Wyoming People: Tim McKinney Took 2 Bullets During 3 Terms As Fremont County Sheriff

At 79, former Fremont County Sheriff Tim McKinney still stands tall and ramrod straight on his family’s 2,700-acre ranch.

His roots in the ground where his cowboy boots stand on go back to the late 1930s when his parents leased the land from a major sheep rancher. 

In the late '40s they bought the property that includes the site of the historic Derby Stage Station that sits along U.S. Highway 287, 14 miles southwest of Lander.

Previous to the 1930s, McKinney’s grandfather and great-grandfather also worked and ranched on nearby lands. 

An album filled with family history includes a story about a noted U.S. Forest Service ranger who worked at Yosemite National Park from 1907 to 1921 and died while on patrol.

“My great-great-grandpa on my great-grandma’s side was Jack Gaylor,” McKinney said. “If you go to Yosemite National Park, you will see his picture as a ranger and there is Gaylor Peak and Gaylor Lakes.”

His great-grandfather on his dad’s side, Edward Coffin McKinney, who married Gaylor’s daughter, was involved in a 1912 Fremont County posse that tracked down a sheepherder-turned-outlaw who robbed three Riverton saloons. 

The sheepherder opened fire on the posse and died in the gunfight.

A law enforcement career keeping the peace in the 9,266 square miles of Fremont County where he was raised seems in character for the family genes.

Born in 1946, McKinney shows Cowboy State Daily a photo of himself as a baby sitting in metal tub by a sheep wagon while his mother supports him. His father worked for a sheep rancher at the time.

“They had to tie me in the washtub under the sheep wagon because there were so many rattlesnakes, so I wouldn’t crawl around,” he said.

Another Era

As a peace officer involved in a shootout that put two bullets through his body, three terms as sheriff, and a stint doing security at the Wyoming Honor Farm, McKinney learned how to deal with snakes of the human variety.

He also looks back at his years wearing the badge and sees accomplishments and gratitude, and an era that is far different from today.

“I wouldn’t recommend someone go into law enforcement today,” he said. “Everyone plays the blame game. I guess I’m just an old peace officer that looks back at what it meant to say ‘protect and serve.’”

McKinney’s time wearing the badge included an infamous murder case, and he transitioned a sheriff’s department into an age that had deputies filing incident reports instead of writing information on napkins.

As sheriff, he launched one the state’s first DARE programs to educate kids about the dangers of drugs, and believes he helped improve communication with the community, other law agencies and within his own department

His tenure and career meant enough to other law enforcement officers in the state to put him into the Wyoming Law Enforcement Hall of Fame in 2011.

While he now has sold his cattle and leases much of his 2,700-acre ranch, McKinney still gets up and works, helping with the “farming” aspect of operations, irrigating, and other chores for the person leasing his land.

His ranching background still guides McKinney's life and values.

“The amount of success you have depends on the effort you put in it,” he said. “That’s pretty much ranching dealing with the ups and downs, the life cycles of animals, and yourself dealing with crises that come about because you are ranching.”

Football Star

As a high schooler, McKinney was a star on the Lander football field, playing quarterback and fullback. 

He was named to the All-State team and designated Player of the Year in Wyoming as a junior. He also excelled at basketball. 

After graduation, he took a full-ride scholarship to play football for Montana State University, but ankle injuries sent him back to Lander at age 19.

Back in his hometown, the only job he could find was as a dispatcher at the Lander Police Department. He took it.

“I worked as a dispatcher for over a year,” he said. 

As he was headed toward his 21st birthday, the chief sent him to a two-week police academy. McKinney recalls helping on patrol during the town’s rowdy Fourth of July when he was still 20. 

While he was being initiated to his city’s bar scene as an officer, he was barely old enough to drink in any of them. 

He said he was “nervous and fidgety” as they walked into a bar and saw two men fighting on top a pool table and two women duking it out inside a phone booth.

“There were clothes flying and hair flying,” he said. “We got them both broke up and tried to arrest the women. … We got them both in the patrol car and they were kind of scantily clothed because they were tearing clothes off and they went at it again.”

When he turned 21, the police chief offered him a job as assistant police chief. McKinney said the offer totally surprised him because he had been working with guys in the department who had been there for eight or nine years.

He was assigned to oversee the night shift that consisted of two older officers who could not get along with each other.

