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[{"type":"text","text":"Still the greatest July 4 video ever recorded....."}]

Darwin 7 5 26

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

<title>Daily Darwin: Sunday, July 5, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Still the greatest July 4 video ever recorded.....

Daily Darwin: Sunday, July 5, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

He was a “G-Man” who arrested the FBI’s most-wanted man in 1936 and later served as the special agent in charge in Detroit helping take down a Nazi spy ring and communicating with J. Edgar Hoover about Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford.

John Bugas would go on to be recruited by Henry Ford in 1944 and help oust the man Ford hired to be the corporation’s thug-like enforcer in what he later in life told a reporter was an encounter with an angry armed man.

“I didn’t know if whether I was going to get something between the shoulders or not,” he said.

Bugas retired as a vice president and consultant to the company in 1978.

But before any of that, Bugas was a Wamsutter ranch kid who played basketball for the University of Wyoming, starred on its stage in dramatic productions, and worked at Yellowstone National Park during his some of his collegiate summers. 

He also was noted for his stories about ranch life. Bugas spun a favorite tale to a Detroit Free Press reporter for a June 30, 1940, profile on him as he led the FBI office in the Motor City.

“When I was a kid, I never wore shoes or ate candy until I was 14," he told the reporter. "Finally, my dad told me he would get me some on his trip to town. So, 10 days later, I ran out a mile from the ranch house to meet him and he tossed me a couple of packages. 

"When he found me under the bed at the house, I had chewed halfway through one of the hob-nailed boots because I thought it was candy.”

Bugas was born in 1908 to Andrew and Helena Bugas in Rock Springs. A year later, the family moved to Wamsutter, where his father started a ranch and operated businesses, including a road construction company.

He attended the University of Wyoming’s preparatory high school graduating at 16 and obtained a scholarship to the university but because of his dad’s needs, took two years off before college to run a road construction crew.

Once in college, Bugas’ name appeared in the Casper Tribune-Herald on April 19, 1931, as a member of The University of Wyoming Players, a traveling theater troupe putting on a play, “The Poor Nut.”

On the university’s basketball team he was a forward. He also played baseball and ran track.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Park Ranger"}]

The school newspaper on April 20, 1933, wrote that Bugas was the law scholarship winner for 1933. He was in the Casper Tribune Herald’s July 27, 1933, edition as a Yellowstone Park ranger investigating a robbery that occurred where thieves took off with $1,000 from a store safe.

After graduation from the university’s law school, he passed the state’s bar exam, worked for a short time for a law firm and then joined the FBI.

Before his role leading the Detroit office in May 1938, he served in assignments in Los Angeles, Omaha, Washington, Alaska, and Birmingham, Alabama.

It was in Los Angeles that he made a name for himself when he and another agent interviewed a woman who said she knew where Thomas H. Robinson Jr. was living. Robinson topped the bureau’s “Most Wanted” list after the arrest of noted mobster Alvin Karpis in 1936. 

Robinson had evaded capture since the Oct. 10, 1934, national headline kidnapping of Alice Speed Stoll, a Louisville, Kentucky, socialite and wife of an oil executive.

Robinson, who had served time in an insane asylum, successfully made off with a $50,000 ransom after the kidnapping, though his wife and father were arrested in the plot.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Arresting The Most Wanted"}]

As a young agent in Los Angeles, Bugas met with a woman who contacted the FBI office and claimed to be Robinson’s lover and who wanted to turn him in. 

That led to Bugas and other agents going to Robinson’s home and taking him at gunpoint. 

“The arrest was made with the same speed and silence that has characterized more of the G-men raids,” The Los Angeles Daily News reported on May 12, 1936. “It was learned that Robinson was taken in Glendale around 8:30 p.m. and that the government chartered a transport plane at Grand Central Terminal shortly after 9 p.m.”

Robinson was sent to Louisville immediately.

A serialized story reprinted across the country by his lover and her description of her conversation with Bugas at a Los Angeles restaurant and the conduct of the FBI in the case put Bugas’ name on front pages across the nation.

