CHEYENNE — A Cody, Wyoming, man suspected of murdering his girlfriend received a seven-year, three-month prison sentence Friday on a separate charge for possessing ammunition as a felon.
The missing woman’s family wore shirts printed with her missing poster to the hearing, “so he can see her face,” said her longtime best friend Shandal Pulver.
Though 27-year-old Adam Shane Aviles Jr.’s sentencing hearing Friday in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming was not a proceeding in a murder case, but an unlawful firearms ammunition possession case, it unfolded like a mini-murder trial. He’s been named a person of interest in Katie Ferguson’s disappearance and suspected murder, but not charged.
The prosecutor and defense attorney battled over whether Ferguson’s bloody disappearance last autumn was proof enough that he committed murder to make his sentence in the possession case more severe.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Paige Hammer argued that not only did Aviles kill Ferguson last October while the pair were traveling by vehicle to Wyoming from Arkansas with their two small children, but that he did so maliciously and deliberately. She said it was more likely than not that Aviles committed second-degree murder, and that his ammunition sentencing should reflect that.
But Hammer also limited her proposed sentence to eight years in prison, the maximum she agreed to argue under a plea agreement she struck in exchange for Aviles’ guilty plea on the ammunition charge.
Conversely, Aviles’ public defense attorney, David Weiss said the evidence shows that if Aviles killed Ferguson at all, he did so with a flawed rationale of self-defense or in a sudden heat of passion. That would have equated Aviles’ actions to a manslaughter charge instead of second-degree murder.
Weiss asked for a sentence between five years and 10 months, and seven years and three months in prison.
Ultimately, U.S. District Court Judge Allan B. Johnson ruled that it is more likely than not that Aviles killed Ferguson unlawfully. But the judge was not willing to label Aviles’ actions as second-degree murder, even for the limited purposes of sentencing.
We just don’t know enough about what happened in the days leading up to Ferguson vanishing, said Johnson.
Grisly And Lengthy
The sentencing followed an entire morning of testimony by FBI Special Agent Luke Williamson, in which Williamson was allowed to repeat secondhand witness statements gathered in the course of the investigation.
Williamson’s summary was long and grisly.
Ferguson’s family and friends, who attended the hearing wearing shirts with her face on them, wept intermittently throughout the hearing.
Aviles’ father and stepsister also attended, and also wept.
Katie Ferguson called her on-and-off boyfriend Adam Shane Aviles Jr. for financial help in the summer of 2023. The pair have two children together, a kindergartener and a toddler.
Aviles decided to go to Alabama where Ferguson and her children were living with Ferguson’s mother, Mona Hartling, and reunite with them.
On Aug. 14, 2023, his stepsister was helping him prepare for the move. She gave him a Dodge Durango.
Aviles gave her money so that she could buy a .45-caliber Glock pistol to be her bear gun since she was afraid of bears, which frequent the Cody area.
Because Aviles’ stepsister was living with a person who was not allowed to have firearms, she put the Glock in a family storage unit, according to court testimony.
Aviles went to Alabama and reunited with Ferguson, and the pair tried to establish themselves. But they struggled, largely due to their drug addictions.
In early October they left Hartling’s home and reportedly headed back toward Wyoming.
Yet they drove southwest through Arkansas, toward Texas, a detour about which Johnson puzzled aloud Friday, but no one ever explained.
The Rainy Stop
On Oct. 5, 2023, a Trumann, Arkansas, police officer spoke with the family but left them alone after a brief conversation.
His body camera video revealed Ferguson and Aviles essentially car-camping in a parking lot. Ferguson appeared weary, but otherwise healthy and pleasant during the interaction. Her open passenger door was intact. Her children chattered and whined from inside the Durango.
Four days later on Oct. 9, 2023, a Texas trooper’s duty video revealed Aviles alone during another traffic stop.
The officer was concerned to find two small children, ages 2 and 5, alone without a female caretaker in a disheveled vehicle, according to Williamson’s court testimony.
The agent asked Aviles how he could get in touch with their mother.
Aviles said that their mother’s phone wasn’t working, so any attempt would be futile. She had left them, he added.
Aviles would later tell friends and family that Ferguson ran off in search of drugs and he had to leave her behind.
Back Home
Aviles stopped in Colorado next and asked his stepmother for money. He later returned to Cody.
One of the first things he did was borrow an angle grinder from a friend, saying he needed to cut something off his car, according to Williamson’s testimony.
When authorities later found Aviles’ Durango, the front passenger seat was gone.
Next, Aviles started working with his dad, Adam Shane Aviles Sr.
One of the father’s employees reported finding the Glock pistol in a work truck, according to court testimony.
Give It Back
On Nov. 2, 2023, Aviles let his dad borrow the pistol to take with him on a hunting trip, said Williamson.
