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Mark Heinz

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Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

ALTA — Seeing the sun rise over Grand Teton and the lesser peaks in the national park definitely is a perk for those in Alta.

They live on the back side of the mountains photographed and inundated by summer tourists in Jackson Hole.

The 429-resident community sits in the Teton Valley along the road to Grand Targhee Resort ski area. There are no bumper-to-bumper traffic lines that back up as tourists vie for views of a bison in Grand Teton National Park or the mountain scenes around Jackson Hole.

“It’s always been interesting living in a part of Wyoming where you couldn’t get to any other part of Wyoming unless you drove through Idaho,” said Jim Wilson, a fourth-generation farmer on the north side of Teton Creek. “Unless you hike or ride horses over the mountain, which many of us have done, you have to drive through Idaho to get to us.”

That hike over the Tetons involves 21 miles and 4,000 feet of elevation from Teton Canyon to Jenny Lake in Jackson Hole. Make sure to bring bear spray.

As a resident of Teton County, Wilson, along with fellow residents Steve Green and Hunter Christensen, knows that to get his license plates or go to the county clerk’s office involves at least a 40-mile drive with 20 miles through Idaho before re-entering the state over Teton Pass. 

And shopping — well, you do what you need to do.

“I’ve always claimed Wyoming,” said Green, a fourth-generation farmer on a 160-acre homestead in Alta. “(But) the only thing we do in Wyoming is pay taxes and license vehicles.”

Green, 70, who grows barley and hay on his farm south of Teton Creek and a few other leased properties, understands that having a view of the Tetons in his backyard is something to appreciate. But it’s also all he has ever known.

He characterizes his community and view as “the better side of Idaho.”

Christensen, 36, senior vice president at Hughes Foundation based in Jackson, grew up in Alta and went to school in the little elementary building that still serves students off of Ski Hill Road and then spent his middle school and high school years in Driggs, Idaho.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Driving Teton Pass"}]

Unlike Green and Wilson, he drives Teton Pass most work days in his front-wheel drive Toyota Camry through all of its seasons, and characterizes the commute as just the way of life for many who live in Alta.

“It’s a beautiful drive every day,” he said. “You never go over that pass and think, ‘Oh, this is terrible.’”

Christensen said there are days when traffic backs up entering Jackson in the morning or leaving in the afternoons. Commuters plan for it. The winter weather in recent years has not been as heavy as when he was growing up, but there are days when he might have to work from home.

Christensen said he knows Alta residents who work in Wyoming and others who work in Idaho. But their identity, though a border community, remains rooted in Wyoming.

“Sometimes they call it ‘Wydaho',” he said. “We have a lot of wonderful neighbors in Idaho, a lot of good heritage and community with our neighbors across the border, and then we still get to be part of Wyoming.”

Christensen, Wilson, and Green all agree that shopping for the vast majority of people who live in Alta takes place in Idaho. Driggs offers a well-stocked supermarket and gas stations as well as a few other services.

To find the box stores, such as Walmart or Costco, residents travel to Rexburg or Idaho Falls, rather than pay the “resort town” prices at stores in Jackson, Christensen said.

Green, who worked at a lumberyard in Driggs for several years in addition to farming, said he contracts with Great Western Malting in Blackfoot, Idaho, to sell his barley. Much of his hay is sold to livestock owners in the Teton Valley and some to horse ranches in Jackson.

The farm he works was homesteaded by his great-grandfather and he has a son who might take it over as a sideline when Green is done. Making money off the farm is more difficult than ever due to the costs of fertilizer and the taxes on his home and barns as part of Teton County, Wyoming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Paying Taxes"}]

“I suspect there is always some kind of benefit to living in Wyoming versus Idaho, or Idaho versus Wyoming,” Green said. “For years, our property taxes and stuff were quite a bit higher than Idaho. Now Idaho, about 10 years ago, caught up. They kind of figured out they could charge more money, just like they do here.”

Green said he sold his cow herd about 25 years ago, but in recent years has purchased a steer or two in the spring to fatten up the family freezers. Predators have not been a problem.

Wilson works on the family farm run by his brother. They have the 160-acre homestead and have leased several properties to farm 1,500 acres of alfalfa, grass hay, barley, and a heritage wheat that has unaltered seed genetics from the wheat planted in the 1800s.

“We sell the wheat online or at farmer’s markets,” he said. The barley is sold in Idaho and the hay in Jackson and Teton Valley.

