The Gillette Police Department officer arrested and jailed Monday by his own department was wanted on suspicion of having sex with a woman who was on probation in Utah, where he was also a police officer, according to court documents Cowboy State Daily obtained Wednesday.
The Gillette Police Department hired Christopher Goree in September, according to a statement the city of Gillette released Monday evening.
Goree was still in his training phase in Gillette when Utah authorities sent GPD a warrant for his arrest.
Goree faces three counts of felony custodial relations, each carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison and $5,000 in fines; a fourth felony of tampering with a witness (same penalty); and a misdemeanor count of accessing sealed records (punishable by up to six months in jail and $1,000 in fines).
Utah law forbids police officers from having sex with people in police “custody,” to include probation and parole.
The Affidavit
The affidavit in Goree’s case, which Utah’s St. George District Court released Wednesday to Cowboy State Daily, says a woman on probation confessed to her probation agent in August that she’d been having an intimate relationship with a Hurricane City Police Department Officer, Goree.
The agent reported the allegation to the police department, which told the State Bureau of Investigation to “deconflict” the investigation.
Utah SBI Agent Christopher S. Terry interviewed the probation agent about the incident Aug. 20, says the affidavit.
The agent said a woman, who is on felony probation, said her relationship with Goree spanned two years. He’d go over to her home, the affidavit adds.
The woman had also shown the agent videos of her and Goree together, and one still image, the document relates.
It says that when investigators went to the woman’s home for an interview, she said she and Goree were just friends, according to the affidavit, and she wouldn’t let them review her text messages with Goree.
Yet later when questioned by her probation agent, the woman again said she was having an intimate relationship with Goree, says the document.
“A records search revealed Goree had accessed (state) records without legal reason to check (her) protected information in April of 2023,” the affidavit says. She was also on felony probation then.
The Messages
Agents secured a warrant for the woman’s phone.
In a recently deleted messages pocket of the phone’s data, investigators found messages indicating a sexual relationship, and Goree coaching the woman not to implicate him, the affidavit alleges.
A warrant of Goree’s iCloud account revealed more evidence of a sexual relationship, Terry wrote in the affidavit.
Goree moved his family to Gillette shortly after the criminal investigation started, says the affidavit.
The woman, meanwhile, told Terry on Sept. 17 that she was still having a relationship with Goree and that he’d drive from Wyoming to St. George, Utah, to see her, the document says.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
