Boyd Van Fleet's trail through the courtrooms of Wyoming and Montana has featured stolen property, an illegally branded horse named Magic, and Douglas fir trees that federal investigators matched back to the stumps from which they'd been cut.
Now the 53-year-old Greybull rancher is headed toward a jury trial on allegations even more serious.
Van Fleet is scheduled to face a Big Horn County jury March 1, 2027, on felony sexual assault charges stemming from what a woman says happened when she was a 13-year-old ranch hand working for him in the summer of 2006.
Van Fleet posted his $75,000 bond before his initial court appearance in April and has remained out of custody as the case moves toward trial.
A pretrial conference is set for Feb. 4.
Van Fleet pleaded not guilty May 12 and remains presumed innocent.
The case might have remained buried in an investigative file if not for another woman who came west from Michigan this winter looking for ranch work.
She lasted three days.
'Inappropriate And Mean'
On Feb. 21, a woman called the Big Horn County Sheriff's Office with a story about a ranch job gone wrong.
She told Sgt. Jeffrey Angell she answered a Facebook advertisement Van Fleet posted looking for a ranch hand, then traveled from Michigan to Big Horn County to take the job.
What she found wasn't what she'd expected or what she'd been told, she said.
She characterized Van Fleet's behavior toward her as inappropriate and mean, court documents say, and after three days she left.
Two days later, she took to a Facebook page called Ranch Hand Hiring and other sites.
She warned that Van Fleet was a dangerous person and that it wasn't safe for young women to work on his Wyoming ranch, Angell wrote in a probable cause affidavit.
Then someone answered her.
On Feb. 24, the Michigan woman called Angell again.
Another woman had contacted her after seeing the Facebook warning and told her Van Fleet had sexually assaulted her when she was 13 years old and working on his ranch.
For Angell, it wasn't a new name or a new allegation.
He'd heard the story eight years earlier.
Cabin Near Shell
The girl's mother first contacted the Big Horn County Sheriff's Office in September 2018 to report that her daughter was sexually assaulted by Van Fleet while working at his ranches.
Angell was assigned to investigate.
He met with the woman, by then an adult, in Casper. She told him she was 13 in the summer of 2006 when she took a summer job working for Van Fleet at his ranches around Greybull and Shell.
Her family was poor and needed the money, she told investigators, and she was excited to have a summer job.
She couldn't drive.
Her friend Lacey Preator and Preator's brother, Ryan, were also working for Van Fleet and initially drove the girl to the ranch each day and brought her home afterward.
She burned brush, cleaned and helped build corrals.
She worked there for roughly two to three weeks.
Then the Preators stopped working for Van Fleet, leaving the 13-year-old without a way to get to work.
Van Fleet offered another solution, she told investigators.
She could spend the night in a cabin on his ranch near Shell.
'I Wish You Were Older'
The girl called her mother, and Van Fleet got on the phone.
He told her mother that he needed the girl at the ranch early the following morning and that she could stay overnight, the affidavit says.
He allegedly assured her mother that the girl would sleep in one location on the ranch while he stayed somewhere else.
Her mother agreed.
After working that day, the girl went to the cabin to shower.
She could see Van Fleet outside on a tractor through the window, she told investigators. She had a bad feeling about getting into the shower and kept on her shirt and pants while she washed.
Eventually she took off her clothes and went to bed.
What she says happened afterward forms the basis of the criminal case against Van Fleet.
The woman told Angell he entered the bedroom after she'd gone to sleep, got into bed with her and sexually assaulted her.
As it happened, she said, he repeatedly told her:
"I wish you were older."
She told investigators she was thinking about how to survive the night and how she could get home.
She considered walking, but it was dark. The ranch was in the middle of nowhere. She had no way to call for help.
She decided it was safest to stay and remain quiet, the affidavit says.
Van Fleet eventually fell asleep. The next morning, he drove her home.
She never worked for him again.
Van Fleet continued calling her mother trying to speak with her, she told investigators, and wanted the girl to accompany him to Montana for a week.
She refused.
