For four straight nights, Game Warden Spencer Carstens and a fellow officer sat in an unmarked vehicle at a Cody city park, windows down, staring into the blackness from dusk until 3 a.m.
Nothing happened.
The poaching caper that would become known internally as the “Cody Park Case” had been building since late August 2024, when residents began finding mule deer carcasses in their front yards and floating in a pond at the Park County Complex. The deer body count reached nine.
According to Wyoming Game and Fish, all nine were killed “right in the middle of town where deer like to hang out” by the library, not far from Canal Park and Glendale Park
All shot with a compound bow, all left to rot.
By the time wardens launched their stakeout, and the only lead was grainy security camera footage of a silver car cruising the neighborhood.
The full story of how the case came together is now the subject of an episode of the Wyoming Wildlife Podcast, hosted by Robert Gagliardi, the assistant editor of Wyoming Wildlife magazine. The podcast is a newer offering from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, and this particular episode stood out for good reason.
“Our law enforcement stories, those are a fan favorite because they’re very exciting, they’re incredibly interesting, and they do a great job just highlighting just how much work goes into successfully investigating and closing a case like that,” Amanda Fry, public information officer for Wyoming Game and Fish, told Cowboy State Daily.
First Blood
In 2024, the first dead buck appeared in someone’s front yard near a city park, with a blood trail leading across the street and footprints disappearing into the grass. An arrow wound made the cause of death obvious.
“The first thing I kind of thought of was maybe it was a kid,” Carstens recalled for the podcast. A deer in a backyard, shot for fun — that was going to be the end of it.
But then, more reports came in the same day. A second buck, a couple of doors down, also arrowed.
Then a third, in a nearby park, where wardens recovered an arrow — an expandable broadhead fired from a compound bow, a typical hunting setup. Then deer four, five and six. Then number seven, found floating in a pond at the Park County Complex, requiring Carstens to wade out in chest waders to retrieve it.
All nine carcasses — two bucks, six does and a fawn — turned up within a tight radius around the county library and city park, right in the middle of town.
Every animal was shot and abandoned. None were harvested in any way.
“They were just killed and left,” Fry confirmed.
Silver Car
Being in city limits gave wardens tools they rarely get to use. Ring doorbell cameras from cooperative neighbors produced footage of activity on the nights deer were killed. Security cameras at a local business captured a silver car driving slowly up and down the street before parking, and a figure stepping out with a flashlight.
It was the first real break, but the footage was too grainy to identify a make and model, let alone a license plate.
“And of course, it’s one of those deals where there’s just silver cars everywhere you look, once you start looking for them,” Carstens said.
An early lead pointed to a group of teenagers spotted on Ring camera footage running around and riding in the back of a truck. Wardens tracked them down at a local school — only to learn they had been playing a supervised game that night, organized by Cody police. They were ruled out.
With no suspect and deer still turning up dead, Carstens and his team decided to stake out the park. They would sit in the dark and wait.
Fifth Night
By the fifth night of the stakeout, the wardens were running on fumes.
“We’re kind of tired, kind of getting sick of it, trying to figure out what are we going to do next because this isn’t working,” Carstens recalled.
Then they heard it — the unmistakable thwack of a compound bow firing in the darkness, followed by the sound of an arrow hitting flesh.
Using night vision, the wardens looked out into the park. A man was standing there holding a bow, standing over a dead deer.
Carstens crept out of the truck and got as close as he could before making contact. The man bolted.
“I actually get in a foot pursuit with this guy,” Carstens said. “He was a young, pretty fast guy, so he got away from me.”
But the suspect had to have driven there. Wardens fanned out and found the silver car parked about a block away. Peering through the window, they saw an arrow lying on the front seat that matched the one recovered from an earlier crime scene.
And the car was full of fresh groceries.
“Basically went out to get groceries, on his way home decided to pull over and shoot a deer in the park,” Carstens said.
Blood Science
The suspect — later identified as Joshua Tamirat Wielhouwer — fled the state. But wardens had his vehicle and, soon, search warrants for the house where he had been staying. Inside, archery equipment was scattered through multiple rooms. A second vehicle yielded more gear, including a bow and broadheads.
Some of that equipment had blood on it. In some cases, only minuscule traces.
Wardens had also been collecting the deer carcasses and storing them in an evidence freezer. They sent tissue samples from eight of the nine deer to the Wyoming Game & Fish forensics lab, along with every piece of blood-stained archery equipment from the house.
What came back was, in Carstens’ word, “remarkable.”
The lab matched all eight deer to specific pieces of equipment — individual broadheads, arrows and metal inserts — through DNA analysis. Trace amounts of tissue inside a tiny metal arrow insert were enough to tie a specific deer to a specific arrow.
“This is the first case that I’ve worked where we’ve actually been able to take nothing but DNA evidence and make a full case on it,” Carstens said. “Big kudos to the forensics lab. They really helped put this case together. We wouldn’t have a case without them.”
A cell phone search warrant then connected the suspect’s archery equipment to an older case — a beef cow shot with multiple arrows and left to die the year before, a case the Park County Sheriff’s Office had been unable to solve.
Serial Poacher
With a nationwide extraditable warrant issued through the Park County prosecuting office, officers in another state began looking for the suspect. He eventually turned himself in, flew back to Cody and sat in jail for 75 days before posting bail.
A trial was set for February 2025. Before it began, prosecutors and the defense reached a plea deal: guilty on nine of the 18 misdemeanor charges, $18,000 in restitution for the deer and one full year in county jail, with 73 days credited for time served.
The suspect also pleaded guilty to felony destruction of property for the cow, paying restitution to the rancher and accepting three years of supervised probation. All seized archery equipment was forfeited.
A year behind bars is an unusual outcome for a wildlife case in Wyoming, where penalties more commonly involve fines and revocation of hunting privileges, explained Carstens.
“This guy had never purchased a hunting license in Wyoming,” Carstens said. “He wasn’t really a traditional hunter in the sense that he buys a license, goes out in the field and looks to harvest anything.”
The warden’s best guess at a motive: the suspect was into archery as target shooting and “maybe just wanted to take it to the next level and see what he could do with his bow.”
Team Effort
Carstens credited his fellow wardens and the Game and Fish investigative unit — which considered the dead cow as a possible predator conflict before determining it had been killed by a bow — and the Park County prosecutor’s office.
“This was definitely the most collaborative effort that I’ve been a part of,” Carstens said.
The community played a role too. Neighbors willingly shared security camera footage, and residents who enjoy the town’s urban mule deer herd were eager to see the case resolved.
“Our hope is to cover everything Game and Fish is doing,” Fry said of the Wyoming Wildlife Podcast. “We have terrestrial habitat work, aquatic habitat work, but our law enforcement stories — those are a fan favorite.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
