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Will Ferrell says he doesn’t buy ANYTHING for his kids, saying when they travel as a family he flies first class and makes them sit in economy on a whole different airline....

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Bonus Video 2: Monday, March 30, 2026

Incredibly dumb people on Wheel of Fortune.....

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Today In Game Shows: Monday, March 30, 2026

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Bonus Video 1: Monday, March 30, 2026

When Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) hosted Saturday Night Live....

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Today On SNL: Monday, March 30, 2026

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Today In Baseball: Monday, March 30, 2026

Bear gets hit in the twigs and berries while trying to scratch his back.....

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Steve Inman: Monday, March 30, 2026

Lowest mileage 1982 Corvette in the world.....

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Today In Barn Finds: Sunday, March 29, 2026

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Today In Modern Dance: Sunday, March 29, 2026

Africa (Toto)... but it lists every country in Africa....

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Today In Music: Sunday, March 29, 2026

How many candles does it take to stop a bullet.....

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Bonus Video 2: Sunday, March 29, 2026

Perfectly Good Tire Just Sitting There Behind The Kroger.....

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Bonus Video 1: Sunday, March 29, 2026

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You Still Here? Sunday, March 29, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

The Fry family lost their 14-year-old corgi Lola on May 16. She was wandering near her home along Wyoming Highway 50 south of Gillette when she disappeared without a trace.

Nearly a month later, Lola turned up in a Facebook Classified post in Wisconsin, more than 1,000 miles away.

“I got a call at 8:15 a.m. and just cried," Kimberly Fry told Cowboy State Daily. “By 10 a.m., my husband, dad, and a family friend were on the road and drove all night to get her from Wisconsin.”

Lola is frazzled and lost a little weight after her strange journey, but is doing fine otherwise. Fry’s children, 7 and 3, were overjoyed to have the family dog back home.

Nevertheless, Fry is still trying to parse out what happened. She believes her corgi was stolen and abandoned by the people who stole her, making their reunion a miracle.

“You try not to give up faith,” she said. “After a month of hell, it’s very surreal to have her back.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'My Newspaper Dog'"}]

 but she’s a bit of a handful in her old age. After all, she’s at least 98 years old in dog years.

“She’s deaf, her back leg shakes because of a partially torn ACL, and she’s on a sensitive dog food diet because of heart issues,” Fry said. “But she’s the sweetest thing ever.”

Fry called her corgi “my newspaper dog” because that’s how she 

 found her. It’s a reminder of just how old she is.

“Someone put an ad in the newspaper that they had puppies for $150,” she said. “We don’t really have newspapers anymore.”

Lola’s routine has been spending most of her time outdoors on the family ranch. Fry said she hangs out with the sheep, horses and chickens, and has been happy “doing her thing” for years.

Then, in her old age, Lola suddenly started to “see people,” as Fry put it.

“Two years ago, she decided she was lonely and walked a mile to visit the neighbors and their cats,” she said. “She’s just a friendly old dog.”

That’s why the Fry family wasn’t immediately concerned when Lola wasn’t home one night. It was the first night of an agonizing ordeal for the family.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Lola Lost"}]

On the morning of Saturday, May 16, Fry’s 

-year-old daughter was taking Lola to her kennel when the dog slipped out of her collar.

“It's common for ranch people to have their dogs' collars pretty loose,” Fry said. “She made it into the kennel but without her collar.”

With Lola in her kennel, the family went into town at 1 p.m. When they returned home at 2 p.m., Lola was gone – the kennel’s door hadn’t been fully shut.

Nobody panicked. They figured Lola was off visiting someone and would be back soon. It was only when it got dark that the family started getting worried.

“My husband looked a little that night, but there was no sign of her,” Fry said. “We figured she’d be back tomorrow. She never came back.”

By Monday, the Frys figured someone must have taken Lola to the pound. When they called that morning, Lola wasn’t there.

That’s when, according to Fry, “the real panic started.” She started posting about Lola in every Facebook group she could, asking for any sign of her missing corgi.

