CHEYENNE — In police body-cam video played in court Thursday morning of a detective’s interview with a Cheyenne man now on trial for aggravated child abuse for nearly starving his 13-year-old adopted son to death, Darrick Mittlestadt described how the boy had started ripping out his hair and smearing feces on his bedroom walls.
He also blamed his wife for the abuse the severely malnourished and underweight teen suffered.
The 50-year-old former fire chief of Laramie County Fire District No. 1 said that he did not take his son out in public because of how he looked.
“I told him, ‘You look like dogshit right now, you need to eat more,’” the father told Laramie County Sheriff’s Office Detective Ryan Martinez on the video.
He also told authorities that the boy “chews his toenails and fingernails to the nub.”
Martinez interviewed Darrick on June 23, 2025, at his home.
The day before, his wife, Angela, had dropped off their son — referred to in court as “EM” — at a Douglas, Wyoming, youth group home and told him that was where he was going to be living.
Staff at the home called Douglas authorities when they saw EM’s terrible condition. The then-13-year-old weighed about 50 pounds and was clearly malnourished.
Dr. Andy Sirotnak, a child abuse pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Colorado, testified Tuesday that during an examination soon after EM was taken into custody by the Wyoming Department of Family Services (DFS), he looked like “a concentration camp survivor.”
Sirotnak said the boy had bones protruding from his chest and tests revealed no detectable vitamin D. EM was diagnosed with cachexia, a complex metabolic syndrome characterized by progressive involuntary loss of body mass, specifically skeletal muscle and fat.
“There was no muscle to the bone,” the physician said.
Both the prosecution and defense rested their cases Thursday morning, with Laramie County District Judge Peter Froelicher expected to give the jury his instructions, then the 10-man, four-woman panel will hear closing arguments.
Before deliberations, two alternate jurors will be excused.
‘This Is All My Fault’
In the background of the body-cam video, Angela is heard being interviewed by a DFS worker.
She was crying throughout the conversation and at one point loudly said, “This is all my fault.”
She accepted a plea bargain Monday in which she pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated child abuse. Another charge of conspiring with her husband to starve their son was dropped.
Darrick Mittlestadt chose to stand trial on the two felony charges, which, if he is convicted of both crimes, could mean a total of up to 50 years in prison.
He also decided to testify in his own defense, during which he placed much of the blame for the boy’s condition on his wife.
“I know I was deceived, misled and lied to by Angela,” he said before finishing his second day on the stand Thursday morning. “And I know that I was not a good dad.”
Darrick said if he had realized the life-threatening condition EM was in, he would have taken him to a doctor to get physical and/or mental health help.
Testimony during the trial indicated that the Mittlestadts never sought medical care for EM since they adopted him in 2019 at age 7. A year later, they adopted his half-brother, NM, who was an infant.
Asked why no medical examination of EM had ever taken place, Darrick said that was left up to his wife.
Darrick testified that he didn’t want to argue with her and that he was exhausted and stressed out from work.
“I just wanted to keep the peace at home,” he said.
Still, Darrick said he trusted Angela “100%” to take care of EM. His job when he was at home was to take care of NM, who he described as “a little tornado.”
Darrick said EM has been skinny since the day he and Angela met him when he was 7 years old, and he never seemed to gain any weight even though “he ate a lot.”
For Martinez, Darrick rattled off a list of things EM would eat throughout the day: yogurt, bananas, bread, lunch meat and applesauce.
For dinner, his father said EM would eat two chicken pot pies with bread and drink water.
EM testified Tuesday that his mother reduced his meals from three a day to two, and then again to one a day.
Darrick told the court he was never aware there was any change in how many meals his son was fed.
Angela, he said, had raised her twin daughters from a prior marriage, and while she was strict, Darrick described her as a good mother.
But on the witness stand Wednesday, Darrick said he now realizes he should have confirmed whether Angela was telling him the truth.
“I trusted her,” he said.
A Troubled Marriage
Their marriage was a rocky one, filled with arguments about their finances and the boys, he said.
Darrick’s attorney, Crystal Stewart, asked him if there was a point where Angela shut him out.
“That was basically in February [2025],” Darrick replied. “Any input I had was of no value at all.”
Darrick testified that he had not seen EM for “three or four months” before he learned about what happened in Douglas.
“The last time I saw him was in February, and he was just a blur, running from his bedroom to his bathroom,” he recalled.
In his video interview with detectives, though, Darrick mentioned an unspecified time during 2025 when his wife was stressed out from starting a new job, “and I took a week off to take care of the boys."
Darrick said he and Angela had talked about getting EM help when she told him that their son was “peeing on himself” and wouldn’t use the bathroom.
He said he came home one day and saw that Angela was “cleaning poop off the walls.”
Angela told Darrick she had been researching places to take EM, including military and boarding schools. Darrick said he was resigned to the fact that she would choose a place without his input.
But he said he was shocked when Martinez told him on June 23, 2025, that Angela dropped EM off at the Douglas group home the day before and told their son to use a fake name: John Diaz.
Graphic Photos
During his interview with the detective, Darrick tried to download some photos he had taken of EM since the adoption to show how skinny their son has always been.
Darrick claimed during cross-examination on Wednesday that he wasn’t aware of the existence of any photos taken of EM in Douglas until several weeks later, when he asked his former attorney after a DFS hearing why everyone was “so PO-ed at me.”
When he looked at the photos, Darrick said he understood why they were, “and rightfully so.”
The body-cam video shows Martinez asking Darrick if EM had reached puberty. The detective said he was curious because there was so much hair on the teen’s back, and he showed Darrick a photo that had been taken of his son when he was in Douglas.
In all, seven graphic photos of EM’s condition were shown to the jury on the opening day of the trial.
Before Assistant Laramie County District Attorney Jack Hatfield pointed out to Martinez that he had shown EM’s father a photo of what he looked like in Douglas, Darrick said he never saw any pictures until weeks later.
Skinny But Happy Kid?
His image of EM until that point, Darrick said, was the way he looked in the photos he had taken: a skinny but happy kid.
While Darrick repeatedly said there was no reason to seek medical treatment for EM, on video he told Martinez that the boy was so weak he couldn’t use a shovel to dig up cactus in their yard without getting tired and giving up, so he would take over.
“That’s how he always was,” Darrick added.
Martinez asked what EM weighed the last time he was put on a scale. Darrick said he never did that.
“The last time I picked him up he was wafer thin,” he said. “I told him he should eat more.”
Stewart asked Martinez during his appearance as a rebuttal witness on Thursday if he had ever told Darrick that he was at his home to investigate a crime.
Martinez said Darrick knew that he was there to take NM into protective custody, but “no, I never used the word ‘crime.’”
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information is available.
