Hikers and other outdoorsmen and women in Park County should be on the lookout for two objects that could advance the murder investigation into the 2023 disappearance of a Cody woman, the sheriff says.
Katie Ferguson, 33, vanished in October 2023 while traveling home to Wyoming with her on-and-off boyfriend Adam Aviles Jr., who was 26 at the time.
With authorities operating on the suspicion that Ferguson was killed by Aviles, Park County Sheriff Darrell Steward is now asking the public traveling outdoors in Park County to stay alert for a pink tote container bearing white duct tape; and the removed, possibly charred or damaged front-passenger seat of a Dodge Durango.
Steward coordinated that request with Ferguson’s mother Mona Hartling, who said she’s desperate to learn where her daughter, or her remains, came to rest.
“It’s killing us not knowing where she is,” Hartling told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday. “It’s for justice, for her and her babies – for her family – her beautiful children.”
Ferguson and Aviles’ two daughters are 6 and 3 years old now, said Hartling, and in the care of Aviles’ mother, who Hartling described as a wonderful caretaker.
“They’re adorable. They’re so adorable – and Katie just shines through them,” Hartling said, adding that she dreads having to explain the case and their mother’s disappearance to the girls as they grow older.
Katie Ferguson (Courtesy Angela Ferguson) 
Katie Ferguson’s family and friends wore shirts bearing her missing poster to her boyfriend’s sentencing on a felon-in-possession-of-ammunition conviction “so he can see her face,” said Ferguson’s best friend Shandal Pulver. 
Katie Ferguson of Cody has been missing since Oct. 10
The Return
Aviles returned to Park County with the pair’s two daughters in October, but without Ferguson. He remained there for weeks as law enforcement scrutiny mounted around him.
One of the first things he did was borrow an angle grinder from a friend, saying he needed to cut something off his car, according to court testimony.
When sheriff’s deputies responded to a report of an abandoned vehicle in the Oregon Basin region north of Cody, they found a Dodge Durango containing blood and bloody items. The Durango’s front passenger seat was missing.
Investigators also found ammunition in the vehicle.
Aviles arrived on scene, lugging a gas can, court documents say.
Though long a suspect in what authorities believe to be Ferguson’s murder, Aviles has not been charged with murder.
He was, however, sentenced on Sept. 13, 2024, to seven years and three months in prison, for the tangential charge of being a felon in possession of ammunition.
How We’ve Searched
Steward told Cowboy State Daily that Park County personnel have searched extensively for the tote, which likely contains “DNA.”
While testifying at Aviles’ sentencing hearing last year, FBI Special Agent Luke Williamson did not describe the contents so mildly.
Aviles’ father in November 2023 had reportedly found a large pink tote container which smelled of “rotting meat,” at the Cody home he shared with his son, Williamson testified under questioning.
Hartling wasn’t expecting to hear that graphic descriptor at the time, she told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.
She and other family members left the courtroom in tears.
“I couldn’t handle it at the time,” she said Wednesday. “To see (Aviles) – No. 1 – and not be able to go up there and just rip his head off. And, that was my baby girl’s blood up there. You never imagine that – it’s like watching a movie. I couldn’t handle it at the time.”
Hartling later re-entered the courtroom to hear the conclusion of the hours long hearing.
Williamson, meanwhile, continued with his testimony, saying Aviles’ father put the tote in the dumpster and that this upset Aviles Jr.
Aviles Jr. told his father that the tote contained “DNA” and retrieved it from the dumpster, according to court testimony.
But investigators never found it.
The tote may be in Park County, Natrona or other surrounding counties, or altogether gone, said Steward.
But it could pose a breakthrough in the case if anyone finds it.
Authorities searched along Aviles and Ferguson’s travel route after her disappearance, eventually narrowing their search on a stretch of Arkansas between Little Rock and Gurdon, Hartling told Cowboy State Daily.
They found a strip of fabric which Hartling said matched the pattern on Ferguson’s pajamas, but they never found Ferguson, Steward said, adding that the search has not yielded recent results.
The Gun
On Nov. 2, 2023, Aviles Jr. let his dad borrow a Glock pistol to take with him on a hunting trip, said Williamson during the hearing.
That was also the day Mona Hartling reported her daughter missing.
Aviles rushed to his father’s hunting campsite and demanded the gun back.
“Did you whack her?” asked the father, according to Williamson’s secondhand account of the father’s later police interviews.
“The kids are safe, that’s what matters,” answered the son, reportedly.
Aviles’ phone search history shows he was looking for answers about how Americans can move to Canada, and about strong cleaning products like lye, according to court testimony.
While You Are Out
Steward said his office is also seeking a Colt .22 handgun, eyeglasses and a cellphone that vanished in the area of Outlaw Trail just west of the Cody shooting complex – associated with the April 2, 2024, suicide death of Mick Barrus.
Investigators have no reason to believe the death was anything other than a suicide, but they’re seeking those items nonetheless, said Steward.
“That’s unrecovered evidence,” the sheriff said, adding that investigators searched for those things for two months. He believes Barrus was separated from the Colt because the man wandered after it after firing “a self-inflicted gunshot wound that didn’t immediately kill him.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
