CASPER — A video showing a naked boy with marks on the left side of his thigh and buttocks was shown to jurors as evidence of abuse prosecutors say a former award-winning foster parent inflicted on his children.
Steven Randall Marler is on trial in Natrona County District Court, charged with 26 charges that involve sexual abuse of minors, battery and child endangerment. Part of Tuesday’s testimony before the 16 members of the jury panel in Judge Kerri Johnson’s courtroom involved testimony from a sheriff’s investigator and photos and videos obtained from the Marler home on Casper Mountain.
Marler is being tried on two counts of first-degree sexual abuse of a minor, seven counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor and 11 counts of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor. He also is charged with five counts of battery and one count of child endangerment. The time frame for the allegations spans a decade, from November 2012 to June 2022.
Under the questioning of Natrona County Assistant District Attorney Brandon Rosty, Natrona County Sheriff’s Investigator Lisa Lauderdale spent part of the morning and early afternoon testifying about the scope of the investigation that led to Marler’s arrest including more than 115 interviews including statements from Steven and wife Kristen Marler’s adopted children, biological children, neighbors, friends, biological parents of the adopted children and others.
Allegation And Investigation
Lauderdale said the investigation began after Marler’s oldest adopted daughter told a caseworker and two sergeants at the Wyoming Cowboy Challenge program for youth in Guernsey that her father had sexually abused her. A forensic interview with a specialist was conducted on May 12, 2021.
The investigator said the girl was initially willing to talk and then shut down, becoming emotional and “angry” when recalling the alleged abuse.
“I returned to Casper and wrote a search warrant for the Marler residence,” Lauderdale said. She said the purpose of the search warrant was to obtain clothing, take photos and obtain a DVR system that she was told was in the home.
The search warrant was executed on June 4, 2021, with Kristin Marler and six of the family’s adopted children present, Lauderdale said. The DVR was in a small storeroom in an office off the master bedroom and had three camera cables running into it.
Lauderdale said they found seven cameras in various areas of the home including in a second-floor school room. An initial search warrant for the DVR content turned up no images, but she said she learned in January that the Casper Police Department could recapture deleted files.
Police were able to recover 9,370 videos, 1,526 of which were playable. One of the videos introduced Wednesday showed the adopted children sleeping on two mattresses in the family’s school room, separated by boys and girls.
A Naked Son
The video depicts a shirtless Marler at the bottom of the screen. One of the boys gets off the mattress and walks toward him. The boys then stand, and the girls get up off their mattress.
Kristen Marler appears and walks over to the boys and helps them put the mattress up against the wall. She walks off camera as all the children stand, some with arms in front of them and some with arms up by their neck.
Rosty questioned Lauderdale about the posture of the children. She testified that their hands were in a “protective gesture.”
Seconds later a boy who had walked off in pajamas returns naked with two marks in the black-and-white video visible on his left thigh near his buttocks.
Johnson then stopped the video and called counsel up to the bench and when the video restarted, it was not shown on the monitor for the courtroom audience.
Other videos introduced included children standing for a long period of time in the school room, a video of children showering with an open bathroom door and girls wearing nothing but towels wrapped around them.
A video from June 22, 2020, showed Marler getting on a mattress with his adopted daughters and receiving an extended massage.
Another video showed Marler tapping his oldest daughter and then a second a video an hour or so later showed her get off the mattress in the school room and walk toward a second-floor office, which is attached to the Marler’s master bedroom. She is off camera for about four minutes, Lauderdale testified.
The Beginning
Earlier, Lauderdale testified that the investigation that began with the oldest daughter’s statements at the Cowboy Challenge continued to May 17, 2023, when the Marler’s second oldest adopted daughter, who at the time was at the Casper Juvenile Detention Center, alleged that Marler had sexually abused her, as well.
Lauderdale said the interview led to the removal of the other children from the home and subsequent interviews with all of the children. She said one adopted son was not willing to provide any information until his “siblings were no longer in the home.”
Lauderdale said her investigation also led to uncovering allegations made by former foster daughter Adrianne Wogan in 2016 following her 10 1/2 months at the Marler home. Wogan testified on Wednesday about incidents where she said Marler sexually abused her.
Cross Examination
Under cross examination by Hummel, Lauderdale was asked about the role that “credibility” has when investigating allegations. Without explicitly saying so, he appeared to raise questions about the credibility of statements from Marler’s second oldest adopted daughter, who had made her allegations in juvenile jail after an arrest.
Lauderdale said she notes any contradictions that come up when following up on statements by victims or witnesses in her investigation reports.
The trial is ongoing.
In 2013, Marler and his wife were recognized by the federal Administration for Children and Families with an Adoption Excellence Award, one of only three families across the nation to get the award that year.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