Wilson said he's often asked if he resents people moving into the community from other areas of the country to enjoy the scenery, skiing, hiking, or just walking their dog up the canyon.

He tells them he’s enjoyed the valley and the view for his entire life and certainly is willing to share it.

“I would describe it as heaven,” he said. “What I do resent is if they come in and try to change it to be like where they came from.”

Christensen said the community has elk on the outskirts, an occasional moose wandering through, and many black bears in recent years. During the winter, the traffic on Ski Hill Road to Grand Targhee picks up on the weekends.

On a recent weekday, Grand Targhee was hosting a mountain bike gathering that had cars going up and down the mountain and past an off-duty 

 Teton County Sheriff’s patrol car parked at the end of a driveway as if waiting for speeders to exceed the 25 mph limit.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Deputies In Community"}]

Teton County Sheriff’s Office Operations Lt. Mark Priest said he has two deputies who live in Alta, and other deputies live in Idaho. They typically drive through the community as part of their shifts before heading over the pass to do law enforcement in the more populated Jackson Hole region and other parts of the county.

In addition to Alta, the department is responsible for covering the popular hiking destination in nearby Darby Canyon as well as other remote spots on the west side of the Tetons. Those require deputies to traverse the pass and drive Idaho roads before crossing back into Wyoming and the county to respond to any issues.

Priest said his department has strong relations with the Idaho counties. If needed they sometimes secure a scene or provide an initial response to an incident if his department can’t get there immediately.

“Recently we have asked them less and less because of the fact we have two guys living (in Alta) and then our guys in Idaho who are able to respond from home as well,” he said.

Wilson said residents receive good service from the county and even in the winter the roads will be plowed while Idaho communities experience closures due to snow.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Good Neighbors"}]

All three of the Alta residents spoke of a community that looks out for one another and helps in time of need.

“The people who live here are by far salt-of-the-earth-good people that have a lot of love for their neighbors,” Christensen said. “That’s what makes living in Alta, for sure, and Wyoming in general, wonderful for me.”

Wilson said he recalled a time in the 1960s when an Idaho senator wanted to annex Alta.

A story in the Casper Morning Star on Feb. 13, 1965, stated that the senator had advocated that “many residents of Wyoming’s Teton Valley would like to be come Idahoans because the mountains cut their communication with Wyoming business centers.”

It apparently was more fancy than fact. Residents voted it down, the newspaper reported.

Wilson said there is no other place on Earth that he would rather be and made clear there is no identity crisis in the community. In the 1990s, Alta successfully lobbied to get its own ZIP code to distinguish it from the Driggs-based rural route that defined the community for years.

Now the Driggs Post Office serves two ZIP codes: 83422 for the Idaho side and 83414 on mail that carriers deliver across the state line.

“We have considered ourselves citizens of Wyoming since the day I was born, and my dad was born, and my grandpa was born and my great-grandpa homesteaded up there,” Wilson said.

Steve Green 1 7 4 26

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Alta, Wyoming: The Town Cut Off From The Rest Of The State By Idaho & Mountains | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Residents of remote Alta, Wyoming, say they don't feel disconnected even though the only way to get to the rest of Wyoming (outside of riding a horse or hiking over the mountain) is a 20-mile drive through Idaho and over Teton Pass.

Alta, Wyoming: The Town Cut Off From The Rest Of The State By Idaho & Mountains

Outdoors

Wildlife

A rancher in central Montana told Cowboy State Daily she suspects a grizzly inflicted ghastly wounds on one of her horses last month, although wildlife officials have yet to confirm it.

Leah LaTray posted photos of the horse and its severe injuries on social media, showing a large gash on its face, a massive open wound on its flank, and other injuries.

LaTray and her family run a cow/calf ranch near Lewistown, Montana, and she’s also a professional horse trainer.

LaTray said the horse apparently attacked by a grizzly is an 8-year-old quarter horse mare (female), and one of the ranch’s working horses.

She suspects the mare was attacked while in a pasture with four other horses on June 16 or 17.

The pasture is in a “wooded area” and also has a creek running through it, with willows along the bank.

LaTray said she didn’t find the mare until the following Tuesday.

“She was standing alone in the willows, with maggots in her wounds,” LaTray said.

The horse was examined by a veterinarian and is expected to live, she said. She added that her veterinarian, and another veterinarian who saw the horse, told her they think its injuries were suffered in a bear attack.

The horse is recovering well, LaTray said. 

The veterinarians could not be reached for comment by publication time.  

agent responded to the scene, but disputed the claim the horse’s injuries resulted from a bear attack.