Back To Court
When Angell returned to the investigation this March, he went looking for people who had been there in 2006.
On March 5, he interviewed Lacey Preator at the Powell Police Department.
Preator confirmed she knew the girl and that both she and her brother worked for Van Fleet that summer. She remembered them driving the girl to and from Van Fleet's ranch because the girl wasn't old enough to drive.
Preator remembered something else.
The girl had told her Van Fleet touched her "inappropriately," Preator told Angell.
Angell interviewed Ryan Preator six days later.
He also remembered the girl working at Van Fleet's ranch while he was there.
The revived investigation eventually put Van Fleet back in a courtroom.
He was arrested in April and made his initial appearance that month. His bond was set at $75,000, which he posted.
On May 4, Van Fleet appeared before Circuit Court Judge Edward G. Luhm for a preliminary hearing.
Luhm found probable cause to believe the charged offenses had been committed and transferred the case to Big Horn County District Court.
Van Fleet faces second-degree sexual assault and third-degree sexual assault charges, with another sexual-contact charge listed as an alternative, under the Wyoming statutes applicable to the alleged conduct in 2006.
He was arraigned May 12 and pleaded not guilty.
His pretrial conference is scheduled for Feb. 4, 2027.
The jury trial is set for March 1.
Not His First Courtroom
Whatever a jury ultimately decides about the allegations from 2006, Van Fleet comes to this case with a court record stretching across decades and state lines.
Some of it reads like something pulled from an old Western.
In one federal case, it was timber.
On Sept. 24, 2008, a Bureau of Land Management forester encountered Van Fleet cutting large trees in the South Meadow Creek area of Madison County, Montana, and loading them onto a logging trailer.
Van Fleet produced a Forest Service firewood permit and said the trees were for firewood.
Investigators later counted 17 stumps from full-sized Douglas firs.
When a BLM special agent questioned Van Fleet two days later, he again said the trees had been cut for firewood.
There was a problem.
Investigators went to a flooring company in Norris, Montana, and learned Van Fleet had sold the business 10 logs for $1,440 on Sept. 26 — the same day he spoke with the federal agent.
Samples from four of the logs matched four of the stumps in South Meadow Creek, federal prosecutors said.
Months later, the Madison County sheriff flew over Van Fleet's ranch and spotted more logs in a gravel pit.
Federal agents arrived with a search warrant March 31, 2009.
Van Fleet eventually pleaded guilty to theft of government property.
In 2011, he was sentenced to one year of probation and ordered to pay a $3,000 fine and $2,448 in restitution.
Horse Named Magic
Van Fleet managed Birch Creek Ranch in Montana before being fired in May 2016.
After he left, ranch owner Jim Guyette discovered property missing and contacted law enforcement.
Included was a palomino gelding Van Fleet bought in Wyoming for Guyette in 2008, with Guyette paying for the horse by check.
Investigators eventually traced Magic through social media to Van Fleet's property. With a search warrant they found the horse, but something had changed.
Magic had a brand.
The horse's livestock paperwork identified him as having no brand, the Montana Supreme Court later wrote.
Prosecutors charged Van Fleet with felony theft of Magic, felony theft of a hot tub, felony removal of livestock from Montana without inspection, felony theft of livestock and business records, illegal branding of Magic and misdemeanor theft of a firearm.
Van Fleet eventually struck a deal. He pleaded no contest to felony theft of Magic, prosecutors dismissed the other five charges, and Van Fleet agreed to return the horse to Guyette and sign a bill of sale transferring Magic back to him.
A judge found Van Fleet guilty and sentenced him to eight years with the Montana Department of Corrections, all suspended, along with a mandatory $5,000 fine.
Later, Van Fleet had tried to withdraw his no-contest plea before sentencing. The judge told him he could renew that request after hearing his sentence and gave him two days to do it.
Van Fleet never did.
Instead, he took the fight to the Montana Supreme Court, arguing that he should have been allowed to withdraw his plea.
The justices weren't persuaded. His felony theft conviction — and the eight-year suspended sentence — stood.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