Once in Detroit, Bugas was involved in several more high-profile cases. FBI files from the Bureau’s “The Vault” — that contains the documents released to the public — have several with Bugas as the author.

The FBI had an extensive file on aviator Charles Lindbergh during World War II as a Nazi sympathizer. 

Bugas sent J. Edgar Hoover a memo on Oct. 20, 1941, and a copy of a handwritten letter from Lindbergh to Henry Ford. In it Lindbergh deplored the “misinformation and propaganda that fills our press, our radio, and our motion picture theaters each day.”

The document blacked out the name of the person who provided the letter to Bugas.

“He gave me a photo static copy of a letter that Mr. Henry Ford, Sr. had received from Charles A. Lindbergh in which Lindbergh in the latter part mentions his sentiments in connection with the international policy of the United States Government,” Bugas wrote. “For your information, as of possible interest, I am transmitting herewith a photostatic copy of this letter.”

A memo from Bugas to a New York FBI official in June 1939 outlined the status of the city as it related to organized crime, the conduct of the Detroit Police Department, and part of the history of the Purple Gang in Detroit and how the gang was no longer functioning but two members had allegedly murdered another former member.

Another memo Bugas wrote on Oct. 13, 1942, related to Henry Ford. 

At that point in the U.S. due to the war, rationing of rubber and tires was in place. Bugas informed Hoover that an informant provided information that Ford told someone that he had enough tires to last his employees 18 years.

Bugas also led efforts to protect Detroit industries from espionage during the start of the war and in August 1943 announced the arrest of five persons, including a female spy dubbed “The Countess” who were all tied to Hitler’s regime.

But before the war was over, Bugas was recruited by Ford himself in 1944 to protect his grandchildren and other family members from kidnapping. Bugas initially worked in the office of Harry Bennett, the man hired by Ford years earlier to be a union buster and his personal fixer. 

Bennett was known to hire thugs, allegedly kept his pistol in his office, and in the 1940s had, because of his influence with the senior Ford, become a power at the automaker.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Showdown"}]

When Henry Ford II convinced his family to be given the lead role at the automaker in 1945 after his return from the U.S. Navy in 1943 due to the death of his father, he wanted Bennett gone and Bugas to replace him. Bugas was given the assignment to tell Bennett the news.

Bugas retold the story of his encounter with Bennett in a newspaper series on Henry Ford II published in 1978. The San Antonio Express-News carried the account in its March 18, 1978, edition.

Bugas told the reporter that Bennett had taken himself and Henry Ford II for a ride around the River Rouge plant after Ford told Bennett he “ought to retire.” Ford then returned to his office.

“I’m sitting over to the right of Bennett and from the desk, the drawer, he pulls out a gun,” Bugas said. “He slams it down on on the desk … jumps up and comes over to where I am sitting.”

Bugas said that he had a snub-nosed pistol in his belt. He told the reporter Bennett had probably been drinking whiskey heavily the previous night. Bennett then accused him of being behind the plot to oust him.

“He cursed me and he was very, very threatening. And I figured, ‘Oh my God, something is going to happen,” Bugas said. “It didn’t. He finally backed over to his chair and sat down completely exhausted.”

Bugas said he sat down in a chair beside Bennett and tried to convince him that it would be in his best interest to leave the organization. He said after about 20 minutes of conversation, Bennett calmed down.

“I didn’t want to get beat up, number one. I didn’t want to get shot, number two, and I didn’t want to shoot anybody, number three,” Bugas said. “So, I got up and walked out of that … room, never knowing whether I was going to get something between the shoulders or not.”

Henry Ford II initially made Bugas his main negotiator with unions, and he was elevated to a vice president role. Before leaving the company in 1968, Bugas helped the company grow internationally and he had become a known and respected player in the auto world.

Bugas became a wealthy man at Ford and had purchased a working Wyoming ranch near Cody. There is a photo of him on his ranch with Henry Ford II and industrialist Max Fischer to join him experiencing the West.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"University Benefactor"}]

He used his wealth to benefit the University of Wyoming by giving the university stock valued at $823,449 during a 10-year period, the Casper Star-Tribune reported on Jan. 9, 1973. Bugas said his donations reflected his “great affection for and deep interest in the state of Wyoming and its people and in a real sense, my gratitude for what the university and the state have done for me and my family.”