LaTray said somebody reported seeing a “young grizzly bear” crossing the highway onto her property June 12.

She added that if her horse was, in fact, maimed by a bear, there’s no way of knowing if it was that same grizzly.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Was It A Bear Attack?"}]

LaTray said her bear-attack claim was investigated by Kraig Glazier, the USDA Wildlife Services West District supervisor, based in Helena, Montana. 

She said Glazier visited her ranch, inspected the horse, and disputed her claim.

Glazier’s assessment was that the horse might have run into or become entangled in something sharp, she said. 

Glazier could not be reached for comment by publication time. 

LaTray said Glazier told her that by his reckoning, the horse would have had “bite wounds on her withers if it had been a bear attack."

“Withers” refers to the prominent bony ridge just at the base of a horse’s neck, between the shoulder blades. 

That would have tracked with bears’ usual method of attacking a prey animal. They to get atop the animal while biting its back. The bear uses its immense strength and weight to drag down the animal. 

LaTray said her response to that point is that “horses are more athletic than sheep or cows,” and her horse “could have managed to wheel around and kick the bear in the face before he managed to get on top of her.”

She said Glazier also noted bears don’t typically claw their prey. So, grizzly claws might not account for the gashes on the horse’s face. 

LaTray said she wonders if the bear’s attack was actually predatory. But rather, if “the bear and the horse had a surprise encounter at very close range in the willows.”

If that was the case, the bear might have responded by lashing out with its claws, she said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Increased Bear Activity"}]

The ranch sits between the North and South Moccasin mountain ranges, along Montana Highway 81, she said.

Grizzly activity has been increasing there in recent years, LaTray said, even though the area more than 100 miles from the Rocky Mountains, where most of the state’s grizzly population lives.

Grizzlies are naturally a Great Plains species, but they’re not being deliberately introduced to prairie country in northern and central Montana.

Instead, they’re moving back into those areas on their own.

The LaTray ranch is also near property owned by the American Prairie conservation group. 

American Prairie welcomes the return of grizzlies to the area, and hopes the bears start settling in on their property.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"LaTray doesn’t like that idea."}]

She said that along with the suspected attack on her horse, neighboring ranches have been reporting trouble with bears. And there’s concern grizzlies could take heavy toll on cattle and threaten human safety.

Danny Kinka, senior wildlife restoration manager for American Prairie, told Cowboy State Daily there are ways to balance ranchers’ concerns with bear conservation.

He said he didn’t know specifics about what might have happened to LaTray’s horse, but agreed it must have been devastating to find the animal so terribly wounded.

“I saw the pictures (posted online), and man, I would be upset if that were my horse. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody,” he said.

When it comes to living alongside grizzlies, “the first order of business is keeping you and your family safe,” he said.

He added that American Prairie has programs to help ranchers mitigate the risk of attacks on their cattle, sheep and horses.

One effective way is to “put a human presence on the landscape,” with working cowboys and range riders staying near cattle, he said.

“The goal is to convince predators that livestock isn’t worth messing with,” he said.

Horse v bear blur 7 4 26

<title>Montana Rancher More Than 100 Miles From Rocky Mountains Says Grizzly Mauled Horse | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Montana rancher who lives more than 100 miles from grizzly territory says a bear mauled her quarter horse. Grizzlies aren't deliberately being reintroduced to prairie country. Instead, they’re moving back into those areas on their own.

Montana Rancher More Than 100 Miles From Rocky Mountains Says Grizzly Mauled Horse

Jen kocher

Jen Kocher

Crime & Courts

Belynda May Grantham was a 20-year-old single mother still finding her footing when her partially clothed body was recovered from the bottom of the North Platte River outside of Glenrock, a rock tied to her neck, in August 1982. 

Grantham had been strangled. She lay submerged for days before a passing bicyclist spotted her.

It would take nearly a month and a newspaper sketch before anyone could identify her.

[{"type":"text","text":"Her murder has never been solved."}]

For her only remaining sibling, Rebecca Grantham, her sister’s death remains a source of pain. At 67 and in ailing health, she’d like to see someone brought to justice.

“She was a really good, smart girl who could have literally done anything with her life if given the chance,” Rebecca said of her younger sister.

[{"type":"text","text":"Her hope is to get answers before she dies."}]

The investigation remains active and ongoing, according to Ryan Cox, a commander with the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation who also oversees the agency’s cold-case team.

