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[{"type":"text","text":"That's it. We gotta have this...."}]

Christmas no play 11 29 25

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<title>Today In Christmas: Saturday, November 29, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

That's it. We gotta have this....

Today In Christmas: Saturday, November 29, 2025

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

When former Fremont County coroner Ed McAuslan arrived in Riverton, Wyoming, as a young police officer in January 1973, the town was rougher than it is now.

“When I first came here, it was a little more wild,” McAuslan said. “There were bombings and just all kinds of things went on back then.”

McAuslan said that a bomb had been placed under the patrol car of Undersheriff Duel Price. The car was parked in his driveway at Price’s home when the explosion rocked the neighborhood. 

No one was hurt, but McAuslan said that it was incidents like the bombing were the on-the-job training he and other rookie cops received. 

There was no police academy in the 1970s and McAuslan learned the intricacies of his job on the streets of Riverton. 

Much of the town's crime centered around the numerous bars in Riverton. McAuslan said that just at the intersection of Third and Main streets there were three bars on the street corners.

McAuslan had gotten into law enforcement by chance. 

In 1962, he had joined the military and spent his tour of duty at Vandenburg Air Force Base in California during the early days of missiles. 

He said that the base test-fired missiles and for the next four years, he was a motion picture lab technician working with film of the missile launches, mostly to the South Pacific.

He left in 1966 and returned home to Wyoming where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife Management. After graduating, McAuslan was unable to find work in his chosen field. 

“I was married with a young son to support,” McAuslan said. “There were only two openings with Wyoming Game and Fish and 75 applicants.”

The chief of Police in Glenrock encouraged him to apply for a job, and in May 1972, McAuslan was employed as a patrol officer. 

He soon transferred to Riverton and hit the streets in January 1973 as a rookie cop, acquiring knowledge as he went.

His first lessons involved learning the city laws and statutes.

“Our job was to patrol and try to keep the crime down,” McAuslan said. “We also had the responsibility of working traffic and doing accident investigations. We covered the whole aspect of it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Investigator And Coroner "}]

McAuslan was a patrol officer for only 10 months before being promoted into investigations. 

It was there that the rookie learned how to investigate major crimes like burglaries and homicides. He was no longer a traffic cop, but it also meant long hours since McAuslan was always on call. 

His duties increased when, in 1975, Fremont County Coroner Larry Lee asked Police Chief Dennis Horyza if McAuslan could assist with death investigations. 

It was approved. The same year, McAuslan also became an EMT and worked with the Fremont County Ambulance until 1990.

“For a long time, the coroners of the state were just funeral directors,” McAuslan said. “But things got to the point where they did more investigations.”

Lee was a funeral director and fire chief when he asked McAuslan to help him with death investigations. Their jurisdiction covered all of Fremont County and the Wind River Reservation. 

McAuslan worked in law enforcement and in the coroner’s office for the next 24 years. 

When Lee retired in 1998, McAuslan was elected to the office in Lee’s place in 1999 and retired from the Riverton Police Department. 

McAuslan became a coroner full-time and held the post until his own retirement in 2014. 

“Working with families during a death, whether it is natural, accidental or a homicide, is the most difficult part,” McAuslan said.“My job was to determine the cause and manner of death, and to assist families however I could. Having compassion is the most important thing there is.”

McAuslan said that it was crucial to remember to always have respect for the people no matter how they treat you. 

He related almost being attacked when he brought news of a husband’s death in a car crash to the victim’s wife. She reacted in a hate-filled rage and went after McAuslan. 

McAuslan said that although he was just the messenger, he knew he could become the target of the loved ones' anger and learned not to take it personally. 

That day, he was grateful he had taken a pastor with him who was able to calm the grief-stricken woman while McAuslan tactfully withdrew from her home.  

“If you can't respect the people and what's going on with them, then you need to get another profession,” McAuslan said. “You can't react to how they treat you because it is a very difficult circumstance.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bridging Cultures"}]

Since McAuslan had jurisdiction over the reservation, he also had to learn to deal respectfully with two different cultures. He worked closely with several tribal members over the years, including Georgianna “Georgie” Crawford and Willie Le Clair.