That was also the day Mona Hartling reported her daughter missing.
Aviles rushed to his father’s hunting campsite and demanded the gun back.
“Did you whack her?” asked the father, according to Williamson’s secondhand account of the father’s later police interviews.
“The kids are safe, that’s what matters,” answered the son, reportedly.
Aviles’ phone search history shows he was looking for answers about how Americans can move to Canada, and about strong cleaning products like lye, according to court testimony.
‘Horrific’
Also around this time, the elder Aviles reportedly found a large pink tote container at his home, where his son lived, that smelled of rotting meat.
When Williamson described the tote, some of Ferguson’s family members left the courtroom in tears, including Hartling. Hartling would re-enter the courtroom several minutes later.
Williamson continued with his testimony, saying the father put the tote in the dumpster.
This upset Aviles Jr.
Saying the tote contained “DNA,” the son retrieved it from the dumpster, according to the court testimony.
Investigators have never found the tote, said Williamson.
Hammer told the court that the tote likely contained “horrific” evidence.
Middle Of Nowhere
Also around this time, two hunters reported to Park County law enforcement the discovery of an abandoned Dodge Durango on a two-track road on federal land. The middle of nowhere, by Williamson’s account.
The Durango’s windows were plastered over from the inside with black garbage bags. Park County investigators converged and found that the vehicle is registered to Aviles Jr., according to Williamson’s testimony.
Fearing that Ferguson was in danger or trapped inside the vehicle, authorities broke at least one window open to get inside it.
The interior smelled of putrefied blood, and a cadaver dog alerted on the vehicle. Investigators found bloody clothing, removed portions of the vehicle’s interior, a loaded Glock magazine and cleaning chemicals, according to court testimony and documents.
They also discovered blood later found to contain Ferguson’s DNA in the lower seal of the front passenger door. And they found three bullets embedded in the passenger side of the Durango. At least two of those bullets were fired by the same gun, according to crime lab evidence repeated in court.
Johnson made a finding Friday that the bullets were among those Aviles possessed unlawfully. The finding linked the forbidden ammunition to the “likely” finding that Aviles killed Ferguson with it.
Johnson’s findings do not equate to a murder conviction. They merely added time to Aviles’ recommended sentence for the ammunition conviction.
Burned Baby
Aviles told some of the people in his life that Ferguson had dropped their 2-year-old daughter in a fire during the trip. Indeed, the toddler had a severe burn on her arm for which her grandmother took her to the emergency room roughly one month after Aviles’ homecoming.
Aviles walked up to the Durango carrying gas cans while authorities were searching it. He told them the vehicle was out of gas, which investigators later found to be untrue, Williamson told the court.
Aviles drove away from the scene in a different vehicle in which he’d arrived. He also called his mother to tell her he loved her, she’d be receiving another phone call later and that she was to take care of his children. He handed the children over to her that night.
Aviles later turned himself in to police after allegedly stealing his dad’s truck.
In the truck, agents found a handwritten note on a plastic bag signed “Adam Shane Aviles Jr.”
“I love you. I’m sorry about the mirror. No matter what happens to me, God knows what happened, so it’ll be fine,” the letter said, according to court testimony.
The letter ends with the writer saying the important matter is that the children are fine. He asks if he can speak with the children once a week.
“Love you, Dad,” the letter concludes.
Could Have Been Any Kind Of Killing
One of Aviles’ family members told investigators that Aviles and Ferguson had been using drugs and Ferguson was acting “crazy” and possibly endangering the children.
The family member said Ferguson may have been trying to “wreck” the vehicle while she and Aviles fought over the gun.
Weiss grilled Williamson over that evidence, and the array of scenarios that could have unfolded in that Durango in Arkansas. Aviles could have shot Fergsuon to save the children from her taking over the Durango’s steering wheel in traffic; he could have shot her in self-defense; he could have “killed her some other way” after she shot at him, the defender said.
Williamson conceded that these hypotheticals are possible under the evidence.
But the agent ventured a theory of his own.
“I believe he killed her,” said Williamson.
Weiss later acknowledged that Aviles could be charged with murder at some point.
On Weiss’ advice, Aviles declined to give any sentencing testimony on his own behalf.
‘Rings In My Head’
No one has heard from Ferguson since Oct. 5 of last year, Williamson told the court.
Pulver, Ferguson’s best friend of 15 years, told Cowboy State Daily she hopes Friday’s sentencing would bring at least some closure for Ferguson’s loved ones.
Ferguson was “a great mom — there for everybody, definitely for her family,” said Pulver.
Erika DeLeon, Ferguson’s friend of 30 years, said she still hears Ferguson’s laugh.
“Her laugh would fill up a room. It rings in my head all the time,” said DeLeon.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
