Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Me at the gym....\""}]

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

<title>Daily Smile: Monday, September 23, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

"Me at the gym....."

Daily Smile: Monday, September 23, 2024

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

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Business

Twelve miles shy of the Teton County line on a 40-acre slice of Fremont County with five mountain springs and a creek, Dubois resident Gary Engman is building a 9,000-square-foot, off-grid mansion from reclaimed antique wood that he’s calling the Cowboy Starship.

The property, which has just listed with luxury real estate brokerage Engel and Volkers for $7.95 million, is surrounded by the Absaroka and Wind River mountain ranges. Construction is expected to finish sometime in August.

Real estate broker Jo Gathercole said the home has already had a number of international callers expressing interest, and it’s not even finished yet. 

“It’s got solar, it has diesel generators,” she said. “If you wanted internet, you’d put in a Starlink. It’s completely off-grid luxury.”

Off-grid cabins are not unheard of, especially in Wyoming, Gathercole added. But an off-grid mansion?

“It’s unusual. When I first saw it, it was kind of stunning to think he was doing this. He’s more than a builder. I think of him as an artist,” she said about what Engman’s building. "He’s actually creating art with this home, which makes it very unique in my mind.”

Why Pay $40 Million To Be In Teton County?

Engman has chosen his canvas for the home with care. 

“This is just a spectacular location,” he told Cowboy State Daily, gesturing toward Ramshorn Mountain. “And I think the house looks like a starship that’s landed on top of a Wyoming mountain.”

It’s not the first luxury home Engman, a former seafood magnate, has built, and isn’t likely to be the last. 

Engman is betting he can expand the luxury market to this slice of Fremont County with homes priced more favorably when compared to ultra-wealthy Jackson Hole.

Based on his research, Engman believes this is the first large-scale, ultra-luxury spec home built in Fremont County. 

The home, Engman said, is comparable to some of the $40 million homes sold in Teton County. 

“One of the houses I’m involved with in Jackson is going on the market for $40 million, and it’s the same size as this,” Engman said. “It’s on 15 acres, and not as nice a lot as this 40 acres. 

"To me, that house is very nice, but not as nice as this one.”

He gestured toward the corner of a fence line about 1,000 feet from the house and said he’d seen a grizzly bear momma with two cubs eating grass there while he was having lunch Wednesday. 

He’s also seen elk, deer, and antelope browsing through the property's surrounding pastures.

“I have more wildlife on my ranch than there is in Yellowstone,” he said with a chuckle. “This is going to, I know this will sell quickly. 

"When you look at all the traffic and congestion in Jackson now, and you can buy, for under $10 million, a 40-acre property with a 9,000-square-foot house an hour from the Jackson airport or 20 minutes from the Dubois airport, where you can land any private jet and you save $30 million?”

In his mind, that $30 million covers a private jet and then some, making his property a much more logical deal for those who want to be in or near Jackson Hole. 

His company located in Dubois also supplied the reclaimed, antique lumber that 

 near Saratoga used to built The Farm, Engman said. 

Restoration Lumber Co. produces 2 million to 3 million board feet of reclaimed antique lumber annually and employs 30-40 people.

For the Cowboy Starship, he’s using redwood planks sourced from Napa Valley’s enormous wine vats for the deck, giving their surface a patina of old purples and reddish brown. 

Overhead, vintage 1910 heavy trusses salvaged from Bumble Bee’s salmon cannery in Washington span the ceilings, tying the mansion to a working waterfront that no longer exists. 

“Everything here has a story, a history,” he said. “It has provenance.”

Not only do they tell a story, they are massively strong. They’ll hold a snow load up to 200 pounds per square foot, Engman said.

The front door, a massive dark brown, is made from old-growth redwood planks transported to the Sea of Cortez more than 150 years ago. They were salvaged from an Indonesian shipwreck.

The double doors to either side are salvaged Yosemite Pine cut to build booming mine towns in California and date to around 1860.

Gold mines, saw mills, cannery operations — Engman only buys wood from places he is sure can’t be saved or that have no historical value. 

Dismantling is done surgically, cataloguing each beam, which will later be custom cut to size for its new home.

Inside the Cowboy Starship, he’s bringing special reclaimed items for the interior, including an ornate bar from the old Wyoming bar in Lander, built in 1890. He sees that as a particular centerpiece with its ornately carved wood and mirrored face. 

