It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Thursday, December 25th. I’m Mac Watson.
Merry Christmas!
For today's newscast, news slows down this time of year so we've asked our reporters to identify their most meaningful, important, interesting, or favorite story of the year for today's newsletter.
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We start with the tragic story of a mom in Byron who shot and killed her 4 daughters before killing herself in their snow-clad home. Crimes and Courts Reporter Clair McFarland spoke to people in Byron about the tragedy, but she’ll never forget the interview with the husband, Cliff Harshamn, who agreed to meet and tell his story in a coffee shop in Powell.
“Often when you're doing an interview, you're just trying to ask the right questions, and you're angling and you're fishing, and sometimes it's confrontational, sometimes a person's accusing someone else of something, and then you have to go confront that person, and there's just a lot of ping pong and a lot of hardball and reporting, but surprisingly well, it's shocking at first that cliff Harshman agreed to have coffee with me, and then he agreed to have an interview. And it was unlike any interview I've ever done in my entire life. We sat down beforehand and discussed, like, why are we doing this? Why are you doing this? And he just said that, the truth is what matters at this point, and I want someone to have it.”
Clair says that CLiff voiced a grim resolve to tell her the truth so that at the least, the gawking public would have the most accurate account of the already-exposed tragedy.
Read the full story HERE.
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Investigative reporter Jen Kocher introduced us to a Thermopolis native who went from flying planes to smuggling drugs for the infamous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. Jen says she still talks to Richard Pitt.
“He actually, apart from surviving run ins with other drug smugglers and drug lords, he also survived years in a Mexican prison where he was tortured and he has since become it's one of those unexpected friendships that make this job amazing, with all the people you meet and all
the random connections you form.”
Jen says that The Wyoming native is now retired after serving his prison sentences both in Mexico and in the United States, is now writing books and living in Denver, Colorado.
Read the full story HERE.
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Sometimes a reporter will become part of the story. Reporter Zak Sonntag wrote about a homeless couple in Casper who was living in an abandoned sedan. Zak tried to help the couple and things turned.
“This was a man named Malachi Springer and his partner, Kayla Riley, who were together, also expecting a child…And it was a really humbling experience to see this, and we developed a natural rapport. But what happened was that after I published the story, instantly after it published the story, the police came to their car and they said, You guys can't be here. You're on private property, and it's time for you to go. And it was directly because that I had brought attention to them, that I kind of exposed, okay, this is where you're living, and I put a target on them, and they lost that resource, and so they had to relocate to a freeway bridge on the opposite side of side of town.”
Zak says he ultimately lost touch with the couple but often thinks, “did i make their lives harder by writing that story?”
Read the full story HERE.
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Everyone deserves a second chance. Business and tourism reporter Renee Jean wrote the story about how Pete Bass got his second change in prison.
“This guy has just lived a life that kind of felt like a movie to me, listening to him tell about it. You know, he ran away to Hollywood when he was a kid, almost got raped, ran back home, you know, he ended up in prison because of drug addiction, and ultimately, he's seen that as like a second chance. He's not bitter about that at all. He's he's glad because it, it, you know, turned his life around, and he was finally able to shake that addiction and and you know now he his whole coffee shop thing is every coffee cup comes with a story. He's all about second chances for other people.”
Pete owns and runs a coffee shop called, aptly, For Pete’s Sake in Evanston.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll be back with more stories that were meaningful, important, interesting, or a favorite of our reporters in 2025 from Cowboy State Daily, after this….
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Stories of overcoming adversity are always inspirational. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz introduced us to Randy Svalina of Laramie who was out hunting just days after having a leg amputated.
“I've always liked doing stories about scrappy people that overcome things, you know, regardless of, you know, of what the beat I was working at the time, or what the type of story was. And this happened to be an outdoors in a hunting story, because Randy's a very, you know, avid outdoorsman Hunter…he did have to have one of his legs amputated, just below the knee, you know, to kind of, kind of mitigate things. And then, and then, so he went from that, and then got a prosthetic. And not long after God is prosthetic, he went out hunting. And when he was still trying to get you, trying to get used, to figure out, he said, basically, I had to learn how to walk all over again, you know, because I live my whole life with two legs, and I just got one, plus a prosthetic.”
Randy is currently working with his doctor on a prototype prosthetic leg that he can use to walk around and use as a rifle rest when he’s out hunting.
Read the full story HERE.
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When someone’s legacy is forgotten, it’s called a “second death.”
Writer Jackie Dorothy says her favorite story of 2025 was of a French metal detectorist who had found an old American dog tag and enlisted a Casper author to help return the military ID to the family.
“It just takes everything about history that I love. You have a mystery, you have people who are searching for the answers, and then you have a treasure reunited with the family. But the best part is, is that someone that was essentially dead to the family that they didn't even know existed suddenly comes alive to them, this great grandfather, this grandfather who is fighting in World War One because of this recovered dog tag that was returned to the family, they suddenly know who he is, and they know part of his story that had been forgotten for at least one generation, if not two. And that is essentially what history is all about.”
Jackie says eventually the metal detectorist went on to recover seven other dog tags which they were able to reunite with their families. Most of these particular soldiers had survived the war and gone on to have families. But some of these descendants didn’t realize they had a great-grandfather fighting for the United States in France.
Read the full story HERE.
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What happens to a small town when the biggest employee suddenly announces it’s shutting down? Managing editor Greg Johnson wrote about the town of Lexington, Nebraska, which was reeling from the news of the abrupt shutdown of the Tyson Processing plant which employed about a third of the town. Greg compares this to when mines were abruptly shut down in Gillette in 2019.
“What I found there was a lot of similarities between what's happening in Lexington now to what happened in Gillette six years ago, in 2019 when Black Jewel just up and closed the Eagle Butte and Bel Air mines. And although, in Tyson's case, Tyson Foods that's closing up its plant in Lexington, that they made their announcement without any warning, but there they gave 60 days. They say, we're closing in 60 days. The black jewels case it was, they shut down mid shift. They're like, okay, get off your machines and go home. Hundreds of workers out…there's the same kind of look behind the eyes of the people walking around, ‘What am I going to do now?’ type of look, ‘It's Christmas time. What's happening?’”
Less than a week before Thanksgiving, Tyson Foods showed up and informed the 3,200 workers there that as of Jan. 20th, they were closing the huge beef processing plant.
Read the full story HERE.
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Back when there was no speed limit in Montana, highways there were known as the “Montanabahn.” Features reporter David Madison wrote about a stubborn cattle hustler from Wyoming named Rudy “Butch” Stanko, whose lead foot and hard head inadvertently brought the no-speed limit era to an end in Montana.
“He was like Burt Reynolds in smoking the bandit out running the law enforcement in Montana, back when Montana had no speed limit, and these two things collided on a lonely highway there in central Montana, where you had this rebel Rudy Butch, you know, flooring it, going 121 miles per hour, confident. Because in addition to all the other things he did, he also was a stock car racer. And for him, he was like, I have this I have the talent to maintain this speed safely. And that was the law in Montana, prudent and safe. There was no exact number, so he gets hit with 121 mile per hour ticket like he always did. He fought it all the way through the courts. His son said he was arrested 250 times because he found enjoyment in it.”
Some of those who knew Butch in Montana remember getting passed by Butch in his purple Camaro or his turquoise Lincoln. They remember seeing him fight a 121-mph speeding violation all the way to the Montana Supreme Court.
Read the full story HERE.
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And that’s a look back at some of the stories that were the most meaningful, important, interesting, or favorites of 2025.
And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, Merry Christmas from Cowboy State Daily.
