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

<title>Daily Cartoon 2: Friday, December 6, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Cartoon 2: Friday, December 6, 2024

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Crime & Courts

Courts

After the state of Wyoming and a group of young men suing the Wyoming Boys' School sifted through several hours of testimony, video, and evidence, it now falls to a federal court judge to decide whether school staffers violated multiple boys’ rights.

They’re accused of restraining, confining, and using force on them — or if the staffers’ actions are protected by qualified immunity and other safeguards in the law.

 Blaise Chivers-King, Charles “Rees” Karn, and Dylan Tolar 

sued the Wyoming Department of Family Services

, the Wyoming Boys’ School in Worland, and 10 former and current employees in 2024.

The school is a facility to which courts send boys judged delinquent in Wyoming. 

The plaintiffs, all boys who had been committed to the school in 2018 and afterward, alleged that school staffers confined, beat, humiliated and abused them. More plaintiffs joined the case later that year: Haiden Willis, Koby Cranford, and a minor identified by the initials “DH.”

In the months that followed, parties on both sides of the case sifted through several hours of depositions and other evidence.

After that, the boys decided against continuing to sue two of the staffers: Margaret Dahlke and Clark Les Urbin.

U.S. District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl dismissed Dahlke and Urbin from the case on April 8 of this year, at the plaintiffs’ request.

Karn is serving a life sentence in the Wyoming Department of Corrections for 

[{"type":"text","text":"End This, State Says"}]

The government agencies and boys’ school staffers argued in a May 14 brief that Skavdahl should judge the case early in their favor.

The brief largely blames the boys’ behavior for the aggressive interactions between boys and staffers, and for the time some of the boys spent in restraint chairs, solitary confinement, or other disciplinary statuses.

It invokes qualified immunity, which is a legal principle shielding government officials who act reasonably and in good faith from being sued. 

The brief also says two of the defendants, Karn and DH, didn’t do enough to plead their grievances with school authorities before resorting to civil litigation, and that that nullifies their claims.

D.H. has failed to show he suffered physical injury, and the boys haven’t proved they suffered excessive force, deliberate indifference to their medical needs, undue punishment or discrimination based on certain disabilities, the state’s brief alleges.

The former inmates fired back in their own filing Friday, urging the judge to send the case to trial rather than judge it early in favor of the state and staffers.

Their response filing leads with an allegation that school security guard Thad Shaffer said, “The best part of the chair is watching the kids cry and scream like a f***ing child … that’s what makes it worth it.” 

The exhibit from which this quote reportedly stems is not yet open to public viewing, the case file says.

However, the Friday filing includes a photo that claims to show one of the plaintiffs lashed to a chair with a mask over his head and a caption that says he would be placed in the restraint chair “for up to 8 hours a day."

The boys’ counter-argument casts doubt on the records the boys’ school is using to make its case.

“The (staffers’) logbooks had large gaps in documentation, inaccurate entries, uncertain authorship, and no verification mechanism,” the filing says. “For example, the Dorm 3 detention logbook has no entries between Apr. 7, 2024, and May 9, 2024, despite DH being in solitary confinement during that time.”

The document asserts that, "Additionally, incident reports were regularly falsified."

Karn and DH did fulfill the grievance requirements, as their parents submitted complaints on their behalf, the filing argues. Also, the school didn’t provide the boys methods to file grievances once they were no loner housed there, says the document.

The boys’ filing calls the state’s claims for qualified immunity inadequate. It says, “Defendants’ legal analysis on these four claims consists entirely of 

[{"type":"text","text":"All These Differences"}]

The state’s brief in favor of early judgment and the boys’ counter-brief tell different stories.

[{"type":"text","text":"Karn was placed at WBS in 2018. "}]

He was placed on detention status numerous times, including for throwing personal items, breaking glasses, disclosing thoughts of hurting others, the state’s brief says.

He was detained for seven days in December 2018 after assaulting a student with a shower head. Court documents dispute whether staffer John Schwalbe shoved Karn’s face into broken glass at that time.

Schwalbe testified that he did not; while the boys’ argument says Schwalbe did restrain Karn on broken glass, and that Schwalbe said, “if you’re going to break shit, then this is pretty much what you’re going to get.”

Karn was restrained numerous times for hitting things in his room, harming himself, hurting others, being disruptive and damaging property, says the state’s brief.