“On Tuesday, we searched with a lady who had a tracking dog,” Fry said. “We found that she had gone to the neighbors, and someone had seen her near the highway on Sunday.”

On Wednesday, they searched with another tracking dog, thermal scopes, and a drone. No sign of Lola.

Fry feared the worst, but the evidence didn’t add up. That was simultaneously hopeful and dreadful.

“If she had passed away, the tracking dogs would have smelt her,” she said. “We were set on (the explanation) that someone had picked her up.”

If so, they weren’t reaching out. Fry tearfully recalled the long wait for any information.

[{"type":"text","text":"“You never want to give up,” she said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'I Have Your Dog'"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"One week. Two weeks. Three weeks."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Still no sign of Lola."}]

Both of Fry’s children celebrated their birthdays without their corgi. Fry gave herself an emotional break from posting about Lola, but started again in mid-June.

[{"type":"text","text":"On June 14, Fry got a call. It was a woman from Wisconsin."}]

“She said, ‘I have your dog,’ and I just started bawling,” Fry said. “I asked if she was sure, because we had a couple of people reaching out trying to help, and she said, ‘Yes, I have your dog'.”

The Wisconsin woman had acquired Lola via Facebook Marketplace. Someone was trying to give Lola away, for free, to anyone who’d take her.

According to Fry, the woman who picked up Lola got some details from the people who had her. It was a young couple who apparently picked up Lola while moving from Wyoming to Wisconsin.

“They saw her on the side of the road and picked her up,” she said. “They just took her.”

The couple said they tried asking someone nearby if they knew who Lola belonged to before taking her. They claimed they weren’t aware she was missing and desperately wanted back.

The woman wasn’t aware Lola was missing either, but Fry said she had “the gut intuition” to check.

“She was going to pick Lola up because she wanted to be the free home, and was OK getting an old dog,” Fry said. “But she had a gut intuition to look into it, she searched Facebook and found us right away.”

Lola made it home at 7:30 a.m. June 19. She was tired, flustered, and had lost a little weight, but quickly settled in when she realized she was where she belonged.

“We’ve taken her to the vet, and everything’s good, all considering,” Fry said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Jumped And Dumped"}]

Lola’s back, but Fry is still trying to determine what happened to her dog. The circumstances have left her upset and angry.

The couple who picked up Lola claimed they had no idea anyone was looking for her. Fry doesn’t believe it.

“I had missing posters all over Facebook and at every veterinarian in the area,” she said. “I posted in the In Search of Missing Dog group on Facebook. I called the police and the sheriff’s department. I contacted every pound in the state.”

Assuming they didn’t know, their decision to give her away for free on Facebook Marketplace is, for Fry, telling.

“She has issues, and she was probably puking because she didn’t have her special dog food,” she said. “I feel like (the couple) decided she was more work than they wanted, and they put her up for free.”

Fry said if the couple had made a point of checking whether anyone in the Gillette area was missing a corgi, they could have easily found and contacted her, and gotten Lola back much sooner.

[{"type":"text","text":"Instead, they took the dog to Wisconsin and gave her away."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“I don’t believe they even tried to find me,” Fry said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Almost The 7%"}]

Getting Lola back was an emotional moment for Fry. The moment of full emotional catharsis is when Lola was reunited with her children.

“They were with their grandparents that week,” she said. “We kept it as a surprise for them.”

After a month of “sleepless nights,” Fry is resting easy now that Lola is finally home. She’s been reunited with her $150 newspaper dog thanks to a “For Free” post on Facebook.

“She’s old and has had a rough, rough month,” she said. “In the research that I've done, there is a 93% chance you'll get your dog back. I was almost in the 7%, and had it not been for this lady who had that intuition to look, I would have been in the 7%. It’s surreal.”

Lost corgi c1c90697 e551 4c84 a020 1a94283cfe13 6 27 26

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

<title>Hooray! Desperate Search For 14-Year-Old Gillette Dog Has Happy Ending In Wisconsin | Cowboy State Daily</title>

When Gillette's Kimberly Fry got a phone call at 8:15 a.m. that someone had found their 14-year-old corgi in Wisconsin, she started crying. An hour later, her family was on the road and drove more than 1,000 miles straight to get their rescued dog.

