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<title>Today In Dr. Suess: Wednesday, February 18, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Today In Dr. Suess: Wednesday, February 18, 2026

 Pouring one out for The Reverend Jesse Jackson. A giant and a champion for civil rights and equality. But can anyone read Green Eggs and Ham better? No....

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

Seven years in prison beginning at 19 for putting a club into the head of a Swiss miner was followed by a couple of decades as a preacher and labor movement orator.

His personal reformation rewarded him with a Wyoming state role enforcing children and animal welfare.

But after just months on the state job, allegations of “white slavery” involving two teenage Casper girls in 1924 meant Baptiste John Minort needed to resign his state position and pulpit role. 

Those charges were eventually dropped and he was back filling a pulpit in Torrington when a “disturbing the peace” charge in 1926 was filed, alleging he had been in a rooming house with a woman in Nebraska he claimed was his wife under an assumed name.

An old character that many believed was buried and destroyed for the 42-year-old Torrington grain store manager and police court judge suddenly had resurfaced.

“Torrington Pastor Slays Family, Suicides,” the Casper Daily Tribune reported on Nov. 15, 1926. “Wife and Four Children Dead as Climax to Late Scandal.”

Newspapers across the country carried the headlines that an Associated Press reporter wrote likely were caused by “wagging tongues” and “domestic difficulties.”

Minort was born Feb. 20, 1884, in France and emigrated to the U.S. in 1892 to Missouri.

In 1901, at 17, he married Luisa Elizabeth Huber and they had five children, including Baptiste John Jr. in 1902, sons Carl, David and Clarence in 1912, 1915, and 1917, and daughter, La Von in 1922.

When he was 19, Minort was charged and convicted for killing a Swiss miner, Vincent Gaffney, at a coal camp in Riverton, Missouri, in March 1903 after a dispute about missing money from Gaffney’s room. Gaffney boarded with the Minort family.

“Minort claimed that Gaffney drew a revolver on him, then, in order to protect himself, he struck Gaffney twice on the head with a club, knocking him against a barbed wire fence, after which he choked him,” the Henry County Democrat reported on March 26, 1903. “Gaffney died as a result of his injuries.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Second-Degree Murder"}]

After his conviction on a second-degree murder charge, Minort was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released after seven.

Newspaper accounts state that while in prison he started reading the Bible and when he got out moved to Nebraska. Whether he pursued formal religious training is not known.

 In May 1914, he took a role as a pastor at a Sterling, Nebraska, church and also had a role as the chairman and clerk of a Sunday school convention.

The Sterling Sun reported he was helping at a revival meeting in Falls City, Nebraska. His efforts in evangelism and teaching grew his church by 200 people, according to a report in the Norfolk Daily News.

By 1922, he was serving as a pastor in a church in Alliance, Nebraska, and was the main speaker at a Labor Day gathering in Casper.

The Casper Daily Tribune on Sept. 5, 1922, reported that Minort delivered an “inspirational address” that promoted the idea of trade unions and how they eliminated “classes” in society. Hundreds gathered to hear him.

“America has no class from which it is impossible to emerge,” he said. “America is distinguished throughout the world by the high standard of living which the masses of her people enjoy.”

By 1924, he had moved to Torrington and taken the pastorate of a Baptist church. He was appointed by Gov. William B. Ross to be the state commissioner of child and animal protection on July 22. Minort embraced the role by bringing charges against 22 boys and girls involved in a wild Cheyenne party in October of that year at the YWCA and Pine Cove. 

He blamed the parents for allowing their children to be at the party.

He also made headlines by uncovering a plot of a stepson to accuse his stepfather of choking an old man to death so he could inherit his mother’s property.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mann Act Violation"}]

But on Nov. 8, he was accused by a federal grand jury of transporting two juvenile delinquent girls across the state line to Nebraska for immoral purposes under the Mann Act. Minort had taken the pair from their uncle in Casper and was supposed to take them back to a Cheyenne facility.

“The girls told police and federal authorities that Minort, instead of going to Cheyenne, stopped in Mitchell, Nebraska, where he is alleged to have mistreated them,” the Grand Island Independent newspaper reported on Nov. 12, 1924.

