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[{"type":"text","text":"The couple that paints together, (sometimes) stays together...."}]

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

<title>You Still Here? Tuesday, July 16, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The couple that paints together, (sometimes) stays together....

You Still Here? Tuesday, July 16, 2024

 The couple that paints together, (sometimes) stays together....

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

Seven years in prison beginning at 19 for putting a club into the head of a Swiss miner was followed by a couple of decades as a preacher and labor movement orator.

His personal reformation rewarded him with a Wyoming state role enforcing children and animal welfare.

But after just months on the state job, allegations of “white slavery” involving two teenage Casper girls in 1924 meant Baptiste John Minort needed to resign his state position and pulpit role. 

Those charges were eventually dropped and he was back filling a pulpit in Torrington when a “disturbing the peace” charge in 1926 was filed, alleging he had been in a rooming house with a woman in Nebraska he claimed was his wife under an assumed name.

An old character that many believed was buried and destroyed for the 42-year-old Torrington grain store manager and police court judge suddenly had resurfaced.

“Torrington Pastor Slays Family, Suicides,” the Casper Daily Tribune reported on Nov. 15, 1926. “Wife and Four Children Dead as Climax to Late Scandal.”

Newspapers across the country carried the headlines that an Associated Press reporter wrote likely were caused by “wagging tongues” and “domestic difficulties.”

Minort was born Feb. 20, 1884, in France and emigrated to the U.S. in 1892 to Missouri.

In 1901, at 17, he married Luisa Elizabeth Huber and they had five children, including Baptiste John Jr. in 1902, sons Carl, David and Clarence in 1912, 1915, and 1917, and daughter, La Von in 1922.

When he was 19, Minort was charged and convicted for killing a Swiss miner, Vincent Gaffney, at a coal camp in Riverton, Missouri, in March 1903 after a dispute about missing money from Gaffney’s room. Gaffney boarded with the Minort family.

“Minort claimed that Gaffney drew a revolver on him, then, in order to protect himself, he struck Gaffney twice on the head with a club, knocking him against a barbed wire fence, after which he choked him,” the Henry County Democrat reported on March 26, 1903. “Gaffney died as a result of his injuries.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Second-Degree Murder"}]

After his conviction on a second-degree murder charge, Minort was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released after seven.

Newspaper accounts state that while in prison he started reading the Bible and when he got out moved to Nebraska. Whether he pursued formal religious training is not known.

 In May 1914, he took a role as a pastor at a Sterling, Nebraska, church and also had a role as the chairman and clerk of a Sunday school convention.

The Sterling Sun reported he was helping at a revival meeting in Falls City, Nebraska. His efforts in evangelism and teaching grew his church by 200 people, according to a report in the Norfolk Daily News.

By 1922, he was serving as a pastor in a church in Alliance, Nebraska, and was the main speaker at a Labor Day gathering in Casper.

The Casper Daily Tribune on Sept. 5, 1922, reported that Minort delivered an “inspirational address” that promoted the idea of trade unions and how they eliminated “classes” in society. Hundreds gathered to hear him.

“America has no class from which it is impossible to emerge,” he said. “America is distinguished throughout the world by the high standard of living which the masses of her people enjoy.”

By 1924, he had moved to Torrington and taken the pastorate of a Baptist church. He was appointed by Gov. William B. Ross to be the state commissioner of child and animal protection on July 22. Minort embraced the role by bringing charges against 22 boys and girls involved in a wild Cheyenne party in October of that year at the YWCA and Pine Cove. 

He blamed the parents for allowing their children to be at the party.

He also made headlines by uncovering a plot of a stepson to accuse his stepfather of choking an old man to death so he could inherit his mother’s property.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mann Act Violation"}]

But on Nov. 8, he was accused by a federal grand jury of transporting two juvenile delinquent girls across the state line to Nebraska for immoral purposes under the Mann Act. Minort had taken the pair from their uncle in Casper and was supposed to take them back to a Cheyenne facility.

“The girls told police and federal authorities that Minort, instead of going to Cheyenne, stopped in Mitchell, Nebraska, where he is alleged to have mistreated them,” the Grand Island Independent newspaper reported on Nov. 12, 1924.

Minort responded that the charges were false and he had taken the girls there to be under the care of an aunt. Still, he resigned from his role as the state commissioner and stepped down from the pulpit. The Torrington community rallied around him and a fund was set up for his defense.