Beyond the bar are picture windows framed with more antique wood, which in turn frame up Ramshorn Mountain like art in a museum. To get to the breathtaking view, Engman wants people to know they’re not just crossing a room. They’re crossing centuries of history.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"For The Love Of History"}]

Engman’s obsession with history tracks back to an old saw mill he bought to reclaim its wood after he decided to pivot from a business selling log cabin kits to buyers in Japan.

“It had a lot of spirit to it,” Engman said. “Something about the spirit of that 150-year-old wood somehow got into my psyche. A lot of these saw mills and salmon canneries were all going out of business. So these huge buildings, built in the 1800s, became available. 

“I started buying any of them that I could. I’ve bought enough buildings and antique wood to probably build 1,000 homes of this size.”

Still, he has a code about which buildings he will buy for salvage.

“If a structure can be saved and has any historical value, I will not take it down,” he said. “I very much believe in living history. For instance, if somebody came to me and said, ‘I’ve got this big barn in North Dakota, will you purchase it or I’ll give it to you if y ou take it down?’ I’ve never taken down a barn because I feel that would be destroying our heritage.”

If they still wanted to sell or give it away, he’d work with the owner to put together an organization to raise money to save the barn rather than destroy it. 

“I’ve done that probably a dozen times,” he said. “There’ll be a big barn or something that really can be saved, I’ll donate all the material to save it.”

It’s important for future generations to see the past in full living color, Engman said.

“To see and understand what the pioneers and the Native American people went through, just to survive in this country,” he said. “You destroy all the beautiful antique structures and replace them with trailer parks, what is an 18-year-old going to learn from that?”

Engman’s obsession with history doesn’t stop at salvaged timbers. He sits on the board for Fremont County’s museum foundation. 

Once the Cowboy Starship is complete, he plans to host a party there as a fundraiser where he expects to raise around $100,000 by donating a weeklong charter on his 110-foot super yacht. He’s also considering a historical display of recent artifacts he found while traveling through Arizona.

It’s also important to Engman to build new structures that can become one-of-a-kind legacies, like the Cowboy Starship near Dubois.

That one is actually the second of the “starships.” The first was a 20,000-square-foot mansion Sun Valley at a ski resort in Idaho.

Sun Valley, Engman said, is “probably the most popular ski resort in the United States,” and offers a different kind of setting. There’s world-class skiing, a celebrity cachet, and a market that’s used to ultra-luxury builds. 

The success of that project helped set the template for what he’s now doing in Fremont County, but this time he’s betting on something a little different than a crowded ski town.

“That was my last house,” Engman said. “It took me a year and half to finish that one. And then I bought the ranch here (near Dubois) with the idea of building a spec house. 

“I don’t need to sell it. Maybe I won’t sell it,” he added, staring down at the corner where the grizzly momma played with her cubs the day before. 

Then he flashed a smile and said, “But I probably will, and then I’ll just build another one.”

Cowboy Starship 20260716 135719 7 19 26

<title>Inside The ‘Cowboy Starship,’ A $7.95 Million Off-Grid Mansion In Remote Wyoming | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Dubois man is betting a remote 9,000-square-foot, $7.95 million off-grid mansion made from reclaimed wood can lure Jackson Hole-level buyers across the Teton County line to Fremont County. “I have more wildlife on my ranch than Yellowstone,” he said.

Inside The ‘Cowboy Starship,’ A $7.95 Million Off-Grid Mansion In Remote Wyoming

Zakary Sonntag

Jen Kocher - Headshot CSD

Jen Kocher

Crime & Courts

FREMONT LAKE — High up on the western flank of the Wind River Range in a pontoon boat at an elevation of 7,400 feet, Bill Dohse is searching for dead bodies encased in old barrels on the stark black bottom of the state's deepest lake.

He’s got top technology, a determined team — and a fat chance.

Dohse, president of the nonprofit Organized Search and Rescue (OSAR), is looking for the bodies of Virginia Uden and her two sons — Richard, 11, and Reagan, 10 — who were murdered in 1980 by her ex-husband, Gerald Uden.

Uden claims he put their corpses in barrels and sank them here at Fremont Lake. The problem is he’s claimed a lot of things, and they haven't all added up.

“A lot of people say Uden’s full of BS, and he's just playing games,” said Dohse, a sun-browned man with a buzzcut, looking out on the glassy morning surface of Fremont Lake this past week.