One example he cited was when they were dealing with a hit-and-run homicide on the reservation and the family was not allowed to enter the scene. 

They asked McAuslan to allow a tribal elder to bless the body, and he was able to convince the FBI and Indian Police that this could be could be done without disturbing the investigation.

“I made a habit of keeping a braid of sweet grass in each vehicle,” McAuslan said. “If the family wanted something like that, we always had it with us.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Preventing Deaths"}]

During McAuslan’s many years as coroner, suicide was a big issue and he became proactive in preventing them, especially with youth.

“Georgie and I spent a lot of time with the kids and we covered the entire county,” McAuslan said. 

He was working for the coroner’s office when in 1985, a rash of suicides by hanging ultimately claimed the lives of 12 young men from the Wind River Indian Reservation, while 88 others fortunately failed in their attempts. 

During this time McAuslan, Crawford and others doubled their efforts to reach the kids and stop the deaths. 

Eventually, the hangings stopped following a Tribal Ceremony, but left behind grieving families.

McAuslan said that another aspect of suicide that is not considered is how no one talked about cleaning the scene following a suicide. This was left to family or friends. 

It broke his heart as he witnessed the additional pain mothers especially were put through.

“At that time, I realized that an issue no one talked about was how messy it was when someone shoots themselves,” McAuslan said. “I was able to talk to some people and get some money to establish the fund to do cleanup so the families didn't have that responsibility.”

McAuslan said that it takes a special person to be willing to clean up a suicide scene and he finally had a young intern, Erin Ivie who took over the job. 

After proving that she had the same compassion as McAuslan, Ivie is currently the Fremont County Coroner. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Compassion"}]

McAuslan said that one of the hardest investigations as a coroner was when someone lost a child to SIDS. 

There is usually no explanation for the death and so rather than prevention, he and Crawford set out to give as much support to the grieving families as possible. 

In the early 2000s, their compassionate approach received national attention and they were invited to make a presentation at the National SIDS Conference in Orlando, Florida.

“We would have families who felt ostracized,” McAuslan said. “The only help we could give them was to support them as we did our investigation.”

McAuslan learned to not rush the families and to sit with them as they held their children for the last time. 

“It's not natural for a parent to lose a child,” McAuslan said. 

In dealing with so many deaths over the past decades, McAuslan said that he cannot dwell on the horrors he has witnessed but rather on the people he has helped.

“You can't focus on the deaths or you won't survive,” McAuslan said. “I still remember a few cases, like the couple who murdered their children in 1979 and the suicides in the 1980s, but for the most part, I don’t think about them.” 

In his retirement, McAuslan has turned to photography and taking classes on petroglyphs at Central Wyoming College. 

“It’s important to keep moving forward,” McAuslan said. “To focus on the good.” 

Ed Mc Auslan 2 inset Ed the retired photographer 6 7 26

<title>Wyoming People: Fremont County’s Ed McAuslan Learned To Be A Coroner On The Job | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Ed McAuslan was the longtime Fremont County coroner who learned his trade on the job as a young cop recruited into the office. A rash of 100 attempted suicides by hanging in 1985 — 12 successful — opened his eyes wide to “an issue no one talked about."

Wyoming People: Fremont County’s Ed McAuslan Learned To Be A Coroner On The Job

Jen kocher

Jen Kocher

Crime & Courts

Law Enforcement

Editor's note: This is the second of a two-part series on the infamous "Rawlins Rodeo Murders." Part one 

 and focused on the disappearances of four young girls that remain unsolved 52 years later.

In the early 1970s, the small, rugged city of Rawlins, Wyoming, was in the dawn of an energy boom.

The summer of 1974 arrived like any other, but then between July and August, 

Two of then — 10-year-old Jaylene Banker and 19-year-old Christine “Christy” Gross — were eventually found dead.

The other two teens, 19-year-old Carlene Brown and 15-year-old Deborah Meyer, were never found at all.

All their murders and disappearances remain unsolved, and more than 50 years later law enforcement has yet to publicly named any suspects or persons of interest.