After a new mayor was elected who fired the chief, McKinney said the mayor offered him the top job, but he told her that he was not ready. 

The new chief kept him on as an assistant. 

Give Me That Rifle

While at the city police department he remembers having to respond to another bar fight and pulling up in the alley outside that had space for several cars. 

As he looked underneath a 1-ton stock truck also parked in the alley, a guy came out with a rifle pointed right at him.

“I just reached back and unsnapped my gun and I asked, ‘What are you doing?’” 

McKinney said the man told him that he had been beaten up and came out to get his rifle, and the man he was fighting came out after him, jerked the rifle away and it went off. 

His opponent then threw the rifle underneath the truck, and he was retrieving it.

McKinney demanded the rifle and found that the lever-action 30-30 that had been pointed at him had a round in the chamber. He also found a bullet hole in a nearby wall.

‘This Guy Is Not Quite Right’

After a few years on the Lander force, McKinney in 1971 applied to the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office.

As a Lander police officer, he had to live in the city. Once he was hired onto the sheriff’s department, he moved back onto the family ranch.

McKinney served as a deputy sheriff until 1977, the same year he got shot.

“I got shot in July of 1977, and then I ran for sheriff that fall and was elected, and started as sheriff in 1978,” he said.

On Saturday, July 23, 1977, McKinney was at the sheriff’s department in a shared building with Lander police. 

He was sitting with a city officer just after lunch and a woman came into the office. He recognized her, because he had arrested her husband a month before.

The woman told the officers her husband had returned, she allowed him to stay the night, and he had gone somewhere in the morning. 

She then put his clothes in a box and put it outside her trailer. 

The husband showed up and broke into the trailer, and she wanted him out.

“And so, the policeman jumped up to go, and I said, ‘Wait a minute. I better go with you, this guy is not quite right,’” McKinney said. 

So, McKinney joined the city officer in the car on the passenger side and drove to the trailer. 

The city officer pulled the squad car directly in front of the trailer with McKinney’s passenger door exposed to the trailer.

McKinney said he told his colleague that they should not get out of the car at the same time. The trailer was facing the street.

 As McKinney got out on the passenger side of the car, he turned his back on the trailer and had the car door in his hand.

Just then, the rear door window exploded in front of him.

“I looked down and saw a bullet hole in my shirt, and I just pushed the car door open and went down behind the car door and stretched my feet out into the gutter,” he said. “And the guy shot twice more at the policeman, because the policeman got out of his door and went to the back of the car.”

The Lander officer returned fire.

Bullets Through Window

McKinney said the shooter was putting bullets directly through the front window of the trailer. 

The shooter was not visible and just as McKinney tried to pull his legs behind the car door the assailant fired again and put a bullet through both of his legs.

“I just pulled my revolver out and laid it against the edge of the door and shot right underneath the window where he was shooting from,” McKinney said. “And then the shooting stopped.”

McKinney was rushed to the hospital for surgery with a .357-magnum bullet through his back that exited his abdomen and the bullet through his legs. 

He later learned that one of his bullets had hit the shooter in the head and the Lander officer’s bullets had hit the shooter in the torso and both legs.

The shooter was taken to Casper and survived, living another 15 years as a quadriplegic, McKinney said.

The irony of the shootout, McKinney said, was that he had been on the shooting range and had .38-caliber bullets and not the standard .357-magnum caliber load he normally would carry in the weapon.

The incident became part of the state’s law enforcement training examples because McKinney said he and the other officer made several mistakes. 

He said he should have never turned his back to the trailer and they should not have parked directly in front of it.

“I should have had regular magnums in my gun,” he added.

McKinney spent a couple of weeks in the hospital, and it was there that he made the decision to run for sheriff, knowing that his boss was not seeking another term. 

He joked that his wife, Roseanne, almost shot him again when he told her.

McKinney ran for office as a Democrat and was elected to office in 1978. He was 31. 

The county had several unions representing miners, oil workers and steel workers that helped put him over the top.

Improving Communications

After being elected, he worked on relationships with other law enforcement agencies in the county as well as with Wind River Reservation officials. 

He eventually started a monthly meeting with all the other court and justice officials in the county as well as police agencies to improve communications.

“There would be 30 or 40 people, and we would just go around the room discussing what the problems were at the time,” he said. 