“But our new technology is superior, and I’m hopeful we'll find what we’re after,” he added.

It’s day one of a privately funded mission dubbed Operation Cold Current, the first major search effort for the Uden bodies in more than a decade. Depending who you ask, it may be the biggest fool’s errand in as many years, too.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘I Think I’ve Got Something Here'"}]

Previous searches produced nothing save major costs and frustrations as dark as the lake itself, which with a maximum depth of 610 feet is known by locals as “The Deep.” 

Officials were certain the killer had put them on a goose chase. But Dohse’s intuition has been blaring like a smoke detector that won’t shut off. 

Lo and behold, it suddenly looks as though that gut feeling is dead on.

“Guys, I think I’ve got something here,” said Carter Sinclair, the mission’s drone operator, eyeing a blip on the sonar readout coming from a remote operated vehicle (ROV) on the lakebed below. “It’s about the right size. Let’s go take a look.”

There it is, 388 feet deep: a ribbed and rusted oil drum.

Dohse’s face went slack when he saw the image on the ROV’s controller screen.

Short of breath, sounding both amazed and afraid, his response seemed to channel nearly half a century of wondering.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“You're f***ing shitting me,” he said."}]

Within the hour, members of Sublette County Sheriff’s Office Tip Top Search and Rescue (TTSAR) were racing across the lake. 

Just like that, a decades-old missing persons case was shocked back to life. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What Happened In 1980?"}]

The murders of Virginia, Richard and Reagan went unsolved for more than three decades until investigators finally got the lead they needed in 2013. 

Uden testified that he shot his ex-wife and adopted children in their heads with a rifle on Sept. 12, 1980, at a rural crossroads near Pavilion, Wyoming, where he’d lured them under the pretext of going on a hunting trip.

“Richard was standing beside the tailgate of the station wagon, and I shot him behind the ear,” Uden confessed in court in 2013, adding that he shot 10-year-old Reagan behind the ear as well, Cowboy State Daily 

"That took approximately 10 seconds. Reagan saw what was happening, and he ran, and he tripped and he fell in the ditch,” he added.

His reasons for the killings were that Virginia and the boys had become a nuisance in his subsequent marriage to Alice Uden, a woman of kindredly morbid regard. Alice was later found guilty for the murder of her previous husband, Ron Holtz, who she’d killed before meeting Uden. 

Uden said he concealed the bodies of Virginia and the boys in a nearby mine until postmortem gasses dissipated. 

He claims that he then transferred them to barrels, Virginia in a 55-gallon drum and the two boys together in a larger galvanized trash canister. The drums were sealed and punctured with bullet holes to ensure they’d sink in water.

Yet subsequent sonar-based search efforts in 2013 and again in 2014 turned up nothing.

“I thought he was full of shit,” said John Linn, water search team leader at Sublette County TTSAR. “The barrels were definitely not where he said they were.”

Once onboard the OSAR vessel this past week, however, with a live image of a corroded drum before him on the lakebed, Linn is rethinking a lot.

“You’ve really got something, boys,” he said.

The following day, the TTSAR water search team was back on the lake dragging a towfish sonar in search of additional clues around the area

They discovered something, but it wasn’t another barrel.

What they found was the depth of the case’s emotional and psychic hold, as old memories dredged up, like Linn’s one-on-one interaction with Uden in the very vessel where he sat now.

“It was quite an experience to be sitting here across from a triple murderer,” Linn said, describing the excursion in which Uden, under the watch of sheriff deputies, guided TTSAR to the location where he’d dumped the drums.

“I asked him point blank: ‘You've been lying about this for 35 years. Why in the world would we believe you after that length of time?” Linn said. "I know you don't have anything to lose, but why would you tell us where this is now?’”

Uden, wearing a survival suit and sitting close enough they’d have smelled one another's breath, alluded to the sky overheard. 

“I got to get right with God,” Uden said to Linn. “And this is the only way I can do it.” 

Linn accepted the answer as earnest and set to work scouring the lake. 

“There was a time when I would eat, drink and sleep this thing,” he said, explaining that it exacted a toll he didn’t expect. 

“It’s physically and emotionally draining, because with every (sonar) pixel that comes in, you're so anxious for something to show up, and after that long you just get numb,” Linn said.

Linn felt certain Uden was lying. He’s less certain now.

“You spend that much time on a search you get attached, in a sense,” he said, eyes glued to a sonar screen mounted on the dash. “Part of the reason I felt so giddy is because I never dreamed they would come back on this search.”

