A Douglas, Wyoming, woman and her boyfriend are each facing up to 11 years in prison on claims they attacked the woman’s mother, splitting her forehead to the bone and leaving her on a rural roadside.
Betsy Burnham, 25, and her boyfriend Dakota Gaughran, 32, are each charged with aggravated assault and reckless endangering. The assault charge is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and $10,000 in fines and the reckless endangering charge carries up to one year in jail and $1,000 in fines.
Gaughran’s case rose Monday to the felony-level Platte County District Court, while Burnham’s preliminary hearing is set for Aug. 6 in Wheatland Circuit Court.
Sheriff On Duty
Platte County Sheriff David Russell was on duty at about 7:14 the evening of June 28 when he learned of a reported assault, with the caller saying she was bleeding badly from her head and alone on the side of a highway, says the case evidentiary affidavit.
The sheriff found her on Highway 319 north of Glendo.
She reportedly had a large, skull-deep slash in the center of her forehead.
“You could see the bone,” Russell wrote later in the affidavit.
The woman said her daughter, Burnham, and daughter’s boyfriend, Gaughran, had been drinking at the woman’s Wheatland home
Burnham told her mother to come with them to Burnham’s Douglas home, the mother told the sheriff.
But on the drive there, things were off and the mother didn’t like the music playing in the white, two-door passenger car, the affidavit says. From her seat in the back, she asked to get out.
Burnham and Gaughran, who were in the front seats, wouldn’t let her get out. Then they hit her, the document says.
The affidavit continues, saying the car stopped, the daughter and boyfriend took the mother out of the vehicle and beat her on the roadside, then left her there and went to Douglas without her.
Brass In The Wound
A firefighter who arrived on scene tended to the mother, then Glendo emergency medical personnel took her to the Converse County Memorial Hospital, the document says.
Russell learned that Burnham was on probation out of Converse County. Burnham was convicted and sentenced to probation in 2023 for felony DUI, for having a fourth DUI within 10 years, her court file says.
Russell asked the Douglas Police Department to find Burnham.
Meanwhile, Platte County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Christina Mangan was working as a medical responder at the hospital and reported that while the mother’s wound was being cleaned, the doctor found a piece of brass in it.
The mother told Mangan the same story she’d told Russell, the affidavit says, but she wasn’t sure which of the two people hurt her. She speculated that her head wound was from a boot.
The document says that besides having her forehead split to the bone, Mangan reported that the mother had bruising and swelling in both wrists and in her left pinky.
Burnham, who posted a $7,500 cash bond July 5, could not be reached via her listed phone number.
Neither Burnham nor Gaughran’s attorneys immediately responded to Cowboy State Daily phone messages requesting comment.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