Minort responded that the charges were false and he had taken the girls there to be under the care of an aunt. Still, he resigned from his role as the state commissioner and stepped down from the pulpit. The Torrington community rallied around him and a fund was set up for his defense.

Those charges were eventually dropped by the federal district court in April 1926 because the girls could not be located to testify.

Meanwhile, Minort worked for the Cheyenne Police Department supervising chain gangs and then got a job managing the Torrington grain elevator. When the charges were dropped, he was named as a police court judge in Torrington and he resumed preaching at a church in the city.

On Nov. 7, 1926, Minort was caught by Bayard, Nebraska, police in a rooming house with a woman from Torrington who was not his wife. He had registered under the name of “Joe Lander and wife.”

A man from Torrington saw him and remarked he looked like Minort. The town’s marshal investigated and called Minort’s wife in Torrington at 3 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 8.

“Minort, after admitting his identity, asserted that he had been the victim of a ‘frame-up’ and that he had been forced at the point of a gun at Bayard (by men) to get into the automobile with the woman and had been intimidated into registering with her as husband and wife,” The Wyoming State Tribune reported on Nov. 15, 1926.

The newspaper reported that the landlady of the rooming house did not confirm his story. Minort was fined $25 and ordered to pay costs of $15.

On Saturday, Nov. 13, Minort resigned his post as a police judge for Torrington.

Early on Nov. 14 Minort, who had prepared a sermon he called “Breaking the Alabaster Box” for church that morning, took a 12-gauge shotgun and shot his wife in the head as she lay sleeping in a bed with their young daughter, 4. He then used a .22-caliber rifle to shoot his daughter twice in the head.

Two sons, who lay in their beds, were killed with one bullet to the head from a .32-caliber revolver. His second-oldest son was killed as he entered his mom’s bedroom with a shot to the head. He was dressed and, according to the Wyoming State Tribune on Nov. 15, had been working for another family in the country and likely returned home for church before being shot.

Minort took time to write letters to the sheriff, his surviving son at a college in Missouri, and to the public as well as to a religious rival in Casper.

Then he called the local undertaker just after 9 a.m. and told him he needed him at the house.

When the undertaker arrived, he could see Minort on the kitchen floor, gasping for air before he died, the Wyoming State Tribune reported. Police were summoned and found a mirror on the kitchen table that he apparently set up so he could shoot himself in the head.

They then discovered the breadth of Minort’s actions in eliminating his family.

In his letter to the public, Minort asserted that he had been framed in the incident with the Torrington woman in Bayard. In his note to the sheriff, he gave his son’s address at college in Missouri.

In a letter to his son, he explained that his mother had told him she would kill herself if he brought shame to the family again. Minort wrote he was going to save her from “spiritual torment” by killing her.

“I killed her and the rest of them rather than have the shadow of the past upon them,” he wrote. “Mother and children are in heaven and I suffer my own fate through the hands of destiny.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"No Caskets, One Grave"}]

Minor told Baptiste John Jr. to just dig a hole and bury the family in one grave to save on burial costs and that he could sell a box of shells he had at the grain elevator for $20 to get some money to help with costs.

“Well my son, I must hasten, as the gun beckons to me and I must hurry before I have lost my nerve,” he wrote, adding that the rest of his son’s life was his own. “So, do the best that you can.”

A coroner’s grand jury ruled that the murders and suicide were all the responsibility of Minort. The family members were buried in Valley View Cemetery in Torrington.

Minort’s surviving son was a sophomore at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, and learned of the shootings from the college dean as he wrote a letter to his father during the afternoon on Tuesday, Nov. 16, according to the Daily Standard newspaper in Excelsior, Missouri on Nov. 17, 1926.

John Minort along with Minort’s brother, Louis, the mayor of Lexington, Missouri, attended the funeral, which was packed with mourners from the Torrington community. All the slain were in caskets, Minort’s exhortation to his son ignored.

The community bore the costs of the funeral and burials, the newspaper reported.

The Western Nebraska Observer reported on Nov. 25, 1926, that the son “bore up bravely” to the tragedy.

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

“It was remarked that the crowd seemingly were forgiving and even sorrowful in their attitude toward the dead man,” the newspaper reported. “Many were seen to pause beside his casket and drop a tear. … Torrington people, heard to comment on the affair after the funeral, declared that Minort had not been himself, to all appearances for several weeks past.”

