The FBI’s bomb squad responded Sunday evening to a home in residential Riverton, Wyoming, when local officers served a search and arrest warrant to a man accused of threatening to burn his neighbor’s house down because of her dogs.
He also threatened to use a “napalm stash," according to court documents and a police interview.
Samuel Clay Giese, 55, was arrested and charged with making terroristic threats, which is a felony punishable by up to three years in prison.
“We served a search warrant and an arrest warrant over there last night,” Riverton Police Department Lt. Heath Wharton told Cowboy State Daily on Monday about a home on Westview Drive where a large law enforcement presence converged starting at 6 p.m. Sunday.
“Then on the recommendation of the FBI, we had a bomb squad come and collect some evidence,” he said, adding that the responding team was the FBI’s bomb squad.
A Cowboy State Daily reporter visiting the Westview home Monday observed four bottles of cleaning materials sitting on the front porch.
Wharton said he did not know the significance of those, and said the investigation is ongoing.
The reporter knocked and rang at the door upon two separate visits two hours apart Monday morning. No one answered.
Court Docs Say …
In an evidentiary affidavit filed Sunday in Riverton Circuit Court, RPD Officer Taylor Murphy wrote that he responded just before midday Saturday to a home on Eastview Drive across the alley from the home where Giese lives.
The response was due to a report of a woman receiving a threatening note from her neighbor, wrote Murphy.
The woman said she found a letter on her backyard fence that morning, which she believed to be from her neighbor across the alley. She didn’t know his name, but he’d made threats before, and she believed he’d started a fire in the alley a couple nights prior, says the affidavit.
Murphy read the letter, he wrote in the affidavit.
“If your dogs ever so much as bark at my cats, or if I ever have to talk to the cops again, I am going to wait until everyone is sleeping, and set your house on fire,” the letter read, according to Murphy’s account.
“So it’s your turn to die for those dogs,” the letter reportedly continued. “Just keep them out of my sight forever, and I’ll forget all about you. But we both know you won’t even consider that, not even to save yourn (sic) life. and the lives of your children. So I am not responsible for what they are forcing me to do.”
The letter continued: “You saw me test my napalm stash. I didn’t make that nasty stuff for my own entertainment. I made that in case I need it on short notice. And I have plenty more where that came from.”
The History
Murphy researched call responses for that home and found that in March of this year, RPD Officer Brandon Brookover contacted Giese for a welfare check after the Veterans Administration hospital said Giese was making homicidal statements, saying the VA was trying to kill him and he was going to “take a bunch of innocent lives with him,” Murphy related from the report.
Brookover called Giese, and Giese said the VA was trying to kill him, but that he was not going to hurt anyone, says the affidavit.
In June another RPD officer contacted Giese when the latter said, “I know my neighbors killed my cat, I’m going to burn their house down, I don’t care if they are in it or not,” according to the document.
The officer chose to put Giese in emergency detention over mental health and potential harm concerns.
A counselor visited with Giese that day, Giese told the counselor he no longer planned to burn the neighbor’s house down and he was released, related Murphy from the call history.
A Visit
Murphy went to the home on Westview on Saturday to speak with Giese and arrest him, but Giese didn’t answer the knocks, the affidavit says.
The next door neighbors said they didn’t know him.
They described a van usually parked in the driveway, which Murphy found at the local Walmart.
Murphy found the van’s owner working at the store, and she woke with officers, says the affidavit.
The woman, Giese’s sister, said he lives in her basement, Murphy wrote.
She didn’t give officers permission to go into her home, but said they could knock and Giese would answer, the document relates.
Murphy countered, saying Giese hadn’t answered.
The sister called Giese and tried convincing him to speak with officers. She asked if he wrote a letter to the neighbors and he said he did, the affidavit says.
Giese said he’d be gone from the home before officers got back to the house, the document says.
Wharton in his Monday interview with Cowboy State Daily confirmed that officers arrested Giese and that investigators were on scene through Sunday night and into Monday morning.
Wharton also indicated that federal charges could come into play in this case.
“Depending on what the FBI wants to do or the feds want to do (it’s uncertain) whether well continue with it,” he said. “You may have to start asking them.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
