It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Thursday, July 17th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by Cheyenne Frontier Days, kicking off this weekend with Wyoming’s own Ian Munsick and Travis Tritt Friday, Jordan Davis with Brett Young Saturday, and Bailey Zimmerman with Josh Ross on Sunday. Country music’s biggest stars, only at Cheyenne Frontier Days! Don’t miss the 129th Daddy of ‘Em all, July 18-27th.
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A young, petite, pregnant woman found dead with beating and strangulation injuries 33 years ago in a ditch 15 miles north of Sheridan has been identified.
The woman who has been known as “I-90 Jane Doe” for the past three decades has been identified as Cindi Arleen Estrada by the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland says Estrada was one of two Wyoming victims in the case of alleged serial killer Clark Perry Baldwin.
“I’ve been watching for this a while, because they identified Bitter Creek Betty, who was found March 1992 off the interstate in Sweetwater County, you know, with strangulation and other injuries, killed. And so then a month after that, they found a woman they called I-90 Jane Doe, petite, pregnant, young, also dead with strangulation marks in Sheridan off of the interstate.”
Estrada was identified using her mother’s DNA. Prior to the publication of this news story, there was essentially no publicly available information on Estrada online as she died before the internet age. All that is known is that she was born in Torrance, California, and was 21 years old when she was killed.
Read the full story HERE.
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Western Wyoming irrigators are frustrated after having their water shut off earlier than normal to send Colorado River Basin water downstream, despite what appeared to be a promising winter snowpack.
Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that an upcoming public meeting in Pinedale is one of four outreach meetings Wyoming officials are hosting to discuss the state's role in managing Colorado River water.
“The mighty Colorado River, you know, begins its life in Wyoming, and high in the Wind River Range, it feeds into the Upper Green River and the little Snake River. And so Wyoming is a part of this collective, this compact of states that's charged by Congress in a very old compact to manage that water… it's just such a massive watershed, you know, it drains the whole Rocky Mountains all the way to Mexico, and it's time to really pay attention to the fact that there's significantly less water every Year flowing down through that Colorado river system.”
The amount of water Wyoming gets to keep as a member of the more than 100-year-old congressionally created Colorado River Compact will depend on what happens during negotiations over the next several months.
Read the full story HERE.
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If Republicans want to fine-tune their bill to claw back $9.4 billion in federal payouts, including defunding PBS and NPR, they're running out of time. The U.S. House has a legal deadline of Friday at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time to vote on the proposed $1.1 billion in cuts to public television and radio.
Cowboy State Daily’s Sean Barry reports that the cuts are part of a rescissions package — a clawback of funds previously allocated by Congress. By law, these unusual measures must be passed by both chambers of Congress no later than 45 days after formally requested by the president.
“It's also something that only requires a simple majority vote. And if you've heard that story before, it's because the Republicans use simple majority vote procedures a lot in order to avoid the 60 vote Senate threshold when they know they're not going to get any help. They did this with the big, beautiful bill. That was another process. They've done it with the congressional review map to throw out rules. And now they're doing it this way by taking existing funding and yanking it from those agencies, in this case Public Broadcasting.”
As of the time this story was published Thursday, the House was in recess and hadn’t voted on the cuts.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming leaders on Thursday announced they’re challenging the order by which a judge has blocked the state’s school-choice program.
Laramie County District Court Judge Peter Froelicher on Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Steamboat Legacy Scholarship program, while public-school advocacy group Wyoming Education Association and a handful of parents challenge it in court.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the state’s appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court was announced by Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder, who is a proponent of school choice.
“It takes a few days or weeks, but yeah, in the coming weeks, they'll argue against the reasoning that Froelicher deployed, and before that, they'll ask the High Court to stay his decision, basically undo his decision, while they evaluate the reasoning that led him to it.”
Had it been allowed to go into effect, the program would have allocated a per-family maximum of $7,000 toward state-contractor-held accounts for approved families to put toward private school tuition or homeschooling.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Yellowstone National Park black bear with a taste for human food and willing to dangerously ransack campsites to get it was “lethally removed” from the area.
Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that a determined adult female black bear had to be killed July 11 after what the National Park Service called a series of concerning incidents at a backcountry campsite in the Blacktail Deer Creek drainage.