Those charges were eventually dropped by the federal district court in April 1926 because the girls could not be located to testify.

Meanwhile, Minort worked for the Cheyenne Police Department supervising chain gangs and then got a job managing the Torrington grain elevator. When the charges were dropped, he was named as a police court judge in Torrington and he resumed preaching at a church in the city.

On Nov. 7, 1926, Minort was caught by Bayard, Nebraska, police in a rooming house with a woman from Torrington who was not his wife. He had registered under the name of “Joe Lander and wife.”

A man from Torrington saw him and remarked he looked like Minort. The town’s marshal investigated and called Minort’s wife in Torrington at 3 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 8.

“Minort, after admitting his identity, asserted that he had been the victim of a ‘frame-up’ and that he had been forced at the point of a gun at Bayard (by men) to get into the automobile with the woman and had been intimidated into registering with her as husband and wife,” The Wyoming State Tribune reported on Nov. 15, 1926.

The newspaper reported that the landlady of the rooming house did not confirm his story. Minort was fined $25 and ordered to pay costs of $15.

On Saturday, Nov. 13, Minort resigned his post as a police judge for Torrington.

Early on Nov. 14 Minort, who had prepared a sermon he called “Breaking the Alabaster Box” for church that morning, took a 12-gauge shotgun and shot his wife in the head as she lay sleeping in a bed with their young daughter, 4. He then used a .22-caliber rifle to shoot his daughter twice in the head.

Two sons, who lay in their beds, were killed with one bullet to the head from a .32-caliber revolver. His second-oldest son was killed as he entered his mom’s bedroom with a shot to the head. He was dressed and, according to the Wyoming State Tribune on Nov. 15, had been working for another family in the country and likely returned home for church before being shot.

Minort took time to write letters to the sheriff, his surviving son at a college in Missouri, and to the public as well as to a religious rival in Casper.

Then he called the local undertaker just after 9 a.m. and told him he needed him at the house.

When the undertaker arrived, he could see Minort on the kitchen floor, gasping for air before he died, the Wyoming State Tribune reported. Police were summoned and found a mirror on the kitchen table that he apparently set up so he could shoot himself in the head.

They then discovered the breadth of Minort’s actions in eliminating his family.

In his letter to the public, Minort asserted that he had been framed in the incident with the Torrington woman in Bayard. In his note to the sheriff, he gave his son’s address at college in Missouri.

In a letter to his son, he explained that his mother had told him she would kill herself if he brought shame to the family again. Minort wrote he was going to save her from “spiritual torment” by killing her.

“I killed her and the rest of them rather than have the shadow of the past upon them,” he wrote. “Mother and children are in heaven and I suffer my own fate through the hands of destiny.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"No Caskets, One Grave"}]

Minor told Baptiste John Jr. to just dig a hole and bury the family in one grave to save on burial costs and that he could sell a box of shells he had at the grain elevator for $20 to get some money to help with costs.

“Well my son, I must hasten, as the gun beckons to me and I must hurry before I have lost my nerve,” he wrote, adding that the rest of his son’s life was his own. “So, do the best that you can.”

A coroner’s grand jury ruled that the murders and suicide were all the responsibility of Minort. The family members were buried in Valley View Cemetery in Torrington.

Minort’s surviving son was a sophomore at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, and learned of the shootings from the college dean as he wrote a letter to his father during the afternoon on Tuesday, Nov. 16, according to the Daily Standard newspaper in Excelsior, Missouri on Nov. 17, 1926.

John Minort along with Minort’s brother, Louis, the mayor of Lexington, Missouri, attended the funeral, which was packed with mourners from the Torrington community. All the slain were in caskets, Minort’s exhortation to his son ignored.

The community bore the costs of the funeral and burials, the newspaper reported.

The Western Nebraska Observer reported on Nov. 25, 1926, that the son “bore up bravely” to the tragedy.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Forgiving Mourners"}]

“It was remarked that the crowd seemingly were forgiving and even sorrowful in their attitude toward the dead man,” the newspaper reported. “Many were seen to pause beside his casket and drop a tear. … Torrington people, heard to comment on the affair after the funeral, declared that Minort had not been himself, to all appearances for several weeks past.”

Three years after the tragedy, the young Minort returned to Torrington and visited old friends. 