While his excitement is shared by Sublette County law enforcement, officials are urging patience.

“It’s amazing that they went out into a lake this big, this deep, and were able to find a barrel,” said Sublette County Sheriff K.C. Lehr. “But as of right now, it’s still just a barrel.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What About The Depth?"}]

One aspect that needs to be reconciled is the depth of the drum.

Uden had told Linn he’d measured the depth of the drop location using a 450-foot rope with a weighted end. He said the weight never touched the bottom, leading to the assumption the drums were likely resting at 450 feet or deeper.

OSAR and TTSAP both believe drums of this sort might drift significantly from a drop point. They also point out how 35 years had passed between the time Uden dumped the barrels and the time he told officials in 2013, meaning he may have misremembered details.

“There’s really no reason for a barrel to be out here,” said Dohse. “My gut feeling is that this is the barrel we’re looking for.”

Much of that feeling stems from a recent letter written by Uden in prison, even if there is still reason to question his truthfulness.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Letters From Prison"}]

 to withdraw his three guilty pleas to first-degree murder, claiming his 2013 confession was elicited under duress. 

The court denied his petition, but he continued to claim innocence. 

Then a private citizen began a correspondence that led to new revelations.

Stacy Koester, founder and president of 

, a Gillette-based missing person organization, contacted Uden in prison through letters and asked for his help finding Virginia and the two boys.

Uden initially denied having a role in their killing or disappearance. But Koester kept pressing, and eventually he admitted to killing them.

He also gave her new information about the location of the bodies in Fremont Lake.

That information made its way to Dohse, who then had long conversations with the OSAR board before committing to a search mission on the organization’s time and dime. 

“We put a lot of trust in Stacy and the fact that she had trust in what was in the letters,” said Dohse. “And finally we said, 'Let's do this, let's pull it off, let's do something that hasn't been done before, and then let's try to bring those two kids in.'"

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"From Discovery To Recovery"}]

OSARs extraction plan for the barrel will rely on a custom underwater recovery rig soon to be developed with partners in Utah. 

It will also depend on cooperation from the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation and the governor’s office, which are reviewing the group’s incident action plan.

For now, they’re keeping details close to the chest.

“All I can say right now is that it’ll take triple the work, triple the people, triple the equipment, and triple the cost,” Dohse said about actually recovering the barrel they found.

Virginia Uden and her two sons, Richard and Reagan, no longer have living relatives to inherit their remains in the event of their recovery, which raises questions for some about whether an expensive effort is justified.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Koester of WyoFind offers an answer."}]

“A lot of people ask why it matters to find Virginia and the boys, and I believe every human being has the right to a proper burial, no matter the amount of time,” she said. “Those boys didn’t get to live the life they truly deserved, and their story shouldn’t be buried in the bottom of a lake.”

If they are recovered, there will be a place ready for their remains.

Virginia’s mother, Claire Martin, who died at age 92 in 2013 just months before Uden’s arrest, pre-purchased a gravesite in the Horseshoe Cemetery in Glendo, according to Ron Franscell, author of "Alice & Gerald: A Homicidal Love Story.”

For Dohse, the search for and recovery of the barrel is about what such efforts signal to society.

“I think there’s an important message in this,” he said. “The message to not quit, to not give up until you have to, or until there's an answer.”

Uden Fremont Lake barrel and mugs 7 19 26

<title>Barrel Found! Killer Had Told Cops Victims' Bodies In Barrels On Lake Bottom | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Triple-murderer Gerald Uden says he put the bodies of his 1980 murder victims in barrels and sunk them in Fremont Lake, Wyoming's deepest. Officials were skeptical — until they found a barrel 388-feet deep last week. “You're shi**ing me!” a searcher said.

Barrel Found! Killer Had Told Cops Victims' Bodies In Barrels On Lake Bottom

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

[{"type":"text","text":"April Jo Jones doesn't flinch at the sight of extreme filth."}]

She doesn't wrinkle her nose when she walks into a room and sees flies circling a sink full of moldy plastic containers.

She doesn't recoil when she sees hallways swallowed by decades of clutter or kitchens buried beneath newspapers, clothing and dirty dishes covered in rotting food.

If anything, the Wyoming woman gets a little excited, as she's become something of a specialist in extreme clean-outs.