After his Ford career, Bugas became a director for several companies, including Standard Oil of Indiana and One Williams Street Fund and Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb. He joined the Buffalo Bill Historical Center’s board in 1962 and was credited with raising funds to build the Plains Indian Museum.

Bugas died Dec. 2, 1982, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, of complications after heart bypass surgery. He and his first wife, Margaret Stowe McCarty, who died in 1972, had three daughters and a son. He was remarried in 1975 to Joan Murphy.

His obituary in the Casper Star-Tribune on Dec. 4, 1982, stated his cremated remains were to be brought back to Wyoming for burial.

Henry Ford II was quoted in several newspapers about the loss of his friend.

“John Bugas was one of my closest and dearest friends,” he said. “His death is a tremendous loss to me personally. I will miss him very much.”

FBI agent and Wamsutter 7 4 26

<title>Wyoming History: Remarkable Life Of Wamsutter's John Bugas — FBI Star, Busted Nazis | Cowboy State Daily</title>

John Bugas was a Wamsutter ranch kid who became an FBI agent and caught the nation's most-wanted man in 1936. Then, as the special agent in charge in Detroit, he took down a Nazi spy ring. He went on to protect the Henry Ford family from kidnappers.

Wyoming History: Remarkable Life Of Wamsutter's John Bugas — FBI Star, Busted Nazis

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

It wasn’t the fanciest Harley-Davidson on the lot when the 95th anniversary Dyna Wide Glide edition motorcycle caught the eye of retired Torrington lawman Randy Giles.

“It was just something that I thought a person my size would enjoy, so I bought it,” he said. “Nothing special attracted me to it. It was just a good, suitable bike for me, for my size and my riding capabilities.”

The used bike was also priced just right. Not too expensive — even if the dealer still got his fair share.

Giles didn’t do anything special to the bike, at least not at first. He bought some leather saddlebags for weekend rides with his friends. It was just a good, solid practical ride.

Then one day he rear-ended a police car in Cheyenne, totaling the bike. 

Bent handlebars, damaged exhaust, smashed forward controls — the motorcycle was done for. Or so the insurance company said.

But Giles was a former auto body repair man before he was a lawman. He knew his way around metal and paint. So that was the beginning of a new journey for him and his Harley.

“I decided to buy it back from the insurance company and built it the way that I wanted to,” he told Cowboy State Daily. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"From Totaled To Wanted"}]

Now the motorcycle is more than just a ride. It’s an iron horse that an Old West lawman might ride today, all duded up with air-brushed posters of famous outlaws like Butch Cassidy and Billy the Kid with a leather saddle ringed by bullets. 

There’s also a picture of a lawman who has just pulled two pistols, one of them smoking, with Devils Tower in the background. 

It’s a rolling gallery of Western outlaw history now, turning heads and starting conversations everywhere he goes. It’s also won awards in various motorcycle shows, beating out some of the big names on the circuit.

“I was in a show at Deadwood Mountain Grand, and I took People’s Choice,” Giles said. “And there were people like Paul Yaffe, Corry Ness, and Donnie Smith in that show, so I feel like I got a little bragging rights there.”

Giles’ outlaw bike, which he calls "Wanted Dead Or Alive," has been through several transformations since it was wrecked in 2006. First came bright yellow with purple flames, then orange, and then a deep blue show-bike look that was starting to win awards every now and then.

“I’d win some and I’d lose some,” he said with a chuckle. “Well, nobody likes to lose, so I just had to do better.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Harley As A Canvas"}]

Better, he ultimately decided, would be to lean into what has meaning to him. 

He had a 30-year career in law enforcement, including time spent as the chief of police in Lingle, where he learned some Wyoming towns still have an old city code that referred to his position as the town marshal.

“I thought that was just Old West,” he said. “I am interested in the Old West lawmen, Native Americans, cowboys, and all that kind of stuff. Lawmen and outlaws, so that’s where I got my idea.”