Cox, too, said he believes it’s not too late to finally solve this crime and asks anyone with information to come forward.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Push For Answers"}]

The murder has never stopped haunting her. Now living in Sacramento, California, Rebecca has teamed with Amanda Patterson in her quest for answers.

Patterson is the daughter of Bonnie Jones, Grantham’s best friend from their teenage years in Casper.

The two women were each carrying their own unresolved grief when they first connected on Facebook. Patterson had been helping her ailing mother type messages online and, through that, formed a bond with Rebecca.

After Jones passed away in February, they remained in touch. In early June, the two created 

the Facebook page “Justice for Belinda May Grantham

At some point during her teens, Grantham began spelling her first name “Belinda,” though never had it legally changed. For this reason, her name appears both ways in news stories about her murder.

The page shares news articles about the murder and the long-unidentified body, along with pleas for anyone with information to reach out to authorities.

Their hope was to renew interest in Grantham’s case and to invite people who knew her to share their memories and photographs — something Rebecca is especially eager for, as she has only one of her sister from childhood.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Putting Together Pieces"}]

Much like her death, the details of Grantham’s life in her final years remain a mystery to those who loved her. 

She was born in Washington state and her family moved through the Pacific Northwest before settling in Casper in 1963.

When Grantham and her siblings were teenagers, their mother, Jeanette, died, upending their lives. According to her obituary, Jeanette died after a lengthy illness at age 36 in November 1974.

Before her mother’s death, Grantham had been a straight-A student. She competed in the Future Farmers of America and took home ribbons for her homemade clothing at the 1977 Central Wyoming Fair. She made the honor roll at East Junior High School.

After losing her mother, Grantham struggled to find her bearings and ran away from time to time.

Their father remarried quickly, and the children, unable to get along with their new stepmother, scattered to relatives’ homes. They drifted in and out of group homes and foster care.

[{"type":"text","text":"There she met a tight group of friends, including Bonnie Jones."}]

Grantham and Jones had an instant connection, Patterson said. In fact, they were so close that Jones gave Grantham a friendship ring, which would be used to help identify her later.

Somewhere around 1978 and 1979, Grantham left Casper to work with a traveling carnival headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She did that for two years before returning to Wyoming.

 By then, Jones had moved to Wichita, Kansas, and the best friends stayed in touch through letters and phone calls.

In April 1981, Grantham gave birth to a baby girl, according to a birth announcement in the Casper-Star Tribune, which listed her address as Mills, Wyoming. It’s unclear if the father of the child was in her life at the time.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Piecing Together Mystery"}]

More than 40 years later, Belinda’s final days continue to baffle her family.

Just as mysterious as her murder is what Grantham’s life was like during that time. This was the era before cell phones, social media and surveillance cameras and the modern trappings that log peoples’ every move and help them stay connected to friends and family.

In 1980s, people communicated with landline telephones in their home and through letters.

Because Grantham tended to move around a lot, her loved ones didn’t piece together that she was missing.

“Because of this established pattern, her absence did not immediately alarm her family and friends,” Cox said.

Then they saw the sketch of the unidentified dead women in the paper and reality hit them hard.

Writing about that moment years later, the girls’ aunt, Jean Henry Mead, spoke of the shock of seeing the drawing in the paper.

“I gasped when I noticed the drawing of a murder victim in the newspaper one morning ...,” Mead 

Not long after, she received a frantic call from her mother-in-law, Grantham’s grandmother.

“No, it can’t be Belinda,” she wrote.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What Happened That Night?"}]

Her friends and family scrambled to sort out the mystery of Grantham’s last steps.

In July, Grantham and a male friend took a trip to Kansas to see Jones but were unable to connect with her because she wasn’t home when they arrived, Patterson said.

For this reason, many of her friends had assumed Grantham was still in Kansas at the time of her disappearance.

Her living situation was fluid at that point, Cox said, but Grantham was reported to have been staying on and off with a family in Mills in the months leading up to her death.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Also unclear are her final moments."}]

Multiple witnesses report seeing her at the Husky Truck Stop and, later, at the Central Wyoming Fair, he said.

[{"type":"text","text":"Her last sighting was at about 8:30 p.m. Aug. 2 at the fair."}]

Cox further stated that records indicate Grantham was unemployed, but given the nature of carnival work could not rule out that she might have been at the fair working that night.

[{"type":"text","text":"Rebecca told Cox that it was highly possible she may have been."}]

Cox declined to say who reported spotting her and who she was seen with that night out of fear of jeopardizing the investigation.