“The incidents all occurred at a back country campsite in the northern section of Yellowstone. And when you're out there, the park mandates that you either suspend your food with these poles or you keep them in a bear proof box. Well, this black bear had previously crushed a tent, but it also figured out how to pull down those poles to get at the food that was being stored overhead. So because it had shown such intelligence and such potentially dangerous behavior and gotten a reward out of it, Yellowstone staff decided the only thing that they could do to ensure everyone's safety was to kill the bear and remove it from the park's population.”
This was the first black bear to be put down by Yellowstone wildlife officials in five years.
Read the full story HERE.
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Nearly half of the inmates in the Laramie County Detention Center have mental health conditions, and about 11% are “extremely” mentally ill.
That’s why, after two years and $700,000, plus other related projects and hires, the jail is opening the first special management unit in Wyoming. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland explains that this jail pod is for inmates whose acute mental health issues require tight monitoring and extra care, but which is designed with good-behavior incentives.
“What was interesting to me is the way the architecture's intent is bound up in its design. The officials at the jail were telling me, yeah, you can see sunlight. They're tempted by this sunlight, and some of them can even see a series of progressing, improving recreation areas, culminating in the outdoor sunlight bath patio that makes them want to improve. It's good behavior that gets them out into each rec area, eventually into the sunlight, and that really is supposed to promote that good behavior, that taking of medication, that not harming of themselves or others.”
Laramie County Chief Deputy and Detention Administrator Perry Rockvam said he expects the special pod to be full nearly all the time. Jail staffers have already identified whom to transition into it in the coming days, with the planned opening set for Friday.
Read the full story HERE.
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A 49-year-old woman who acted as a mule to traffic meth, fentanyl and cocaine to Wyoming from Colorado will spend up to eight years in prison.
Heather Marie Russell pleaded guilty Thursday to 10 drug-related charges. As part of the plea deal, Cowboy State Daily's Dale Killingbeck reports that Russell is agreeing to “testify honestly” against “known and unknown” co-conspirators in the enterprise that brought drugs from Colorado to Natrona County, then sold them to local buyers.
“In court today, she was apologetic. She apologized to the court and to the community for her actions. She said that she was thankful to be sober and that she wanted the judge to just go ahead and sentence her today. She didn't want a pre sentence investigation or anything, so the judge sentenced her to concurrent sentences that will mean she'll serve up to eight years in prison.”
DCI’s investigation of Russell tracked her traveling between Natrona County and Colorado to buy drugs. Agents did controlled buys from Russell starting in February 2024, and informants and co-conspirators pointed to Russell as a source for fentanyl.
Read the full story HERE.
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U.S. House Judiciary Committee member Harriet Hageman of Wyoming is investigating the prosecution of an Idaho ultrarunner for going off a trail in Grand Teton National Park.
33-year-old Michelino Sunseri has never denied cutting the switchback during a run in the national park on Sept. 2, 2024. It was his disclosure of the switchback cut on social media that caught the National Park Service’s attention, and resulted in a misdemeanor charge. Cowboy State Daily’s Sean Barry reports that Hageman feels Sunseri’s case is an example of overzealous prosecution.
“It appears that even after the National Park Service sort of stepped away from this the US Attorney's Office for the District of Wyoming has been plowing straight ahead with this prosecution, and it's very upsetting to some people to see. One plea offer reportedly would have been 1000 hours of community service and a five year prohibition from setting foot in the park… Harriet Hageman thinks it's an example of over-criminalization, where people who did things that they did not really know what the rules were, they thought were minor, are now being hit with some very serious penalties.”
Hageman said the cut-through that Sunseri took was actually an “alternate path,” and she is questioning his prosecution altogether.
Read the full story HERE.
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And that’s today’s news! For a deeper dive into the people and issues that affect Wyoming, check out The Roundup, conversations with the most interesting people in the Cowboy State. This week, my guest is Cody native Megan Anderson, a successful young entrepreneur who lives full-time in a conversion van. You can find the link to this really fascinating conversation on our website, on our YouTube channel, and wherever you get your podcasts. And of course, you'll find it in our FREE daily email newsletter! Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