During a second stay at the facility Karn was placed on detention for misbehaviors including acts of violence, pretending to shoot people, damaging property, trying to run away, threatening staff and making terroristic bomb threats on Facebook, says the document.

He was restrained during the second stay, allegedly after punching a staffer, trying to flip or throw a desk, “spinning around to face staff when they entered to clean the detention room camera,” damaging cameras, smearing feces on the detention room, and other misbehaviors.

[{"type":"text","text":"The plaintiffs deny many of these characterizations."}]

The brief points to staffers’ deposition testimonies, in saying that the facility didn’t have safeguards in place to ensure the accuracy of incident reports.

The boys’ brief admits that Karn was placed in solitary confinement after making threats on Facebook, but adds, “(We) Deny that 13 days in solitary confinement for alleged threats was appropriate or that he received meaningful social stimuli, exercise, or education.”

In response to the boys’ school claim that Rees was restrained for trying to harm himself with a sock, the boys’ counter-argument says, “The video shows Rees playing with a sock, not tying it around his  neck or refusing staff instructions. Indeed, one sock appears on his foot the entire time.”

To another claim that  Karn was moved to a vacant dorm after threatening to assault staff and hitting a camera, the response parries that, “The video does not show Rees hitting the camera or threatening to assault staff.”

While the state alleges Karn was restrained in April 2021 after tearing a pillow apart and trying to hit staffers who entered to retrieve the pieces, the boys’ argument counters that a staffer initiated force “without provocation because Rees withheld a piece of pillow stuffing.”

Where the state asserts that Chivers-King was placed on detention status in May of 2020 for threatening and cursing at staff, throwing a chair, kicking his door and punching his window and lights — the boys’ response says Chivers-King toppled, rather than threw a chair. 

The boys’ response denies that Chivers-King continued to escalate, and says there was no reason for a staffer to use force on him, “as the video depicts Blaise (Chivers-King) standing with arms crossed when WBS staff forced him to the ground.”

Where the state asserts that DH continuously refused to follow instructions or engage in programming, the boys’ response says, “The behaviors for which DH was punished were obvious symptoms of his disabilities.”

When DH was in solitary confinement, says the boys’ brief, it was “lonely, depressing, and I had a few bugs for company.”

The state had asserted, conversely, that staffers gave DH “highly individualized attention” during that time to get him on track with the programming.

[{"type":"text","text":"The Clash Continues"}]

Disagreements between what prompted restraints and other punishments pervade the state’s argument and the boys’ counterargument.

In the segment pertaining to how staffers treated DH, the boys’ argument relates from another staffer’s deposition that Coronado called DH a “retard” nearly every day.

The boys’ argument contends that they had known disabilities and staffers didn’t accommodate them, while the state’s argument says of the boys, they “did not request any accommodations for any mental health diagnoses or physical conditions, nor was it obvious (they) needed any.”

Here the state’s argument says, There’s no “evidence plaintiffs were discriminated against ‘by reason of’ their disabilities; rather, the record shows WBS staff’s actions were based on Plaintiffs’ conduct.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Plaintiffs are asking the court to send these claims to trial:"}]

• Excessive force claims that staffers used excessive force by confining Karn and Willis in a restraint chair “for long stretches” when not necessary for people’s safety.

• Excessive force claims that staffers unnecessarily tackled, shoved, slammed and attacked boys who were not resisting, who were already subdued, or whose conduct didn’t merit such force.

• A deliberate indifference claim, asserting staffers were deliberately indifferent to some boys’ risks and serious medical needs.

• A claim that two staffers deprived the boys of due process, by denying them meaningful and periodic reviews of their solitary confinement, and meaningful notice of what they could do to earn release.

• A claim that staffers discriminated against and failed to accommodate the boys due to their various disabilities.

Wyoming Boys School lawsuit 6 15 26

<title>Court Filings Say Wyoming Boys' School Staffers Restrained, Attacked Boys | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A group of young men suing the Wyoming Boys’ School claim they were attacked, confined in a chair and made to wear a mask. “The best part of the chair is watching the kids cry and scream,” a security guard is alleged to have said.

Court Filings Say Wyoming Boys' School Staffers Restrained, Attacked Boys

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily State Government and Politics reporter, Leo Wolfson.

Leo Wolfson For Cowboy State Daily

Wyoming Life

Sports

Beartooth Basin, located at nearly 11,000 feet of elevation in northern Wyoming, is North America’s only ski area open exclusively during the summer months.