Three years after the tragedy, the young Minort returned to Torrington and visited old friends. 

The Scottsbluff Daily Star-Herald reprinted a story from the Torrington paper on June 16, 1929, that stated that Baptiste John Jr. had been involved in a cafe business and had to quit college due to lack of funds.

“He has enjoyed a fair success and will continue in the cafe business,” the newspaper reported. “His friends in Torrington are glad to learn that he is pleasantly located and making a success of his efforts.”

Minort went on to marry twice, once in 1934 in Missouri. The marriage lasted a year. He married his second wife in 1945 and became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 

Baptiste John Minort Jr. lived his last years in Utah and died on Aug. 16, 1970. 

Heworked as cook for most of his life and is buried in Price City, Utah.

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<title>Wyoming History: Disgraced Pastor Shocked State By Killing Family, Self In 1926 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Shocking headlines from 100 years ago after a pastor from Torrington gunned down his wife and four of his five children, then himself. He wrote he had brought shame to them when caught with a woman in a rooming house in Nebraska under an assumed name.

Wyoming History: Disgraced Pastor Shocked State By Killing Family, Self In 1926

Image depicting a missing headshot of a Cowboy State Daily team member.

Gail Symons

Opinion

CSD Columnists

In "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," three men spend two and a half hours chasing the same buried gold.

They lie to each other. They team up with each other. They betray each other. Nobody gets the money without going through somebody else first.

Wyoming's primary election season works the same way. Every candidate on your ballot needed something from someone: a party, a donor, a volunteer, an organization willing to put money behind them. Nobody wins a legislative seat entirely alone.

Here's the thing: not all of that help looks the same.

I spent several hours this week pulling campaign finance filings for 14 contested legislative races, plus five of the political action committees (PACs) spending the most money in them. What I found is that "outside money" isn't one thing. It's at least three different things, and they deserve three different reactions from you.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Start with the categories."}]

Direct candidate money is what you'd expect: individuals and Wyoming PACs giving straight to a campaign. Wyoming-organized political money means Wyoming residents pooling their money through a PAC of their own.

National, ideological money is outside networks spending into Wyoming races, sometimes directly, sometimes by funding a Wyoming-based group that then spends it here.

That distinction matters because your candidate's own fundraising report might not tell you who's actually paying for the campaign against them. Or for them.

The anti-Freedom Caucus group Common Sense Republicans for Wyoming raised $124,107 this cycle. Almost all of it, $118,607, came from individuals. Donors from Casper, Sheridan, Jackson, Cheyenne, Gillette and a dozen other towns. That's Wyoming money, raised from Wyoming people, for Wyoming races. Whatever your opinion of the group’s spending choices, the source isn't in question.

The Freedom Caucus’s campaign arm, WY Freedom PAC, tells a more complicated story. It raised $296,500. That sounds like the same kind of grassroots operation.

But $165,000 of it, more than half, came from the State Freedom Caucus Network, headquartered in Washington, D.C.

This Wyoming PAC has its real Wyoming donors sitting on top of a national funding pipeline.

Then there's Make Liberty Win. It raised $562,605, and every dollar of that came from its own out-of-state structure. Not a cent of it started here.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Look at what that means in one race."}]

In Sheridan’s Senate District 21, Melissa Butcher raised $59,328 for her campaign. Ken Pendergraft raised $15,900 for his. If you stopped reading there, you'd think Butcher had a massive financial edge. But Make Liberty Win spent separately in support of Pendergraft, money that never appears in his own campaign report. The fundraising totals you can look up don't tell you who actually has more resources behind him in that race. Not even close.

Three PACs. Three different relationships between the money and the state. Only one of them is what most people picture when they hear "outside money."

None of this means outside spending is automatically corrupt.

Americans for Prosperity put roughly $286,000 into Wyoming races too, and it crosses ideological lines in ways the Freedom Caucus money doesn't. This isn't a story about one side buying elections while the other side plays fair.

Both sides are doing it. The problem isn't which direction the money leans. It's whether you can see it.

Converse County’s House District 6 tells the same story from a different part of the state.

Jim Willox raised $34,410 for his campaign. Tomi Strock raised $10,250. Same gap you saw in Senate District 21, and the same fix underneath it: Make Liberty Win spent separately to support Strock.

