruising, saying the woman’s recent medical treatment was causing her to bruise easily, reportedly.
The woman’s account says that in early spring, Tatro could not get sexually excited without slapping her. In one incident, he sexually tortured her so that she bled and it hurt to urinate, the affidavit relates.
In early April (the affidavit gives two different dates) the pair met at Deer Field Park in Rifle. He was allegedly drunk, and they drove in his vehicle to an unknown location on the Flat Tops. They decided to break up. But he initiated sex, and choked her while they were having sex, as she gasped for air and tried to pry his hands off her throat, allegedly.
“I want to make you pass out,” he said, according to the document.
The affidavit says he didn’t care that she couldn’t breathe and didn’t stop choking her until the act was complete.
She officially broke up with him the next day.
On April 19, the woman texted the female police agent with whom she’d dined on Thanksgiving, saying her “ex-boyfriend” had been smoking marijuana and hitting her, but that he told her no one would believe her if she reported him because he’s a cop.
What He Said
An investigator interviewed Tatro in late April after Tatro, having heard his Miranda rights, reportedly agreed to talk.
He said they had sex in their cars and would often stay in Airbnbs. He said he did have rough sex with the woman, and would use one hand on her throat but never two. He acknowledged sending the woman’s mother a photo of her bruise, and acknowledged buying alcohol for her, allegedly.
Tatro told police they “play fought” all the time, causing him to incur a bloody lip, but never leading to the woman being injured, the document says.
He reportedly denied the incident at Anytime Fitness, and said his taser only deployed when he accidentally stunned himself while spark testing the taser.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