Situated just 5 miles from the Montana border in the Beartooth Mountains outside Red Lodge, the basin symbolizes everything that bucks the direction of the nation’s mainstream ski industry.

The low-frills mountain describes itself as “backcountry skiing with a lift.” There is no base lodge, ski school, rental shop, or slopeside lodging. 

The ski area runs on a single generator. An old repurposed service truck with “Little League” emblazoned across the front serves as a combination lift-ticket office, snack shack, and lost-and-found department.

The dirt parking lot is small and full of potholes, people lounging in camping chairs, and plenty of smiles in the best spirit of ski-bummery.

“It’s just a really small, unique operation,” co-owner Justin Modroo told Cowboy State Daily. “When we’re rolling, it can really be quite smooth and fun and enjoyable.”

In an increasingly transactional society, where metrics and profit margins often seem to drive every business decision, skiers say Beartooth is heartwarming and surprising as an operation that looks beyond those concerns simply for the love of their sport.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"How It Works"}]

Operating for only a handful of weeks each summer and catering to a diehard niche of skiers and snowboarders, everything about Beartooth Basin 

What little profit the mountain generates, if any, is reinvested into operations, which unsurprisingly are not cheap.

As long as there is enough snow, the basin opens around Memorial Day each year, relying on the high-alpine Beartooth Highway to be cleared before operations can begin. 

Once open, the ski area remains operational as long as conditions allow. In 2019, it stayed open until July 4. This year, the goal is June 21, the summer solstice.

Two aging Poma surface lifts serve the ski area, making the ride uphill sometimes as nerve-racking as the trip down. Riding a Poma lift involves placing a small plastic disc beneath your hips and hoping your legs can hold on long enough as you’re towed to the top.

“It’s just simple, basic uphill travel to get people up the hill so they can go back down and have fun,” Modroo said.

The basin’s twin Poma lifts are relics dating back to the 1980s, and breakdowns are not uncommon. Located atop a mountain pass with no maintenance facility on-site, the ski area faces significant challenges when equipment fails.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"This year was no exception. "}]

The main drive on the upper lift failed earlier this month, forcing the mountain to close for roughly two weeks. 

Modroo described the situation as “pretty rough,” requiring the lift to be transported more than 90 minutes to Billings, Montana, for repairs. 

Now fixed and with the Beartooth Highway cleared of a late-season snow, Beartooth opened at 9 a.m. Sunday.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Modest Amenities, Five-Star Skiing"}]

As minimal as the amenities may be, the basin offers some of the most remarkable skiing in North America.

The runs are short but steep, reaching grades of nearly 50 degrees in some sections. According to Modroo, there’s always an opportunity “to get puckered,” ski slang for experiencing fear on the slopes.

Despite competing professionally on the World Freeskiing Tour and skiing some of the most challenging terrain on the planet, Modroo still describes the basin’s terrain as “mind-boggling.” 

Professional ski legends such as Tanner Hall, Karl Fostvedt, and Sander Hadley have also skied its slopes.

“People that go up there for the first time are always blown away — just absolutely blown away,” Modroo said. “Even if they’re pro skiers, even if they’re not skiers. It doesn’t get close to boring.”

Many of the runs resemble narrow snow corridors bordered by massive boulder walls. The snow is almost always slushy, creating a forgiving surface to navigate moguls that can grow as large as a small car.

From the top cornice, skiers are treated to sweeping views of the Beartooth Mountains. It is easy to become lost in the beauty of the landscape without ever feeling the need to make a turn.

Whether you’re an expert skier or simply trying to survive your way down the mountain, it is hard not to feel like a rock star as soft, mashed-potato snow sprays from beneath your skis and glitters in the high-elevation sunlight.

And despite it being summer skiing, conditions at 11,000 feet can quickly shift back to winter. Fresh June powder is not uncommon.

The ski area is staffed by professional ski patrollers and lift operators, but this crew is a special breed. They sacrifice a month of their summers to work long, unpredictable hours in an extremely rugged environment.

Aside from operating snowcats, the staff are true jacks-of-all-trades, doing whatever is necessary to keep the mountain running.

Cody native Dean Madley drives snowcats at the basin and has been skiing the mountain since childhood.