Growing up in Wyoming helped deepen that fascination. He was surrounded most of his life by landscapes tied to real frontier legends — Powder River country, the old territorial prison where Butch Cassidy once famously stayed, and areas where Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were said to have robbed a few trains.

Giles had been diving into books and television documentaries about the West since his 40s. So that became his theme and his Harley became a canvas.

Giles started his concept with a cherry-maroon paint color, which he did himself. Then he hired an artist to layer intricate airbrushed “Wanted” posters of iconic outlaws such as Jesse James and Butch Cassidy on the bike. 

The portraits look aged and weathered, as if peeled from an 1800s-era sheriff’s office wall. Chains and iron handcuffs are painted draped across the tank in the “trompe-l’oeil,” fool-the-eye tradition that is a hallmark of so many Renaissance painters. 

On the rear fender, a lone gunfighter stands with two pistols drawn, one of them smoking, with Devils Tower rising in the background.

“Devils Tower ties it into Wyoming,” Giles said. “That and the gunfighter are the two features I like the most.”

But he also cherishes the custom-tooled brown leather saddle seat with its crossed revolvers and vintage “Wyoming US Marshal” star badge. And it’s not long before he’s named it as his favorite feature as well. The saddle has a sharp, braided leather edging around it as well as a shiny bullet belt that completes the look. 

The bike that has emerged is part Western shrine, but it also harkens to Harley history as a part vintage “Frisco chopper,” a minimalist, tall and narrow custom Harley-Davidson meant for aggressive side-street riding and lane-splitting. The style emerged in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1960s.

Giles also swapped out the bike’s front end for a vintage Springer front, which has exposed chrome springs, rather than modern, telescopic fork shocks. And he used tall, ape-hanger handlebars, giving the bike a sleek silhouette with a commanding, arms-up riding stance.

The engine is the classic Harley V-twin with straight pipes, loaded with aftermarket chrome covers and paired with the long, unbaffled chrome straight-pipe exhausts. 

All of which to say, this is a motorcycle that definitely makes an entrance when the engine starts. It’s meant not just to be seen but to be heard, and talked about.

Giles doesn’t just plop this bike in the parking lot when he takes it to a show. He builds a miniature frontier world around it.

“I put ropes around it and a display that I made with some pilings, some ropes, and some Wanted posters and lamps,” he said. “It just went well with the theme that I had.”

Giles has other bikes he’s duded up for shows as well, but this is the one that starts the most conversations.

“They’ll stand there and just look it over really good for a long time and take pictures,” he said. “And that’s what makes me happy, to see somebody enjoying something that I’ve done.”

Giles is living firmly inside what people call the “Harley lifestyle,” but he’s doing it in Wyoming style.

He’s been taking bikes to Sturgis every year since 1990, trailering up multiple bikes, some to ride and some to show. Then he spends the week doing what Harley culture is famous for — people-watching, checking out vendors, and soaking in all the craziness.

It’s the latter, he’ll admit with a laugh, that he likes about Sturgis. But there’s also camaraderie, meeting new people, and looking at all the vendors, scoping out new ideas for the next Harley project.

No bike is ever truly finished, Giles said.

“I’ll accessorize this bike if I see something I like,” he said. “But I’ve got two other bikes now that I’m working on, so I’ve got to make financial room for those.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Next Up: A Gold Digger"}]

One is a 1998 Softail he’s rebuilding from the frame up around a $4,000 Evolution engine he won as a prize at Sturgis.

He’s sandblasted the frame and covered it and the swingarm in gold leaf. Its theme will be another Western archetype. He’s going to call it Gold Digger.

“Not so much the girl who tries to take money from a rich guy,” he said. “But the guy who goes out and pans for gold.”

Right now this project is living in his half of the family garage — much to his wife’s occasional frustration.

“I try and squeeze her out, and then she gets mad,” he admits with a laugh.

Recently he’s been imagining clever peace offerings. Like when his green bike “Slow Poke” won a trophy, he sent her up to collect it in his stead.