The Scottsbluff Daily Star-Herald reprinted a story from the Torrington paper on June 16, 1929, that stated that Baptiste John Jr. had been involved in a cafe business and had to quit college due to lack of funds.

“He has enjoyed a fair success and will continue in the cafe business,” the newspaper reported. “His friends in Torrington are glad to learn that he is pleasantly located and making a success of his efforts.”

Minort went on to marry twice, once in 1934 in Missouri. The marriage lasted a year. He married his second wife in 1945 and became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 

Baptiste John Minort Jr. lived his last years in Utah and died on Aug. 16, 1970. 

Heworked as cook for most of his life and is buried in Price City, Utah.

Pastor killed family Valley View Thermopolis 8 9 26

<title>Wyoming History: Disgraced Pastor Shocked State By Killing Family, Self In 1926 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Shocking headlines from 100 years ago after a pastor from Torrington gunned down his wife and four of his five children, then himself. He wrote he had brought shame to them when caught with a woman in a rooming house in Nebraska under an assumed name.

Wyoming History: Disgraced Pastor Shocked State By Killing Family, Self In 1926

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

Renée Jean

Business

Kelli Tracy feels like she’s “living in a Hallmark movie.” She and her husband just closed on their own brick-and-mortar store in downtown Sheridan, and she’s now celebrating her 10th year in business. 

These days, her Lil Bee’s Bohemian clothing line ships all over the world, and the business brings in a comfortable $600,000 to $700,000 a year in sales. 

But, like any Hallmark movie, getting to “happily ever after” wasn’t an easy task. 

The journey started when she was unexpectedly laid off from a big corporate job in Florida as a quality assurance compliance manager. It was scary.

“I had just moved in with my now husband but, at the time, my boyfriend,” Tracy recalled. “And he was like, ‘Well you need to get a job. You need to maybe go back to bartending or go back to doing something so you have money coming in.’” 

Tracy had done plenty of bartending in college and had no intention of going back to it. She had a completely different idea, one people told her was crazy at the time.  

“The next day I started my own boutique with clothing out of my closet,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “That’s when Instagram first started. Like it was just coming out and the algorithms were great. Everything was great.”

She propped a mannequin she bought from California — a model she named Lola — in front of her phone, dressed it in her own clothes, and opened a Shopify account. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Lil Bee’s Bohemian was born."}]

Starting out, her biggest problem wasn’t finding customers. She had plenty of people clamoring for the outfits she was styling. 

Her trouble was finding inventory priced low enough that she could resell it with a healthy profit margin. 

“I didn’t know there were places like Fashion Go or like Marketplaces and all the things,” she said. “You can go to Dallas Market and like find all your vendors.”

Initially, to get inventory, she’d go to places like Ross and Marshalls to buy items for the outfits she was promoting on Instagram. It was rare, but if the outfits didn’t sell, she’d just return them.

That strategy wasn’t going to work long-term, she realized. She had to figure out something else.

“Then I met a lady named Holly who owns Baja Ranch and she’s the one who helped me,” Tracy said. “I was buying a bunch of her stuff off eBay, because it was really cheap, to resell. And so she asked me like, ‘What are you buying all this stuff for?’”

When Tracy explained she was starting a boutique and needed inventory, Holly explained where she could go to find wholesale items to resell. 

“I mean, you can buy from me,” she said. “But you can get all of this stuff here.”

And the prices would be much less expensive. Wholesale pricing, Holly explained, would let Tracy keep her margins, without relying on returns.

Tracy, meanwhile, helped Holly figure out how to start Instagram and Shopify accounts so she could improve her business model.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A $12,000 Surprise"}]

Once she had reliable wholesale sources, sales were booming. But there was a big problem. Somehow, despite making many, many sales, the money wasn’t adding up. 

“I was like, ‘Man, where is all the money?’ Like I know I didn’t spend all this money,” she said. 

Eventually she figured out that many of the purchases were landing in her business’ PayPal account. She thought that money would transfer to her bank account automatically, but it was sitting there, quietly waiting for her to go in and authorize its transfer.

“I was almost to the point of bagging it,” Tracy said. “I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do this. I can’t really afford more stuff.’ And then I wound up with all this extra money.”