Carbon County Sheriff Alex Bakken, who wasn’t born at the time the murders took place, admits that his knowledge is limited on the cases. He took over as sheriff four years ago and inherited these among other cold cases.

He said the files are securely stowed in an offsite storage facility that he plans to retrieve.

other cash-strapped agencies throughout the state

 with large jurisdictions and limited staff, is “slowly but surely” working to digitize older case files in accordance with state statute passed in 2024.

It requires agencies to report cold cases dating back to January 1972 to the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation’s 

[{"type":"text","text":"To date, only Banker appears in the database."}]

This work is being done around their current workload, Bakken said, but it doesn’t mean that they’re forgotten, he said.

Retired homicide detective and Powell-based cold case investigator Janet Franson likewise believes there’s still work to be done.

She’s been looking into these cases for 25 years, specifically trying to locate the remains of the missing girls.

“I know people would say it’s so old,” Franson told Cowboy State Daily. “But two girls are still missing and need to be found.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Possible Suspects?"}]

The first two teens vanished on July 4, 1974, which was a big year for Rawlins.

Fireworks were returning to the town’s Fourth of July celebration after being absent for several years, according to local reporting at the time.

Two friends, 19-year-olds Carlene Brown and Christine “Christy” Gross, attended the Little Britches Rodeo, a local favorite annual event. Gross had been visiting from Bowdle, South Dakota.

Details surrounding their disappearances are vague, but former Carbon County Deputy Sheriff Jeff Faycosh reported that their van was found parked at the fairgrounds, according to a November 1983 Casper-Star Tribune story.

Gross’s remains were found nine years later near Sinclair, a small town of around 350 residents located about 6 miles from Rawlins along Interstate 80.

At the time, Faycosh said his office had turned up a “few new leads” from the crime scene and indicated that a suspect had been identified after looking at “all possible suspects,” according to local media reports.

He further stated that his office was in the process of attempting to locate the suspect, who he declined to name.

[{"type":"text","text":"Faycosh also said that he hadn’t given up hope of finding Brown."}]

“You spend nine years sweating a case like this and you think you are at a dead end. Then you get a new lead,” he told a Rawlins 

Times reporter in a November 1983 article.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Likely Not Bundy"}]

It’s not clear what “suspect” Faycosh was referring to or if any suspects have ever been publicly named.

Many in the community, including Brown’s longtime friend Mary Kay Albrechtson, believe that 

Theodore “Ted” Bundy may be responsible for the murders.

However, former Carbon County Sheriff Chuck Ogburn dispelled that speculation, telling reporters that his office had looked into Bundy, but he’d been incarcerated in Colorado when Gross and Brown vanished.

That timeline, however, appears to be off, according to 

 that say Bundy was not arrested in Utah until August 1975, when he was taken into custody for kidnapping and assaulting a teenager in that state.

He faced additional murder charges in Colorado and was moved to an Aspen jail in January 1977.

Bundy later escaped from the jail in June 1977 from a second-story window while using the jailhouse law library but was captured five days later.

Authorities believe Bundy’s killing spree began in 1974, as he confessed before his 1989 execution to the murders of more than 30 women and young girls.

In July 1974, however, it’s likely that Bundy was still in Washington state, where he abducted and killed Janice Ott and Denise Naslund from Lake Sammamish on July 14, 1974.

Bundy may have been in the Rawlins area, however, when Meyer and Banker disappeared in August — the same month he relocated to Salt Lake City to begin law school and continue his prolific killing spree.

He’s thought to have killed at least eight young women during his time in Utah. His latest victim there was 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime, 

which the Utah County Sheriff’s Office solved in April after 52 years

This discovery also allowed authorities for the first time to upload Bundy’s full DNA profile with more murders expected to be linked to the notorious serial killer.

He’s known to have killed victims in at least seven states — including Utah, Idaho and Colorado — but so far, Bundy has not been tied to any murders in Wyoming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Tracking A Suspected Murderer"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"A more likely suspect for some is Royal Russell Long, said Janet Franson."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“I’d put my money on this guy,” Franson said."}]

Franson, a retired Lakeland, Florida, homicide detective now living in Powell, has been studying Long’s connections to the Rawlins murders since 2001.