Some of the meetings included investigators from different departments and resulted in crimes being solved because of the collaboration between them.

During his tenure, McKinney said he was able to get repeater antennas installed to fix an ongoing issue that deputies had with car radios in parts of the county where they could not communicate with dispatch. 

He also oversaw the remodeling of the county jail and the introduction of official case reports by deputies that included a case number.

Prior to that, McKinney said case notes may have been written on napkins or anything else available.

McKinney also introduced the first computer to the department and had phone lines installed in local communities, so no one had to make a long-distance call to the department. 

He also led the Wyoming Peace Officers Association and separate Wyoming Sheriff’s Association in 1985.

McKinney recalls doing a lot of legislative work and sitting on a group that developed a state peace officer’s handbook and standards for officers to become certified.

Uden Case

Looking back on his career, one of the cases that he was involved in early in his tenure became national news over the years and spawned magazine covers and at least one true-crime book.

It involved the suspected murder of a Fremont man’s ex-wife and her two boys in September 1980.

“It started right after I was elected sheriff and continued on until just a few years ago when it culminated with the arrest of Gerald and Alice Uden for the murder of Virginia and her two kids,” he said. “I lost a lot of sleep and took a lot of verbal abuse because we didn’t solve that and it was a very, very difficult case. To this day, their bodies have still not been found.”

McKinney said Virginia Uden and her sons had been reported missing, but the case took a new turn when an old football friend and rancher told him at a football game that he noticed a glint of something up above Trout Creek Canyon on the Wind River Reservation. 

When McKinney sent a deputy to check it out, he found Virginia’s car hidden behind a bunch of brush.

“It had a rag sticking in the gas tank,” McKinney said. “We didn’t say anything about that. We just said we found the missing woman’s car.”

A Riverton Police Department investigator found blood behind the front seat. 

McKinney said the missing woman’s mother shortly afterward arrived at his office telling him she got a telegram telling her daughter was OK.

When McKinney called Illinois state police to check out the source of the telegram, they traced it to one of Alice Uden’s daughters by a previous marriage.

“When they confronted her, she just busted down bawling and saying, 'I just did what my mother asked me to do,'” he said. 

Shortly after that Alice, in tears, showed up in the sheriff department’s Riverton branch and told the captain that they were just trying to ease Virginia’s mother’s mind, and then her husband spoke.

“All of a sudden, ole Gerald spoke up and said, ‘I know why they didn’t burn,’’” McKinney said. “We never said anything about that rag in the gas tank. 

"Trout Creek Canyon is way deep and their intention was to run that car off there, and the only reason it would have been found would have been somebody looking for cattle in the bottom of that canyon. But they didn’t get it done, it got stuck in the trees and they tried to camouflage it.”

Despite questioning and pressure from McKinney and other officers, they never had enough evidence to bring charges. The Udens moved to Missouri.

Later, a tip that McKinney eventually received about Alice Uden killing her first husband and dumping him down a mine shaft on a ranch near Cheyenne that he shared with the Laramie County sheriff at the time eventually led to a Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation case that found the husband’s body and led to the arrests of the Udens when they were in their 70s.

Sentences

Gerald Uden confessed to killing his ex-wife and her sons and was given a life sentence on first-degree murder charges. 

Alice Uden was convicted of the 1975 killing of her ex-husband, her third marriage, and sentenced to 20 years in 2014. She died in 2018.

Gerald Uden tried to recant his confession after Alice. McKinney believes he may not have pulled the trigger, because Alice killed her first husband by shooting him behind the ear while he slept.

The “behind the ear” tactic was similar to what Gerald Uden confessed to police, he said.

“I’ve said all along that he didn’t kill them, she did,” McKinney said. “The motive for the killings was that the woman he was married to first had went to see an attorney just prior to meeting him out there and wanted the attorney to go back to court and increase the child support.”

McKinney’s sheriff tenure ended with a defeat by 12 votes as he ran for his fourth term in 1990. He went on to be recruited to oversee security at the Wyoming Honor Camp, where he worked for four years.

He learned a lot more about human nature and the importance of people taking accountability for their actions and their lives.

“I think I served in the best time because there was respect for the law,” he said. “When you threw somebody in jail, you scared the hell out of them. Now, it’s kind of a prestige thing if they go to jail.”

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.