The 19-year-old daughter of the Rock Springs police chief was sentenced Wednesday to 42 days in jail and ordered to pay $2,224.86 in restitution for poisoning her roommate’s dog so that it had to be euthanized.
Originally charged with felony animal cruelty, Allie Erspamer pleaded “no contest” Wednesday to the misdemeanor version of that charge, in accordance with a plea agreement she signed last month. Erspamer is the daughter of Rock Springs Police Chief Bill Erspamer.
Pinedale Circuit Court Judge John LaBuda sentenced Allie Erspamer to 42 days in jail. He ordered her to report to the jail by 5 p.m. Wednesday, a few hours after her sentencing hearing.
The restitution amount Erspamer must pay is for cremation and veterinary costs, the deceased dog’s owner, Hallie Blake, confirmed Thursday to Cowboy State Daily.
Blake penned around 18 rewrites of the four-page statement she delivered Wednesday in court, she said.
“And still, like the morning of (the sentencing) with what I finally came up with – I still didn’t know if it was the right thing to say,” Blake told Cowboy State Daily. “But (they were) things that couldn’t go unsaid I guess.”
Blake spoke about Lilly, the pit bull pup she adopted last year and kept in the home she shared with Erspamer.
Erspamer was her close friend and roommate, she said in a past interview.
Blake also spoke in court “about how I struggled mentally and how Allie kind of just went on with her life as if she did nothing wrong,” she recalled.
“I think that there’s no sentencing — definitely (not) 42 days — nothing’s ever going to bring back what she took from me and what I’ve been through,” Blake said. “But something, I think, is better than nothing at all; and I just really hope that she learns from what she’s done.”
After Erspamer was charged, Blake told Cowboy State Daily that her sense of having been betrayed and deceived by her friend was even more damaging than the suffering and loss she went through with Lilly.
Erspamer apologized to Blake and Blake’s family and said she took full responsibility for her part in the poisoning, according to Blake’s recollection of that hearing.
Erspamer’s attorney Charles Barnum did not respond to an email request for comment by publication time.
Prosecutor’s Word
Like LaBuda, Sublette County Attorney Clayton Melinkovich took on the case when Sweetwater County authorities said they had a conflict and could not take it.
Recognizing social media backlash Bill Erspamer sustained with news of the case, Blake told Cowboy State Daily last month that she wished people would ease up on him, since he’d always been great to her, “and I know Bill’s a good person.”
Melinkovich, in a Thursday email to Cowboy State Daily, said he recognized “that no outcome in this case will make up for the loss that Ms. Blake and her sweet Lilly suffered.”
Still, he added, “the state stands in the unique position of needing to address a defendant’s horrific actions while also accounting for that defendant as an individual.”
A cherished pet was senselessly poisoned and died, he wrote, adding that its caretaker was “devastated by the cruel actions of a young woman with no real criminal history.”
A judge’s likely sentence after a trial would have been two years’ supervised probation, given Erspamer’s age and lack of criminal history, he said.
It is unclear which judge would have fielded Erspamer’s case had it ascended to the felony-level court. Sweetwater County has two judges. Either of them may have conflicted out of the case and brought in an alternate district court judge.
Melinkovich said he opted here to seek a jail sentence instead, “to ensure that this defendant does not make a decision like this again in the future.”
The prosecutor said he had multiple discussions with Blake.
“I know that there will be some that say that this young woman got special treatment because of her family — nothing could be further from the truth,” wrote Melinkovich. “My office addressed this case the same as any other case with similar facts and a similarly situated defendant.”
That is, except for one caveat: She’s being housed in the Sublette County Detention Center via a contract with the Sweetwater County Detention Center “to ensure her safety as a result of her last name.”
A Little History …
Hallie Blake called the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office on April 18 to say she believed her dog Lilly had been poisoned, says an evidentiary affidavit Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Deputy Casey Watkins signed Sept. 26.
Lilly was a pit bull, about 1 year old, that Hallie Blake rescued from the local animal control agency, Hallie told Cowboy State Daily in November.
Allie Erspamer moved in as Hallie’s new roommate in late January of this year and expressed distaste for the dog, the affidavit says.
In mid-March, the dog suffered seizures.
In that same time, Erspamer said the dog had bitten her, not breaking the skin, wrote Watkins.
‘Could She Have Been Poisoned?'
The dog grew sicker, the deputy wrote.
Blake took the dog to see a veterinarian and ultimately, the vet recommended euthanizing the dog.
“We paid thousands of dollars in vet bills trying to get her saved,” Hallie’s mother Shalane Blake said in her own November interview. “The vet had asked, ‘Could she have been poisoned?’”
At the time, added Shalane, that seemed outlandish.
In the last two weeks of Lilly’s life, the dog would collapse and drool so much it seemed she was vomiting water, said Shalane.
“I can’t even get the images out of my head,” she added.
Veterinary personnel told the Blakes they could put the dog down or take her to Salt Lake City for around $15,000 in dialysis treatments, said Shalane.
Hallie Blake felt that a puppy with that many health issues was bound to lead a life of torment, and it was time to put her down to end the suffering, her mother related.
Bleach And Antifreeze
Dr. Margaret White, the vet, confirmed to Watkins that the dog was suffering from kidney failure, and that White recommended and performed euthanasia on the dog, says the affidavit.
White told investigators that, with permission from Blake, she sent the dog’s remains to the State Veterinary Crime Lab in Laramie for a necropsy.
The necropsy report confirmed kidney failure from antifreeze poisoning, the document alleges.
Blake told investigators that Erspamer had talked with a friend about the alleged poisoning on Snapchat. Investigators obtained a search warrant for Erspamer’s Snapchat account, and Snyder reviewed those messages, the affidavit says.
Erspamer acknowledged to a person in those messages that she’d sprayed bleach on treats that she fed to the dog, the document says, adding that she told another person the same, and corresponded “extensively” with another person about how to avoid discovery regarding actions with the dog.
A female friend gave Erspamer examples of messages to send to other people “to deflect suspicion of wrongdoing,” related Watkins from the investigation.
The affidavit says Erspamer queried Snapchat’s artificial intelligence search engine to ask, “Can an autopsy on a dog show antifreeze poisoning” and “what about bleach” and “how long would it take for bleach to kill a dog.”
When Erspamer and the third girl’s alleged involvement surfaced in chatter among other friends, Hallie chose to move out of the trailer house they shared, Shalane said.
“She’s on her own now. She’s like, 'I don’t want any more roommates,'” said the mother. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, I can’t imagine the trust issues this kid has now.’”
The Accessory Charge
Erspamer’s friend was charged in September with one count of accessory after the fact, but Melinkovich asked LaBuda on Oct. 24 to dismiss the case without prejudice, and LaBuda granted that request the same day.
A dismissal “without prejudice” means Melinkovich could bring the case against the woman again if the evidence merits it.
The accessory after the fact to a felony charge carried a steeper maximum penalty than the animal cruelty charge on which it was hinged in this case.
It would have been punishable by up to three years in prison and $3,000 in fines, while felony animal cruelty is punishable by up to two years in prison and up to $5,000 in fines.
The misdemeanor charge for which Erspamer was ultimately sentenced is punishable by up to six months in jail and $750 in fines.
The charge against the other friend should never have been filed, Melinkovich told Cowboy State Daily in a Monday email.
“Unfortunately, our office was unaware of specific constraints on that charge that prohibited her continued prosecution,” wrote Melinkovich. “Had I known this information at the time of charging, I would not have filed the accessory charge against her.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