After retiring from the Lakeland Police Department, Franson continued investigating cold cases.

She worked as a volunteer cold case investigator for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and later for the Human Identification Lab at the University of North Texas.

It was this work that sent her to Wyoming and other states to investigate cases and procure DNA from victims’ families for identification.

Long’s name popped up a lot in her investigation into Brown’s disappearance.

He was a long-haul trucker known to carry equipment to carnivals and fairs. In 1984, Long was arrested for kidnapping and raping two teen girls.

The girls had been hitchhiking when they were abducted by Long, who tied them up at gunpoint and took them to his home in Evansville, Wyoming.

The 15-year-old was able to escape and call for help, but Long fled with 12-year-old Sharon Baldeagle.

Long was eventually caught in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Baldeagle was not with him, however, and remains missing to this day.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Predilection For Pairs"}]

Long has never been charged with murder. He pleaded guilty to the two counts of kidnapping and received two life sentences, according to legal documents.

He was also charged with the kidnapping and murder of two 13-year-old girls whom he’d abducted from the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds in September 1981.

Despite having several witnesses that recognized Long as well as hairs of one of the girls in the trunk of his car, authorities were unable to make the charges stick.

Long died in a Wyoming prison of a heart attack in 1993, taking his secrets to his grave.

Though never charged, Long is suspected of multiple rapes and murders across many states, Franson said.

She firmly believes that not only did he murder Baldeagle and dispose of her body, but he’s also responsible for the deaths of all four Rawlins victims.

Franson notes the similarities of the abductions and Long’s predilection for taking victims in pairs, which is rare, she said.

Though there’s no record of address that Cowboy State Daily could locate, Franson was told by a local she interviewed years ago that Long had been staying in Rawlins at the time of the murders at a residence within blocks of the fairgrounds.

Long, who is originally from Indiana, has a long rap sheet dating back to the early 1950s when he was still in his late teens.

This includes a charge for assault with a deadly weapon in Reading, California, in 1952, and also escaping from jail, forged checks and burglary, among other charges, according to a criminal record shared with Cowboy State Daily.

Franson believes Long escalated to murder, and that the Wyoming incarceration was preceded by a trail of victims.

Long was considered a suspect but not the “only viable” one, said Ryan Cox, commander and head of cold cases for the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI).

He did not share information about additional suspects or whether there is any DNA or any evidence still on file. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Finding Brown’s Family"}]

With justice for the “Rawlins Rodeo Murder” victims is likely not possible at this point, Franson thinks the next best thing is finding the remains of Brown and Meyer.

Meyer’s DNA is in the national database, so she can be identified should her remains be found.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Brown, however, is a different story."}]

She and her brother Rick Brown were adopted by Carl Brown and Catherine T. Gutsch, who split up when the kids were teens.

[{"type":"text","text":"Carl remained in Rawlins while Gutsch moved to Colorado."}]

Both Brown’s adopted parents and brother are now deceased, so Franson has taken it upon herself to attempt to track down Brown’s biological parents or family to procure a DNA sample from them.

[{"type":"text","text":"She’s been trying for years in vain to track this information down."}]

A spark of hope came this spring when Sheriff Bakken was able to get Brown’s birth certificate from the Colorado Department of Vital Services. However, the birth certificate contained the names of her adopted, not biological, parents.

Franson said she’d never seen that before nor did the genealogists with whom she consulted on Brown’s case.

Now, it’s back to the drawing board with Bakken in the process of seeing if he can attain an amended or earlier birth record.

Anyone who might know Brown’s biological family or have information about her birth is asked to contact Sheriff Bakken at the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office.

For now, both Bakken and Franson will continue to try to piece together the mystery while keeping the girls’ names alive.

Rawlins Rodeo Murders Old Welcome to Rawlins sign Jimmy Emerson via Flickr 6 7 26

<title>Rawlins Rodeo Murders, Part 2: Did Ted Bundy Kill Four Wyoming Girls 52 Years Ago? | Cowboy State Daily</title>

In the second of a two-part series on the infamous "Rawlins Rodeo Murders" of 1974, many in the community believe serial killer Ted Bundy was responsible for the deaths of the four girls. Others pin the blame on long haul trucker Russell Royal Long.