“She thought that was neat,” he said. “So maybe I’ve got her in my corner now.”

When he’s finished with “Gold Digger,” he’s thinking that bike might become hers. 

“She’s been mad at me ever since I bought that one,” he said. “So if I give her that one, maybe she won’t be so mad at me anymore.”

Gold Digger has a good chance, he believes, of beating his outlaw Harley, and winning more awards. 

But regardless, he plans to keep the old outlaw that started the Harley hobby he enjoys so much. It’s the perfect iron horse for a former town marshal with its vintage badge on a custom leather seat and its Wanted posters of the West’s most famous outlaws on the tank.

Outlaw Harley 20260620 123548 6.28.26

<title>Retired Wyoming Lawman’s Outlaw Harley Turns Heads Across West | Cowboy State Daily</title>

After retired Torrington lawman Randy Giles totaled his Harley, he didn’t walk away from it. The former auto body repairman turned it into a Western-themed town marshal’s show bike. His outlaw Harley has been beating big-name builders in shows across the West.

Retired Wyoming Lawman’s Outlaw Harley Turns Heads Across West

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

For more than 40 years, Hope Sheets marched through Cody's famed Stampede Parade in a flowing pink gown, four-inch heels and an extravagant flowered hat, waving to thousands of spectators while leading a fluffy white poodle dyed bubblegum pink.

[{"type":"text","text":"Children waited for her."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Visitors photographed her."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Generations of Cody residents simply expected to see her."}]

When Sheets died in May 2025, the Pink Lady disappeared with her, and last year's Fourth of July felt different.

"It was a weird parade," said her oldest daughter, Lisa Kealey. "We were all very sad to go watch it without my mom in it."

[{"type":"text","text":"This year, however, the Pink Lady returned."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"In Her Shoes"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Kealey insists she never intended to step into her mother's famous shoes."}]

Then parade organizers invited her to help celebrate America's 250th birthday by bringing back some of the event's most iconic entries.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I just said yes,\" she recalled. \"I didn't think about it.\""}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Only afterward did the reality sink in."}]

"I'm doing my version of my mom," Kealey said. "I'm not copy-catting her exactly, but it is the same idea. It has the same personality."

Hope's original gown wouldn't fit. Standing just over five feet tall, she was much smaller than her daughter.

Kealey sat at her sewing machine and created a new pink dress inspired by the original — one longtime Cody residents would instantly recognize, but that still reflected her own style.

[{"type":"text","text":"One piece, however, came directly from her mother's costume."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The flower-covered hat."}]

"I actually gave her that hat," Kealey said. "So now it comes full circle."

She carefully cleaned it, reshaped it and added fresh posies before wearing it down Sheridan Avenue.

"I do look quite a bit like my mom," Kealey said. "And everybody that found out is just super, super excited that I'm kind of bringing this whole thing back in honor of her."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Poodles To Pomeranian"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"After the decision was made, one challenge remained. "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The Pink Lady needed a pink dog."}]

Courtney asked the community if anyone had a white poodle she could borrow.

"I was shocked at how many people came forward to offer their dog," she said.

At one point she nearly settled on Roscoe, a large Goldendoodle whose owner had even bought him tiny pink Crocs.

"It was hilarious," Kealey said, but ultimately, Roscoe was simply too much dog.

Instead, she found a tiny white Pomeranian to be professionally groomed and dyed before the parade.

"She'll look like a little stuffed animal out there," she said ahead of the march. 

For a few blocks through downtown Cody, spectators once again saw a flash of pink, a fluffy pink dog, and a familiar flowered hat.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Performance Art"}]

Long before she became the Pink Lady, Hope Sheets was already well known around Wyoming.

She and her husband, Lloyd, traveled the country performing music before eventually settling in Cody, where the family became known for singing and entertaining together.

When health problems ended her singing career, Sheets found another stage.

Hope Sheets was a fixture for four decades in the Cody Stampede Parade as the “Pink Lady.” More than a year after her death, her daughter has stepped into the iconic pink dress to keep the tradition alive. "I'm doing my version of my mom," she said.