“The Beartooth Pass skiing community is filled with some of the most committed skiers and snowboarders anywhere, extending their seasons into the summer months,” Madley said. “The lift-access operation at Beartooth Basin is never easy and always unpredictable, but it is run by some of skiing’s most passionate people.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The Basin’s History"}]

The Basin began its operations in 1962 when Austrians Pepi Gramshammer, Eric Sailer, and Anderl Molterer founded it as a summer training ground for alpine ski racers.

Over time, it became known as the Red Lodge International Ski and Snowboard Camp. When new owners took over, the ski area opened to the public for the first time in 1986. 

Since, the basin has earned a reputation for providing a raw, untamed skiing experience rooted in a passion for high-alpine summer skiing and snowboarding.

One of Modroo’s favorite Beartooth memories came in 2006, when he 

timed an avalanche-control blast to coincide with a drop from the top cornice

 to a landing roughly 15 feet below. As chunks of snow cascaded down the mountain behind him, Modroo linked perfect turns through the terrain.

The basin regularly uses avalanche-control explosives to reduce risk, and videos of the resulting slides frequently 

 because of the massive amounts of snow tumbling down the mountain.

Even those pale in comparison to some of the larger airs 

riders have been sending at the Basin this summer

The summer of 2020 was particularly memorable because Beartooth Basin became the first ski area in North America to reopen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Modroo remembers that summer fondly, describing the mountain at the time as “the happiest place on Earth."

A few years ago, Modroo and the other owners announced they were putting the ski area up for sale. They have yet to receive a serious offer, and Modroo said they are only interested in selling to someone who shares their vision.

He admits he does not really want to part with the mountain he has frequented since his days as a young ski racer, and hopes to retain a minority ownership stake if a buyer eventually emerges.

“For me, it’s just a labor of love, and I enjoy it,” he said.

Although Modroo dreams of someday building a tram from the base of the Beartooth Highway to the ski area, allowing access throughout the winter, such a project is unlikely anytime soon.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"And that’s probably OK."}]

The basin is already a diamond in the rough — rugged, beautiful, and fleeting.

Berartooth Basin6 6 14 26

<title>Inside North America's Only Summer-Only Ski Area: Wyoming's Beartooth Basin | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Beartooth Basin, located at nearly 11,000 feet of elevation in northern Wyoming, is North America’s only ski area open exclusively during the summer months. “People who go up there for the first time are always blown away," co-owner Justin Modroo said.

Inside North America's Only Summer-Only Ski Area: Wyoming's Beartooth Basin

Jen kocher

Jen Kocher

Law Enforcement

Lt. Doug Fisher had been about a week away from flying to Wisconsin to arrest Roger Durkee when he got the news: Durkee was dead.

The cat-and-mouse game Durkee had been playing with Elko County Sheriff’s Office (ECSO) detectives for the past few years was officially over.

[{"type":"text","text":"Fisher called the news bittersweet."}]

He and ECSO Det. Alex Cox had been looking forward to finally putting the cuffs on Durkee, who had spent 32 years eluding authorities after allegedly murdering an unidentified woman and dumping her nude body at a remote desert exit off Interstate 80 in Nevada.

but both officers agree that identifying Durkee’s victim 

For decades, she was known only as “Shafter Jane Doe,” named for the highway exit where she was found in November 1993.

detectives finally identified her as Marion Hertha Alexander

, a 25-year-old German immigrant who had been living in Salt Lake City, Utah, when she crossed paths with Durkee.

The woman also had spent seven months in Afton, Wyoming, shortly before she was killed, which was determined in 2010 via a breakthrough isotope testing procedure. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Family Devastated"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Alexander’s mother was devastated, Fisher said."}]

He and Cox had driven to her California home in January to tell her in person. She had met her husband, a

She married him and returned to California with him and her children in 1972.

Alexander left home in her late teens — a free spirit, her mother told detectives, who drifted and grew distant from the family.

They had not known she was missing and were devastated 

Her mother is now working with the sheriff’s office to finalize the inscription on a new headstone 

 paid for by the Elko County Commissioners.

[{"type":"text","text":"After more than three decades, they finally has the answer."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“We want to make sure we finally get Mary laid to rest,” Fisher said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Little To Go On At First"}]

Many detectives have worked on Alexander’s case over the years. It was not their only cold case, Fisher said.

Along with Alexander, there are five other unidentified people in Elko County dating back to 1972, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs).

[{"type":"text","text":"At first, they had little to go on."}]

When Alexander’s body was discovered about a week after she was killed, it was already badly decomposed.  

