Joseph Underwood is guilty of concealing a woman’s dead body in Park County, possessing a firearm despite a prior felony, resisting arrest, and leading law enforcement on a high-speed car chase.
Underwood, 51, faces up to 14.5 years in prison, says a judge’s order filed late last week.
His sentencing is set for Oct. 1; however, Senior Assistant Public Defender Timothy Blatt has asked the court to reschedule that so Underwood can scrutinize a parole agent’s summary of his life, crime and character before he’s sentenced.
Underwood gave an Alford guilty plea in District Court Judge Bill Simpson’s Court on Sept. 5, according to a Sept. 12 order recounting the hearing.
That means he didn’t have to confess in court.
Alford pleas function like guilty pleas for sentencing purposes, but they mean that the defendant isn’t admitting his guilt. He’s merely acknowledging that the state has enough evidence to convict him.
Simpson “read the affidavit of probable cause into the record” to establish the evidence that would convict Underwood, absent his confession, the order says.
Six Long Years
Wyoming’s six years of prosecuting Underwood for these crimes have revealed complexities in the state’s criminal mental incompetence laws.
He was originally charged in Laramie County with killing Angela Elizondo, 40, at his Cheyenne home on Nov. 1, 2019. If convicted of first-degree murder, he could have been sentenced to life in prison or the death penalty
That case did not survive.
Underwood received a mental evaluation in May 2020 that found him unfit to proceed to trial.
Forensic psychologist Dr. Max Wachtel said Underwood had received a head injury and expressed worry that his evaluation took place too quickly after that incident.
At that time, Wachtel believed Underwood’s impairments could be reversed, so prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to send him to the Wyoming State Hospital (WSH) in December 2020.
However, separate evaluations presented to the court in Laramie County during hearings in June and August of 2021 concluded Underwood was not competent to proceed with the trial.
At the second hearing, the court determined “there was a substantial probability” Underwood could become fit to stand trial at some point in the future and directed the State Hospital to report to the court every 90 days on his mental progress.
In June 2022, Froelicher reversed course and said there was no viable reason to believe Underwood could be prepared to stand trial.
Froelicher also said in a separate ruling that WSH failed to fully comply with the reporting requirements mandated for the case and as a result unnecessarily extended its duration.
The judge dismissed the murder case June 23, 2022.
Park County then took up its own case against Underwood, pursuing the lesser charges relating to Underwood’s crimes within Park County’s borders.
Whatever It Takes
Again in Park County, Underwood insisted he was not well enough to participate in his case. He wrote multiple letters to the judge asking for the defense attorney and mental health evaluator he’d had in Cheyenne.
In April 2024, Cody Circuit Court Judge Joseph Darrah ruled that Underwood is mentally slow, but that the court could make special concessions to help him understand court proceedings and participate in his case.
Former Park County Deputy Attorney Jack Hatfield II, who has since taken a job in Laramie County, said he’d go to great lengths to get Underwood through court proceedings.
“There’s obviously something wrong with Mr. Underwood, and the fact that he’s slow isn’t any different than just about any murder defendant in this country,” said Hatfield in a March 2024 hearing. “Nothing says if you have that level of IQ you can’t be tried for murder, body-dump, fleeing from law enforcement, possessing a firearm when you’re not supposed to — just like every other criminal in this country.”
Underwood injured his brain in a motorcycle accident in his late teens and harmed it again by shooting himself in the side of the head in 2014.
Once the case ascended to Simpson’s felony-level court, Simpson carried out Darrah’s findings and kept Underwood’s case alive.
Court Docs Say …
Court documents allege that while living in Cheyenne, Underwood picked up Elizondo and took her to his home Nov. 1, 2019, where they talked and interacted.
He followed her into the bathroom, Underwood later told investigators, then he blacked out and came back to consciousness to find himself sitting on her chest while she lay on her back in the bathroom area.
Underwood realized she was dead, the affidavit alleges, and he pulled down her pants and had sex with her body.
At The Walmart
Underwood told investigators he went to Walmart and bought a rope and red handcart, which he then used to load the woman’s body into his white 2007 Chevy Silverado and drive her to Highway 120 South between Cody and Meeteetse, the affidavit says.
He drove west off the highway onto a two-track road near a private ranch about a mile and a half, then drove another half mile down another two-track road to an area where a small creek runs through a ravine bed.
Underwood allegedly put the woman’s body, still wrapped in a bedsheet and tied to the handcart, into the creek bed in the ravine.
Here the alleged facts fork into Park County’s jurisdiction.
A hunter found the woman’s body in the ravine the day after her death, and Park County Sheriff’s Deputy Robert R. Cooke responded to secure the scene that evening.
At about 10:43 p.m., Cooke watched a vehicle, which he later identified as a white truck, headed his direction. Headlights appeared in the dark as if someone had just switched them on, reads Cooke’s affidavit in Underwood’s Park County case.
Cooke radioed dispatch to ask if other law enforcement agents were coming out to help him. Dispatch said no, that vehicle wasn’t another agent.
The vehicle turned its headlights off again and loitered about 100 yards from Cooke’s vehicle.
Cooke switched on his spotlight and peered through binoculars at the truck.
The truck loitered for about 13 minutes, the affidavit says.
Then it approached Cooke again, and he turned on his police lights. The vehicle stopped and backed up, turning around at about 10:57 p.m., headed back for the highway.
The Chase
Cooke called for more agents, summoning Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers, sheriff’s deputies and Bureau of Land Management Ranger Robert Lind.
Cooke struggled to keep up as he followed the white truck on the two-track road, but he and the other agents were able to get behind the vehicle as it raced east on the highway then turned left toward Meeteetse.
A trooper executed a traffic stop. Cooke ran the truck’s registration and linked the truck to Joseph Underwood, whom Cooke knew from previous law-enforcement contacts, the affidavit says.
Others told Cooke that Underwood had a handgun trained on his head and was threatening repeatedly to kill himself.
The various agents tried talking Underwood down, but it did no good.
This Scar
Lind visited with Underwood, who said he’d shot himself before with a .38-caliber pistol near his right temple and still had the scar.
Lind asked if he could feel the scar, the affidavit says.
“And when Joe let him touch the scar, Robert lunged through the open window,” wrote Cooke later.
Lind grabbed the pistol and a round ejected from the chamber as Lind grabbed it. The pistol flew from Underwood’s hand and landed on the truck’s passenger seat.
Lind kept wrestling with Underwood, but when Underwood broke away from Lind’s grasp, both Lind and Cooke pointed their guns at Underwood and commanded him not to move, says the affidavit.
Lind then holstered his weapon and wrestled some more as Underwood reached for his own 9 mm pistol.
Cooke tased Underwood.
Lind opened the truck door, and Underwood rolled onto the highway.
“All right, all right, I quit, I quit,” said Underwood as the taser cycled, the affidavit relates.
Agents took Underwood to the Park County Detention Center without further incident.
Fetus In Your Truck
DCI agents interviewed Underwood multiple times in the jail, says the Laramie County affidavit.
They asked him if they’d find anything concerning in his truck. Underwood reportedly said his girlfriend’s clothes were in the truck along with both their cellphones, a 9 mm handgun and a fetus in a butter container.
The fetus was from his girlfriend’s miscarriage from one or two months before her death, according to Underwood’s interview. He was the father of the fetus and had planned on burying it in Park County, he told DCI agents.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