Two races, two different parts of Wyoming, the same pattern showing up in both.

When independent spending in a small legislative district rivals or beats what the candidate raised, the report you can pull up online stops being the real picture of the race. You're voting based on half the information, and the missing half is public record. It's just not the half anyone hands you at your front door.

In the movie, everyone's after the same prize, and what separates the good, the bad and the ugly is how they go about getting it. In Wyoming, the prize is your district's seat. The difference is traceable now, if you know where to look.

Before you trust the next mailer that lands in your box, pull up the Wyoming Campaign Finance Information System yourself. Ask whose money paid for it. Ask whether that money started in Wyoming or somewhere a long way from your kitchen table.

The gold is real. So is the trail it leaves behind.

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<title>Gail Symons: Check Out All This Out-Of-State Money In Wyoming Politics | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Columnist Gail Symons writes: "The Freedom Caucus’s campaign arm, WY Freedom PAC, raised $296,500. Sounds like a grassroots operation, but $165,000 of it, more than half, came from the State Freedom Caucus Network, headquartered in Washington, D.C."

Gail Symons: Check Out All This Out-Of-State Money In Wyoming Politics

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And now Bob presents, the most laid back fetch ever in the history of fetch....

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<title>Daily Smile: Monday, August 17, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Smile: Monday, August 17, 2026

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<title>You Still Here? Sunday, August 16, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

You Still Here? Sunday, August 16, 2026

[{"type":"text","text":"You won't find a friend as helpful as this one...."}]

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<title>Daily Smile: Sunday, August 16, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

You won't find a friend as helpful as this one....

Daily Smile: Sunday, August 16, 2026

Welsch mug

Jeff Welsch

Sports

Their Links of Dreams unfolded in every way they imagined: The long drive past cornfields on a lonely dirt road, a massive American flag and windsock fluttering over a clubhouse perched atop a knoll on the endless undulating terrain of northeast Nebraska, and the first religious glimpse of the No. 1 tee, fairways and greens unlike any others.

For Sheridan’s Josh Gardner and Jared Stiver, a moment coveted by golfers worldwide — but rarely experienced — was, at long last, at hand.

To secure a tee time at the Landmand Golf Club outside of Homer, Nebraska, 

Some 11,000 slots are made available each New Year’s Eve for the novel 4-year-old course; they’re gone in less than an hour.

Now here Gardner and Stiver were the first week of August, two regular guys from Wyoming, somehow entered to play Landmand in the inaugural The Heartbeat tournament, a Golf Channel creation, after Gardner took a Plan B New Year's Eve stab on the course's website. 

Soon they would be pitted against pairs from all 50 states over four days, a fortuitous practice round and three days of competition.

“Everything about it was cool,” Stiver told Cowboy State Daily less than a week after their return home. “You’re on top of a hill from start to finish, and you see forever and it’s all golf around you, and it’s all awesome.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Then the golf happens."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Course Unlike Any Other"}]

Gardner and Stiver have played courses of all shapes and sizes, in all types of environments, foreign and domestic.

[{"type":"text","text":"Nothing could prepare them for Landmand."}]

“We got there and I was just excited to be there,” Gardner recalled with a chuckle. “It didn’t really matter what was in front of us. Like, this is awesome. But by the time we got to the fourth or fifth green, I thought, ‘I don’t know if I can do this four days in a row.’

“I wasn’t prepared for how massive it all was. The scale is hard to describe.”

Landmand was carved out of the treeless Loess Hills, and at nearly 600 acres is roughly four times the size of typical 18-hole courses. Fairways are the width of football fields. Gaping bunkers swallow golfers whole.

[{"type":"text","text":"Only the tee boxes offer any semblance of flatness."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And then ... those greens."}]

On average, they sprawl to more than double the size of typical American greens. Some are four to six times larger. At three-quarters of an acre, the 17th green ranks as one of the world’s largest, in the same league as the revered Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland.

[{"type":"text","text":"Gradients rose to 25%."}]

“You could put seven Powder Horn greens in one there,” Stiver said of their home course in Sheridan. “Monster greens.”