The business was saved, and Tracy realized she had to get more organized. The scare pushed her to tighten up her books and treat Lil Bee’s less like an experiment and more like the real business it was becoming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"One Closet Wasn’t Enough"}]

As the business grew, so did its footprint inside the couple’s home. 

It was no longer just her own closet. It was every closet in the house. She put racks in the spare bedroom, the living room, and even one hallway.

“It was just taking over the house,” Tracy said. “It was bad. I remember looking over at my husband and his two kids and the dog and they all looked at me like I was crazy.”

Finally, one day her husband said, “Hey, if you go get a place like a studio or like an office, this whole entire closet here could be your personal closet.”

Tracy heard what he was really saying. It was time for Lil Bee’s to grow wings and fly. 

“I had the keys to a showroom the next day,” she said. “Within 24 hours.”

The business doubled in size and quickly outgrew the showroom. She moved it next to a big warehouse, and just kept upgrading from there. 

“At one point, I think I had two, maybe three warehouses,” she said. “It just kept getting bigger and bigger.”

The growth looked impressive on paper. At peak, Lil Bee’s was doing more than $1.4 million a year in sales.

But the pace was grueling, the overhead relentless, and she was working all the time. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Right-Sizing Her Business"}]

By year eight, she made some decisions that shape the business as it is today. 

First, she decided to start making her own clothing designs instead of just buying and reselling other people’s ideas.

That would also allow her to boost the quality. No more thin, disposable stuff. She wanted pieces that people could keep and love forever.

She also decided just how big she wanted Lil Bee’s to be. 

“It just got to bee too much,” Tracy said. “It was just more, more, more.”

She realized that if she downsized her business, she’d still remain profitable and she would have more time to focus on her own designs.

That turned out to be a fortuitous move. Her ‘70s-inspired clothes caught the eye of a rising country star — Lainey Wilson.

Wilson, then an artist in Nashville, was a regular customer. 

“She bought bell bottoms from me and she called it ‘Balling on a budget,’” Tracy said with a chuckle. “She even spoke about Lil Bee’s on the Bobby Bones podcast.”

Eventually, Wilson and Tracy teamed up on a collaborative clothing line built around flared jeans and boho blouses. 

“We created four items together,” Tracy said. “It was a really cool, button-down top, a pair of jeans, like acid-washed black jeans, a bandana, and striped bell bottoms.”

As Wilson’s career took off, however, the partnership became more complicated. New managers stepped in, and access to the star tightened. 

“I couldn’t just call her up anymore,” Tracy said. “I didn’t take it personally though. She’s a wonderful person, and she’s the same way in person as she is on stage.”

The Lainey Wilson chapter was a fun, unexpected part of her business journey, but it’s not the one Tracy likes best. 

That's the one she’s in right now, designing her own clothes and selling wholesale to 146 stores across America as well as stores in Canada. She also ships orders direct around the world and has a loyal following in Australia. 

The boutique shop she just closed on in Sheridan exactly 10 years after starting her business is a full-circle moment. 

The store is just 800 square feet. But it feels just right for now.

“It’s packed so full of just amazing beautiful stuff,” she said. “I’ve got my entire line in there — all my blouses, and jewelry.”

There are sweaters, jackets, dresses, tallow makeup, bags and a hat bar, too. 

“When you get in there, it’s like a time capsule back into the '70s,” she said. “It’s groovy, and there’s not one thing that’s plain. It’s like a maximalist dream.”

It’s a dream that’s also planted in the one place in the world she’s decided she likes the best of every place she’s ever roamed — Sheridan. She got to know the town after visiting some friends, and just decided it’s where she’s always belonged.

“It’s just marvelous,” she said. “This last Christmas we had the Holiday Stroll and it snowed. I mean, it snowed so much that night, it was just marvelous. Everyone was out there with hot chocolate and their scarves and I was like this is nuts. Like I’m living in a Hallmark movie.”

Lil Bees and Kelly Tracy 8 16 26

<title>How A Sheridan Woman Turned Her Closet Into A Funky Worldwide Fashion Business | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Laid off from a corporate job, Kelli Tracy started selling clothes out of her closet on Instagram. Ten years later, she owns Sheridan’s Lil Bee’s Bohemian and ships her '70s-inspired designs to people all over the world from her Wyoming storefront.

