A Rawlins man living in a house full of knives with “Danger, Women stay out, Kill her, Be Aware” scrawled in red marker on his front door told police that the woman who claims he assaulted her instead hit herself in the face.
The Rawlins Police Department was greeted by that message on the door when they responded Monday to the home of 46-year-old Jeremiah Hall.
They were sent to investigate a report that the woman had fled the house, flagged down a passing vehicle and reported that she’d just been assaulted, according to an affidavit of probable cause by Lt. Daria Hooper.
When police entered Hall’s home, they found paraphernalia associated with illegal drug use, including a glass plate with razor blades, a straw, and two clear meth pipes set out on a shelf.
A puppy stared at the grim scene from a kennel in the living room.
Responding officers also saw several knives throughout the house, including a serrated knife in the stairwell with a broken tip, the affidavit says. Blood was on the bedsheets of a mattress, propped against a wall.
When asked why there were so many knives around, Hall told police he needed them to defend himself, Hooper wrote.
“I asked defendant why there were so many knives around the house,” the affidavit says. “He told me that he is paranoid and thinks people are out to get him.
“Defendant uses the knives for protection. He told me he had stabbed the walls a bunch of times.”
Hall is scheduled for an initial appearance in Carbon County Circuit Court on Friday, with a preliminary hearing set for May 12.
He’s charged with four felonies and six misdemeanors, the most serious two counts each of aggravated assault and battery and strangulation of a household member.
Her Side Of The Story
The victim told police she came to the house to stay with Hall, her adopted father, after having a fight with her boyfriend in Cheyenne.
The last time she had seen Hall before the alleged assault was when he chased her boyfriend from the house with a hatchet in April, the affidavit says.
She told police that Hall “seemed angry and agitated” that day, and that she’d seen him smoke “dope” (meth) and denied using meth with him.
Things escalated by dinner time when the woman said Hall told her, “she was ungrateful for the food he cooked her and told her she needed to shut up because she was talking too much,” Hooper wrote.
It was at this point that he began throwing the puppy around, the woman told police. When she told him to stop, he allegedly told her to “go to her room.”
She said she went to her room in the basement for a time but then came back upstairs. That’s when Hall pushed her to the ground.
While she was face-down, she believed she had a seizure, the affidavit says. When she “came to,” Hall was slamming her face and nose into the ground, causing her to bleed.
At one point, her stepfather allegedly began strangling her, and the woman told police “she thought she was going to die.”
The victim would later show police bumps and bruises on her head, hands, face, and chest from allegedly being pummeled during the attack.
At one point, she said Hall pulled her pants down and began to hit her backside and said “she needed to be spanked more as a kid,” according to the affidavit.
Hall allegedly tormented her with at least three different knives, and the victim recalled him saying “he was going to stab her in the heart and he wanted to bury her body in a bag somewhere.”
Then Hall got off of her and went upstairs. She told the police she ran out of the back door and flagged down someone to call for help.
What Police Saw
Police took photos of the victim’s injuries, the affidavit says. She had scratches on her chin, neck, jaw, ears, and back. She had bruising on her right eyelid, and a bruise starting to form on the left eye. She also had an abrasion on her right knee.
The victim expressed that she was in pain all over her body.
Hooper wrote that the next day, the victim’s mother called police to say she was “concerned” that her daughter “did the injuries to herself.”
She told police her husband, Hall, had sent her a video he took that night — albeit “pretty grainy,” the affidavit reports — pointed at the victim in a visibly bloody shirt to show what he claimed she had done to herself.
He said on camera that he was getting ready to “kick her a** out” because she was threatening to call the cops on him. He added that the victim “wouldn’t be quiet” and give him time to eat his dinner, so he got mad and told her to leave.
Hall said she’s lucky he didn’t “murder her a**”. The only reason he didn’t was out of “respect” for the victim’s mother, the affidavit says.
His Side Of The Story
Hall told police that the argument started Monday after he went to the store with another man and bought steaks and beer.
He said the victim had previously lent him $300, and that since he was using the money on her, it wasn’t a loan anymore, the affidavit says.
Hall said he tried to kick his stepdaughter out and put the dog on the porch, but she began faking a seizure.
“She was banging her head on things,” and said at one point he saw her “punching herself in the face with both hands” causing herself to bleed,” the affidavit says.
Despite saying he saw the woman foam at the mouth, Hall said he didn’t see the victim’s eyes roll back “like they should,” so he didn’t think it was a real seizure.
Hall denied assaulting the woman to the extent she alleges, but did admit he pushed her, put his hand over her mouth to stop her from screaming, squeezed her cheeks, and spanked her “because he was angry.”
As for the knives, he said he kept them for protection due to paranoia and denied threatening her.
“Overall, Defendant’s statement appeared to minimize his involvement” notes the affidavit.
Formal Charges
Hall was arrested on Thursday and is being held in the Carbon County Detention Center on the 10 charges.
In addition to the felonies, he also faces two counts of domestic battery, false imprisonment, interference with an emergency calls=, possession of marijuana, and possession of meth.
If he is found guilty of all the charges, he could get 44.5 years in prison.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