Long before the Dubois, Wyoming, woman picked up a pair of rubber gloves, Jones grew up in a house where addiction overtook everyday life.

"Our house was filthy," she recalled. "We didn't have running water. Sometimes we didn't have electricity."

Living through that experience gave her both the empathy and resolve to help people living in homes buried beneath clutter, trash and their own shame.

"I know what it feels like to be embarrassed," she said. "I know what it's like to have people judge you."

What started as a routine cleaning business gradually evolved into something far more specialized.

Families call her, desperate to help aging parents who can no longer manage their homes. Landlords ask if she'll tackle houses most other house-cleaners are too afraid to enter.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Please Don't Judge Me'"}]

Embarrassment is one of hoarding's cruelest burdens hoarders deal with, said University of Wyoming psychology professor Joshua Clapp.

"It's hard. It's not that they're nasty. It’s not that they're dumb or stupid,” he said.

For many people, their belongings become deeply intertwined with identity, memory and comfort, Clapp said.

Jones said it’s predictable when she arrives to do an extreme clean-out. The apology almost always comes before the front door fully opens.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Please don't judge me.\""}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Jones hears that nearly every time."}]

Narrow pathways snake through towering piles of belongings, sometimes barely wide enough for a person to squeeze through sideways.

Bedrooms become storage units. Dining room tables disappear beneath years of unopened mail, newspapers and photographs.

[{"type":"text","text":"Cats and other pets weave through the clutter."}]

Sometimes there are more cats than a homeowner even realizes, Jones said.

[{"type":"text","text":"Jones has seen homes where reaching the bathroom means navigating a maze."}]

Others have become so full that everyday tasks — cooking dinner, sleeping in a bed, using the bathroom or simply opening a window — are no longer possible.

Despite what television portrays on voyeuristic reality shows, she said these homes aren't spectacles. They represent people’s lives.

And the people living there are almost always ashamed, which leads to more extreme hoarding as the stuff piles up as those living in it are slowly buried and not yet desperate enough to ask for help.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Letting Go"}]

To outsiders, the solution seems obvious — get it gone. How can people live like that?

That's one of the biggest misunderstandings about hoarding, says the UW professor. It isn't simply about having too much stuff.

Many of the objects people struggle to part with aren't valuable in a monetary sense. They're valuable emotionally.

[{"type":"text","text":"A faded magazine might remind someone of a spouse who died years ago."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"A cracked coffee mug may recall happier times."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Plastic containers represent something that could still be useful."}]

"You're not only giving up possessions," Clapp said. "You're giving up memories."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Perilous"}]

For firefighters, the danger extends far beyond having to climb over piles of belongings.

Casper Fire-EMS Battalion Chief Bradley Adles said firefighters "regularly" encounter homes where excessive piles of clothing, paper, trash and other belongings complicate emergency calls.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Hoarding is not uncommon for us to deal with,\" he said."}]

Blocked hallways, narrow pathways, and towering stacks can collapse onto first responders while they work.

Adles said piles of paper, clothing and other household belongings dramatically increase the amount of fuel available to a fire.

He said hoarding complicates nearly every aspect of an emergency response, and that stuff stacked to ceilings can collapse onto firefighters trying to do their jobs.

Clapp said the danger often develops gradually, making it difficult for people living in the home to recognize how narrow their world has become.

It's not uncommon for people with hoarding disorder to create the mazes Jones encounters, and in some cases those pathways can become deadly if someone falls or cannot escape during an emergency.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Expensive Cycle"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The consequences don't stop at the front door."}]

Cheyenne real estate agent Dominic Valdez remembers helping an elderly Army veteran with a traumatic brain injury sell a house after his mother died.

The home contained narrow pathways through rooms packed with newspapers, magazines and other belongings. Downstairs, hundreds of carefully labeled storage bins stretched from floor to ceiling.

[{"type":"text","text":"The homeowner insisted on keeping everything."}]

Rather than sorting through it before moving, he paid roughly $20,000 to ship about 475 storage bins across the country, telling Valdez he would go through them later.

To complete the sale, Valdez said he and another Realtor spent an entire weekend hauling bins out of the basement so an appraiser could reach the walls.

A Dubois woman who specializes in cleaning up hoarder houses says every cleanup begins with the same plea from clients not to judge them. She said growing up in a similar situation gave her the empathy to help people living in homes buried beneath clutter.

Daily Smile: Monday, September 23, 2024

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