How A Sheridan Woman Turned Her Closet Into A Funky Worldwide Fashion Business

Kerry Drake

John Adolfi, a creationist in Syracuse, New York, searched for many years for Noah’s Ark and a race of giants who supposedly walked the Earth. But until he died last November, the elusive Pedro Mountain Mummy found in Wyoming in 1932 still clearly haunted him.

In 2005, Adolfi posted a $10,000 reward for the tiny mummified remains of the 

” as he came to be known in the region. Pedro hasn’t been seen in public since 1950, but in the past 76 years the mummy has been the source of extraordinary speculation about its origin.

Adolfi’s goal was to have the mummy tested through DNA samples, magnetic resonance imaging, and improved X-ray technology to establish exactly what it was so he could disprove the theory of evolution.

Countless newspaper and magazine articles have been written about Pedro, who is also the subject of a host of videos on YouTube and was featured on an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” in 1994. 

Some of the videos make sensational claims, including that he was a member of a tribe of 

But was the human-like Pedro an example of the Nimerigar, a mythical tribe of savage pygmies with sharp teeth that Native Americans thought were hiding in the mountains? 

Nimerigar is literally translated as “people eaters,” and it’s said they shot their Indian prey with tiny bows and poisoned arrows. 

In 1941, the Milwaukee Journal asked in a headline, “Did a Race of Pygmies Once Live in America?” According to this account, the preserved mummy was a 65-year-old man.

Most disturbing was the article’s claim that X-rays showed “food in the stomach appears to have been raw meat. The teeth in the front of the mouth are pointed and of the flesh-eating variety.”

Or was the mummy an example of a benign race of humanoid pranksters? 

One aspect of the legend is that people who go near the San Pedro Mountains in southern Wyoming should carry something shiny to offer the Little People as a gift, so they knew no harm would come to them.

Perhaps all the fascination is due to the fact that while so little is known about the mummy, including its whereabouts, there is no doubt that it existed, that it looked freakish, and there are still copies of X-rays — but not the X-rays themselves — that have led to scientific speculation that Pedro was either a full-grown adult or an infant with an abnormality called anencephalus, in which only the brain stem develops. 

Complicating matters was the appearance of a large wound on top of its head.

There is just enough photographic and other evidence left for people to claim Pedro was anything they want it to be.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Wanted To Disprove Evolution"}]

Two decades ago, Adolphi told then-Casper Star-Tribune reporter Brendan Burke — who became so curious about the mummy that he added Pedro to his unofficial beat — that he realized proof of a previously unknown prehistoric relative of man would not disprove evolution.

But Adolphi maintained that a new humanoid species would poke holes in the paradigm evolutionists have created regarding human origins.

Six months later he was interviewed again by Burke, who reported that while Adolfi said he received many leads, none had panned out.

A Wyoming woman told him the mummy was in the possession of an Indian tribe not based in Wyoming. But Adolfi investigated and determined that tip was a dead end.

So was another person who reported seeing Pedro at a garage sale in New Jersey. And an 86-year-old Wyoming man who had what appeared to be a hominoid mummy that could fit in the palm of one’s hand.

But the man was not willing to have the artifact X-rayed, Adolfi said, because he didn’t want to know if it was an authentic Nimerigar corpse or a vegetable carving. And the man wanted to continue believing that his mummy was “the real deal.”

Adolfi said he was willing to pay less money for evidence of other pygmy mummies, but he apparently never got his hands on one.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"A Middle Eastern Cousin?"}]

 on his YouTube channel Lost World Museum, though, is fascinating. 

Adolfi interviews a man with a Middle Eastern accent and wearing clear plastic gloves who wants to show him his own find. The man speaks in a foreign language to someone off camera, and relays the answers in English.

The man unwraps what looks much like Pedro from Wyoming, but in a slightly different pose and with a lot more hair. He says the artifact was discovered about a half-meter underground by accident.

“Unfortunately, we can’t share too much with (viewers) about location or what’s going to happen with this little fella,” Adolfi says. “But I wanted you to see this for yourself, examine it, and ask yourself, ‘Is this a full-grown human? Or is it just a mummified fetus?’"

“The doctor here says it is fully human,” the man volunteers. “It’s estimated to be 1,500 years old.”

“They do have plans for it,” Adolfi says when the man is gone. “I know there are some questions about the legalities of it. I know if this was in the United States, such as the Pedro Mountain Mummy, there’s Native American rights there, and obviously there's archaeological rights there, there are human rights there.