She’d been shot in the chest and the back with a small

caliber firearm and had been severely beaten in the face.

There was little to no evidence left at the scene, leaving authorities to believe she’d been killed elsewhere and dumped afterward.

Apart from a partial right thumbprint that had no match in federal databases, detectives had little to go on. The only other identifiers were a tooth that was in the process of getting a root canal and a 2-by-4-inch burn scar or birthmark on her right calf.

To draw attention to the case, detectives reached out to the national media and also held a funeral for her.

Her story initially gained traction after it was picked up by the 

news program “Hard Copy.” but it ultimately yielded no results.

The sheriff’s office took advantage of technological advancements over the years, including having a forensic facial reconstruction done as well as stable isotope ratio analysis of a hair follicle that linked her to Afton, Wyoming, where it was suspected she’d spent the last seven months of her life.

Oddly, this was one detail that the detectives couldn’t track down upon finally learning her identity.

They found addresses for her in California, Oregon, Utah and southern Nevada, but nothing in Wyoming.

In fact, at the time of her murder, she had been living in downtown Salt Lake City near Durkee, Fisher said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Overlooked Evidence"}]

The biggest break in the case happened in April 2019 when detectives took a new look at existing evidence and realized they had DNA on a vaginal swab for both the victim and perpetrator.

It’s not clear how this evidence went overlooked for so long, Fisher said, but it appears to have been the result of a miscommunication between detectives and the crime lab.

still needed to figure out to whom they belonged.

Neither was found in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) or on genetic DNA databases, still leaving them with no answers, so they kept pulling threads, Fisher said.

approved a $10,000 expenditure that allowed the sheriff’s office to contract with Identifiers International for a forensic genetic 

This led investigators to Durkee in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who reached out to the FBI for help identifying him.

The FBI agents procured some items from Durkee’s trash and determined that profile could not be excluded from the one taken from the swab.

“Not being excluded” is as close as law enforcement and science can legally get to saying it’s a likely match.

[{"type":"text","text":"“That was a good indication that this is our guy,” Fisher said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Still, Alexander’s identity remained a mystery at that point."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Closing In On A Killer"}]

Even with Durkee’s identity as Alexander’s killer likely confirmed, it was not enough to collar him for the murder.

All it proved, Cox noted, is that the two had been intimate, but not that he killed her.

[{"type":"text","text":"So they kept digging, Fisher said."}]

In doing so, they learned Durkee moved quite a bit during the 1990s and early 2000s while working 

. This included stints in Nevada, Idaho and Colorado and Salt Lake City.

They also learned he’d been arrested for third-degree sexual assault in Wisconsin in 1978.

Along with moving frequently during this period, Durkee also changed his name, assuming aliases of James W. Kenedy and Carrol T. Hiel.

why he changed his name, he told detectives it was during a time in which he’d made bad decisions in his life and didn’t care to be known by his real name.

Then Fisher and Cox flew out to Wisconsin for the first of three interviews with Durkee in Milwaukee beginning in August 2024.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Pulling Out Teeth"}]

A couple things struck the detectives about Durkee during that first meeting. For starters, he was toothless.

This is because he’d pulled out all of his teeth over the years by himself, Durkee told them. With pliers.

[{"type":"text","text":"“That was a first for me,” Cox said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Fisher agreed."}]

“We’ve done thousands of interviews, and I can tell you that is the first time I ever heard anybody tell me they pulled out their own teeth,” Fisher said, wondering if it would have been 27 or 28 total 

Another thing that struck the detectives as odd is that Durkee had a collection of Faraday bags and cages, which are used to block electromagnetic fields and wireless signals.

“They’re used by law enforcement primarily when we take a suspect’s phone, so it can be protected for forensic analysis, but you don’t normally see these types of things in someone’s home,” Fisher said. “It was shocking.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Conversations With Durkee"}]

During this initial conversation, when asked about his potential connection to the still unknown Jane Doe who’d been murdered 

in Elko, Durkee shared that he remembered giving a .380 pistol to a woman named “Mary.”

the caliber of the pistol used to kill her.

During his second meeting with detectives 

A detective was about to fly to Wisconsin to arrest the lead suspect in the 32-year cold case of a woman whose nude body was dumped along I-80 when he got the news the suspect was dead. The woman's time in Wyoming led to the breakthrough in the case.

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