A federal prosecutor Wednesday voiced skepticism of a Wyoming woman’s claims that her son stole her guns before fatally shooting a Sheridan police sergeant then launching a two-day standoff that culminated in his own shooting death in February 2024.
Eileen Hurley faces four felonies in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming on allegations that she bought three guns for her son, William Lowery, 46, who was a convicted felon and prohibited from having guns.
Lowery went on to fatally shoot Sheridan Police Sgt. Nevada Krinkee on Feb. 13, 2024. He hid in a local woman’s house for nearly two days during a dramatic police standoff, and was ultimately shot by law enforcement while trying to flee.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Wyoming charged Hurley on Jan. 15.
Claims He Stole Guns
During the investigation, she told investigators that Lowery stole the guns from her.
She asked prosecutors last month to tell her where the other approximately 14 guns found in Lowery’s possession came from so that she could investigate whether Lowery could have stolen these and build her defense.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Margaret M. Vierbuchen doesn’t buy this defense theory or agree with Hurley’s request, her Wednesday filing indicates. It also says there were another 10 guns found.
“The evidence indicates that the Defendant told police that she had given the guns to (Lowery) to sell on her behalf to a friend,” wrote Vierbuchen, in response to the April filing by Hurley’s public defense attorney Jordan Deckenbach.
Hurley gave specific details on how this alleged transfer of her three guns to this friend happened, the prosecutor’s filing alleges.
Specifically, wrote Vierbuchen, Hurley provided law enforcement with a two-page bill of sale that purported to show she sold the three guns to her friend May 30, 2022, two weeks after she bought them from a local sporting goods shop.
“The problem with this story,” wrote the prosecutor, “is that the friend she claims to have sold the guns to died in April 2022, over a month before the Defendant originally purchased the guns, making the alleged transfer of the guns on May 30, 2022 an impossibility.”
The investigator confronted Hurley with this discrepancy, says the filing.
After that, Hurley “suggested to investigators that (Lowery) was always taking her things,” wrote Vierbuchen.
And on Sept. 1, 2024, Hurley called a different investigator and insisted outright that Lowery had stolen her guns, the filing adds.
The Law Stuff
Vierbuchen ventured these details to rebut Hurley’s request for more information about the sources of the other 10 or more guns found on Lowery’s person or in a home or car associated with him at the time of his death.
Deckenbach called the guns’ origin “material,” or important evidence, and asked the case judge to order the government to give it to the defense.
Vierbuchen said it’s not material and would spur “mini-trials” surrounding Lowery’s acquisition of the other guns. But no one had reported those guns stolen, the prosecutor added.
Courts take seriously the right of defendants to access evidence important to their cases, but it’s not limitless, she noted.
Some limits on that right prevent “fishing expedition(s)” and level the playing field between the government and the defendant (who has a Fifth Amendment right to remain silent), and to protect witnesses from harassment and intimidation, added Vierbuchen.
The Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation has considered the investigation into Lowery's shooting open for more than a year.
DCI Commander Cox told Cowboy State Daily in a Thursday email that for this investigation and all investigations, "DCI considers the case open and active until prosecution has been completed in whatever fashion that takes."
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