“But over in the Middle East, Far East, there are laws and whatnot that you have to follow. But they’re big boys, and they’re going to do whatever they’re going to do, I guess.”

Adolfi speculates that the mummy “is going to be put in someone’s private collection, and it’s never going to be seen again.”

Wherever Pedro is, or whether he still even exists, George Gill, a University of Wyoming anthropology professor, has seen the medical research and he said it’s definitely an anencephalic infant. 

He said in 2013 that further testing on a female pygmy mummy later brought to Gill and sent to Children’s Hospital in Denver to obtain X-rays, a DNA sample and a radiocarbon date yielded the same result.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Pedro’s Strange Journey"}]

The Pedro Mountain Mummy was discovered in 1932 by two gold prospectors, Cecil Main and Frank Carr, who detonated some explosives near the Pathfinder Reservoir and opened up a cave, according to an article in the Oct. 21, 1932, Casper Tribune-Herald.

Inside on a ledge by itself was Pedro, sitting with his feet tucked under him and his arms crossed. 

In 2013, the website Atlas Obscura described Pedro: “His skin was brown and dried by the arid Wyoming climate, his mouth was drawn into a placid scowl — a lean Buddha with a misshapen head.”

It was estimated that if the mummy had been standing, it would be about 17 inches tall. It weighed less than a pound.

The prospectors brought their find to Casper, where some were sure it was a hoax and others didn’t know what they were looking at. The pair sold it for the not-too-princely sum of $25.

The mummy apparently exchanged hands several times and was seen at various sideshow exhibits in the region. 

It wound up at the Jones Drug Store in Meeteetse for several years before a curious Casper car salesman named Ivan Goodman paid several thousands of dollars for it and brought it back to his showroom, where it acted as a mascot for the dealership.

It was also a place guaranteed to attract business, and Goodman was a showman of sorts. The most well-known photo of the Pedro Mountain Mummy depicts Goodman holding it in a glass case.

Main once signed an affidavit in 1941 that said the mummy was brought to the Chicago Field Museum, but there was no record of it ever being seen there. 

It’s known that Goodman did have the artifact analyzed on one of at least two trips he made with it to New York City, where it was X-rayed and examined by scientists.

“After an exhaustive study by the scientists it was agreed that it was the only specimen known of a human race of that type which perhaps dated back a million years,” Goodman told the Tribune-Herald on March 5, 1950.

The car dealer didn’t leave New York City with Pedro. It’s not clear whether he was swindled by a con man, as one story purported, or he sold it to a man named Leonard Wadler, who according to a 1979 Casper Star-Tribune article took it to Florida.

Only two things are certain: Goodman died in 1950, and Adolfi’s research showed Wadler died in the Sunshine State in the 1980s. The creationist told reporters he always expected Pedro to show up somewhere in Florida.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"True Believer In Montana"}]

Interest in the mummy has remained high in the Rocky Mountains. 

One of the foremost true believers in the region in the existence of the Little People was Shirley Smith, who owned the Little Cowboy Bar and Museum in Fromberg, Montana, for decades before it burned down in 2013.

Smith had many exhibits in her museum related to Little People of the Pryor Mountains, but apparently none survived the flames.

Her longtime partner, John Hanson of Bridger, said school children would visit the museum, and Smith had a popcorn machine. 

“She would make sure that every kid got a bag of popcorn so they could give it to the little people,” Hanson told Cowboy State Daily with a laugh.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Hanson said it was all a myth. "}]

“I think every civilization … the people of Hawaii have their little people, the Irish have their little people. I think it’s a worldwide phenomenon in that sense," he said. "Everyone seems to have some kind of little people.”

Smith grew up near Byron, in the boondocks, Hanson said.

“She spent all her life calling to (the Little People] and going up and down the mountains,” he said. “She would get some of the Crows to come over, and some of the older ones were true believers. Shirley and them would be thick as thieves talking about them. She was a true believer too.”

Diana Shaffer of Thermopolis was one of Smith’s daughters. 

“She told me that when she was young, someone brought a mummy of one to school,” Shaffer told Cowboy State Daily. 

In 2005 New York creationist John Adolfi offered a $10,000 reward if someone brought him the "Pedro Mountain Mummy" found in Wyoming in 1932 but never seen in public after 1950. With Adolfi's death in November, no one will ever claim the reward.

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