Echoed Gardner: “Greens the size of Walmart. If that golf course was here (Sheridan) I’d take my kids sledding on it and they’d need a helmet. They’d be like the blue runs on a ski hill. In some spots where they placed the flag you couldn’t even see it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Howling Wyoming-esque Winds"}]

The greens sport windsocks instead of flags, a nod to visibility and a notorious local climate. 

Winds can be so ferocious and unpredictable the course has two handicaps dedicated to them on the scorecard, one for gales howling from the southwest and the other for the nor’easters.

[{"type":"text","text":"Gardner and Stiver got a gritty taste of both."}]

“You’d think Wyoming boys would be good in a wind, but us Sheridan boys … not so good,” Stiver mused.

Agreed Gardner: “Guys from Evanston and Rock Springs, and the Casper Country Club boys, would be a better fit.”

It’s this enormity of challenge, the scale of the course, and its vistas — not to mention the modest $175 greens fees — that has golfers nationwide poised like expectant parents with their fingers hovering over their keyboards every New Year’s Eve.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then reality bites for those lucky enough to score a round."}]

But, unlike all other golfers except the locals who have the luxury of pouncing last-minute on a rare cancellation, Gardner and Stiver had four full days in the belly of this manicured beast.

Entering the final round, they were in 32nd place out of 52 teams. Five birdies and 18 holes later, they walked off their final monster green in 19th.

“The final round, I did feel better about it,” Stiver said. “I kind of knew how I could go and knock it out. By then I still didn’t know exactly where to go on the greens, but it definitely helped.”

[{"type":"text","text":"“Being in the top 20 was respectable for sure,\" added Gardner."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Giving A Wyoming-Style Gift"}]

The golf was the centerpiece of the adventure, but the experience didn’t end there.

Owner Will Andersen, Golf Channel host Gary Williams and the course’s architects were on hand to explain the Landmand concept and history. Their passion and detail gave Gardner and Stiver an entirely different perspective as they plied the course on days three and four.

Stiver also was struck by Andersen’s graciousness, and that he’d remember his name each time they’d bump into each other amid the throngs of golfers, staffers, media and spectators.

Small wonder: The duo made an impression when they presented Andersen with a spur with hearts cut into it made by renowned Sheridan craftsman Tom Balding. They also gave Andersen a copper shot glass from their hometown Mint Bar.

“Fifty thousand people have played golf here and nobody’s brought me anything,” Stiver recalls a touched Andersen telling them.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We just wanted to take a piece of Wyoming,” Gardner explained."}]

When it was over and they’d walked off the Walmart parking lot that was their 18th green for the final time, filmed by The Golf Channel shaking hands with their partners for the round, Gardner and Stiver said they both felt a palpable sense of relief.

[{"type":"text","text":"Their immediate reaction: Never again."}]

A week later, they are still nursing the bruises to their golf egos from what Gardner says is the toughest course he’s ever played. But they’re also certain their links version of PTSD will subside.

“There will be a day,” Stiver said with a chuckle, “when we’re ready to get hurt again.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Gardner agreed."}]

“The event itself was exceptional,” he said of a tournament where their $7,000 team entry fee covered everything from meals and drinks to their 10 daily range balls. “It was better than what I expected. Then to spend 10 hours each way with a buddy and a truck and no distractions and just hang out — it was just a great week.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Golf Envy Back Home"}]

They’re enjoying their few minutes of golf-envy fame back home, too, though a torn rotator cuff suffered at the Powder Horn member-guest event has sidelined Gardner from the duo’s mission of playing every Wyoming course over the next few summers.

[{"type":"text","text":"Landmand is all anybody in their Sheridan circles wants to talk about."}]

Do they have advice should any of their golfing buddies somehow win the lottery on New Year’s Eve and land a tee time on this Links of Dreams in the Loess Hills?

“Just experience it,” Gardner said with a laugh, “because you’re not going to walk away going ‘I’m a really good golfer.’”

Contact Jeff Welsch at jeff@cowboystatedaily.com

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<title>Sheridan Golfers Finally Get To Play Toughest Place To Book A Tee Time In The U.S. | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Two golfers from Sheridan won the lottery on New Year's Eve when they were selected to play at the toughest place to book a tee time in the U.S. All 11,000 tee times were booked in one hour and they played last week. "It's all awesome," Jared Stiver said.

Today In Dr. Suess: Wednesday, February 18, 2026

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