Rawlins Rodeo Murders, Part 2: Did Ted Bundy Kill Four Wyoming Girls 52 Years Ago?

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Business

CHEYENNE — Patricia Miller was helping another customer when a smooth-talking gentleman came in and quickly grabbed some crystals that he said were a gift for his mom. 

“He was trying to small talk with me about how wonderful of a person he was, because he’s getting them for her,” Miller told Cowboy State Daily. “And he’s going to print out information about each one of them, and all this other stuff.”

Miller thought that was sweet and said so, but what happened next was anything but sweet.

“He handed me this $100 bill, and I could feel that something was different,” she said. “And I was looking at it, and I’m like, ‘Well, maybe it’s old?'”

That prompted the man to helpfully add that the bill was from 1996.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"That’s when things clicked for Miller."}]

“Like, who knows what year the bill is that you’re handing a cashier?” she said. “So that’s what really triggered my mind to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is counterfeit.’”

Not wanting to falsely accuse the man — or ignite a confrontation — Miller took a different tack. 

“I said to him, ‘I”m sorry, but I don’t have change for this. You’re going to have to maybe get change and come back. Do you have anything smaller?’" Miller said. “And he said, ‘No, I’ll go to Bomgaars and get change.’”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The man never returned for his items. "}]

Later, looking at the store’s video surveillance, Miller saw the man had several recognizable bags with him. When she visited those other stores, it confirmed her suspicion that the $100 bill had been fake. 

The same man with the same story and multiple copies of the same $100 bill, all sharing the same serial number, had hit all of the stores.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Same Serial Number All Over Town"}]

Miller’s social media post about the experience drew jeers from some skeptical online commenters who accused her of overreacting. 

She posted the bill so others would know what was happening, to prevent anyone from getting duped.

A manager at a discount store on South Greeley Highway in Cheyenne, who asked that her store not be named for corporate reasons, confirmed she’d encountered both the same man and the same $100 bill as Miller. 

The man came to the store on South Greeley between the hours of 3:30 and 4 p.m., she said, trying to buy some baby wipes and a gallon jug of water with the $100 — a classic, small-purchase, big-change tactic.

The cashier felt something was off with the bill, but couldn’t identify what. She used a traditional counterfeit detector pen. If the iodine ink, which reacts with starches in standard, wood-pulp paper, remains black, that’s supposed to indicate that a bill is real. 

But the manager has learned a different trick to identify counterfeits lately. 

“I swabbed it with rubbing alcohol, and the ink smudged,” she said. “So I told him it was fake and we were not going to accept it.”

When the cashier told the man the bill was fake, he said, “Keep it,” and walked out, by then visibly trying to hide his face from the camera.

“That confirms to me that it was fake,” the manager said. 

The bill has been turned over to Laramie County Sheriff’s Office for further investigation.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Bleached Bills Fool Counterfeit Pens"}]

The discount store manager said counterfeiters have come up with a smart strategy to fool the traditional iodine counterfeit detector pens.

What they do is bleach a $1 bill, and then print a $100 bill over the top of it. Because it’s genuine currency paper, the iodine pens won’t catch that the bill is fake. 

“The counterfeit pens are garbage,” the manager said. “You can write on that and it won’t catch it because it is in fact money paper, just not the right denomination.”

She prefers that her employees use rubbing alcohol to test the ink. If it smudges, that’s a huge red flag.

She also has them hold the bill up to the light, to look for water marks and other security features that $100 bills have that $1 bills do not.

The last check is the texture of the bill itself, which is slightly changed by the bleaching process. 

“When we held it up, it did not have a water mark in it,” she said. “It did not have a face in it, and I felt no texture on the bill itself.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"A Prop Money In Riverton"}]

In Riverton, meanwhile, funny money has taken a slightly different tack, with Hollywood-style prop bills circulating around town.

Counterfeit $100 bills are getting passed throughout Wyoming and store clerks say iodine counterfeit detector pens won't detect the fake bills. “The counterfeit pens are garbage,” said one store manager

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