Also unclear is when she was killed. Her body had likely been in the rushing water for anywhere from two to five days before being discovered by the bicyclist at about 10 a.m. the morning of Aug. 6.

Her body was recovered from the North Platte near a bridge and road that once connected Glenrock to the adjacent community of Rolling Hills before it was rerouted in the 1990s.

The Natrona County Coroner’s Office recorded her cause of death as asphyxia, the manner of death as homicide, according to the Verdict and Case Docket provided by the office.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Delayed Response"}]

News articles at the time reported the discovery of the body and a plea for help in identifying her.

An Aug. 11 article reports that the Converse County Sheriff’s Office was seeking the public’s help in identifying a partially clothed white female found in the North Platte River near Glenrock.

Grantham went unidentified for more than three weeks until a sketch was finally released to the media.

Grantham’s family has no clear answer as to why the sheriff’s office waited so long to release a sketch, but once itappeared in local media on Aug. 27, friends and family identified her immediately.

An Aug. 31 article in the Casper Star-Tribune confirmed Grantham had been named.

Rebecca said the early coverage was painful for her family, who felt it reduced her sister to her circumstances.

The Star-Tribune, reporting on Aug. 31, quoted former Converse County Sheriff Chuck Widick, who had characterized Grantham as “a known runaway from an early age” and a ward of the state “several times.”

He also called it running away to join a carnival, Rebecca noted — rather than moving to New Mexico to take a job.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Evidence"}]

That Grantham’s body had remained in the water for several days in a rushing river complicated the investigation. 

In March 1983, five unnamed pieces of evidence collected from Grantham were submitted to the DCI’s crime lab, but the biological volume of trace evidence was insufficient to produce a DNA profile, according to a source within the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office familiar with the case who asked not to be named.

Whether Grantham was sexually assaulted cannot be shared under state statute that prevents releasing the identities of these victims, though investigators did confirm the absence of a semen sample for DNA testing.

The source said this left investigators with little to go on. 

When short tandem repeat DNA analysis emerged in the 1990s — a technique using short, repeating sequences of DNA to generate a genetic profile — the evidence was resubmitted for testing in 2006, again without result.

Investigators remain hopeful that future developments in forensic technology might yet yield answers, but in the meantime they are counting on someone with knowledge of what happened to Grantham to finally step forward.

“We would welcome them with open arms quietly and get them to the right place very quickly,” one source said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rumors Abound"}]

In the absence of answers, rumors abounded about who was responsible for her murder.

According to Mead’s blog entry in 2008, she heard stories about Grantham’s boyfriend strangling her and dumping her body in a bathtub filled with water.

“But why hadn’t the police arrested him?” she asked.

Rebecca also heard these same rumors and said several people in Grantham’s circle of friends were questioned, as were family members. She recalled one of her male cousins being questioned and asked to give a sample of DNA.

The initial investigation focused on Grantham’s immediate circle, Cox confirmed, but he declined to provide any names of those questioned or potentially still on the suspect list.

“The investigation turned up numerous potential suspects,” he said in an email. “The certainty of the early suspects' involvement definitely wavered as time passed. Initially, the investigation focused on Belinda's immediate circle. However, as the investigation of those persons progressed it failed to definitively link any of them to the physical evidence at the scene.”

One of the names linked with Grantham’s murder by amateur sleuths and psychology researchers at Radford University in Virginia is Dale Wayne Eaton.

 of Lisa Marie Kimmell, also known as “Lil Miss” from her personalized license plate.

Kimmell disappeared while driving from Denver to her family’s home in Billings, Montana, and remained missing for eight days before her body was found floating in the North Platte near Casper, about 25 miles east of where Grantham’s body was found.

Her murder went unsolved for 14 years until DNA profiling linked Eaton to her kidnapping, rape and murder in 2002.

Kimmel’s Honda CR-X was later found buried on Eaton’s property. He was convicted in 2004 and faced the death penalty, which was later overturned.

Along with Grantham’s murder, Eaton is also a suspect in 

, who was found nude and strangled to death on a remote Natrona County ranch in September 1982.

The 18-year-old single mother had been working in an oilfield in Rawlins at the time and disappeared on June 29, 1982, while hitchhiking home to Buffalo to see her daughter. Her murder also remains unsolved.

It’s been 44 years since a young Casper woman was found dead in the North Platte River with a rock tied around her neck. The murder has never stopped haunting her older sister Rebecca. In failing health, Rebecca is hoping to find answers before she dies.

CSD Staff

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