Hooray! Desperate Search For 14-Year-Old Gillette Dog Has Happy Ending In Wisconsin

Jen kocher

Jen Kocher

Law Enforcement

Authorities are working to unravel the mysterious deaths of a man and woman who were found in Laramie County earlier this year within three months of one another in unrelated incidents.

The first, a woman thought to be between 30 and 50 years old, was struck by a vehicle and killed on the side of Interstate 25 outside Cheyenne in late April.

The second is an unknown man found near a commercial building on South Greeley Avenue earlier this month.

Both deaths are under investigation, pending autopsy results from the Laramie County Coroner’s Office.

The fatalities were not publicly announced by authorities, but instead entered into the National Unidentified Persons System — known as NamUs — which is the country’s only centralized database for tracking missing and unidentified persons.

Although anyone with an account can enter missing people into the database, only law enforcement and those with coroners' offices can add unidentified people.

For both, distinctive tattoos could help investigators track down who they are.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Potential Assist"}]

Two NamUs entries for Wyoming in one week are unusual, say two amateur Cheyenne-based genealogists who run a pro bono company focused on reporting missing and unidentified people.

“It definitely caught our attention,” said Ashley Kroner, who along with her twin sister, Megan McWilliams, are cofounders of Genetics Uncovered.

As usual, they made posters for both John and Jane Doe, with photos of identifying tattoos added by the coroner’s office and shared on their 

Facebook page with more than 9,000 followers

The posts reached hundreds of people, potentially including members of the John Doe’s family, who contacted Kroner and stated they recognized the tattoos.

Kroner shared their information with Laramie County Coroner Rebecca Reid, who is responsible for making the identification, per state statute.

As of Thursday, John Doe was still listed in NamUs.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mysterious Circumstances"}]

Little is known about the individuals and the circumstances under which they died.

Jane Doe was struck and killed by a vehicle at the mile marker 11 exit, potentially near the on ramp, between 8 and 9 p.m. on April 20, according to Aaron Brown, public information officer for the Wyoming Highway Patrol.

Brown said troopers rendered aid to no avail, and the woman succumbed to her injuries on the scene.

Her death remains under investigation, Brown said. He declined to share any additional details, citing an active investigation, though he added no charges are pending.

The victim is described as Caucasian with shoulder-length blonde, strawberry hair and unknown eye color. She was about 5-feet-7 and weighed 136 pounds.

She had a distinct tattoo on her right hip: A cloud with three zigzag lines beneath it, a sun emerging from the cloud’s left side and a star above the sun, and two clusters of triangles running along the far left of the lines.

Along with her clothing, a black and white duffle bag was found near her body, according to the NamUs entry.

Also citing an active investigation, Reid likewise could not provide any additional information.

John Doe was found dead June 6 at the 800 block of South Greeley Highway in Cheyenne, slumped in a kneeling position alongside a commercial building, with no cellphone or other identification.

His death remains under investigation, according to Chance Walkama, chief deputy of operations for the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office.

Walkama said his office is awaiting autopsy and toxicology results from Reid’s office. No foul play is currently suspected, but the cause and manner of death have not yet been determined.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Giving Them A Name"}]

McWilliams and Kroner said they were pleased their efforts might have helped lead to the identification of the John Doe and also credited Reid for entering both Does into the national database, where the public – and family members – can see them.  

why they started Genetics Uncovered in 2021

 with the mission of locating missing people and putting names to Jane and John Does.

Both sisters have decades of experience in genealogy. McWilliams, whose husband Scott oversees the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation’s crime lab, taught a two-day class in forensic genetic genealogy for DCI agents and assisted the agency with a 1995 cold case in Carbon County.

McWilliams was also just accepted into an investigative genetic genealogy program starting this fall. Kroner, meanwhile, holds down a full-time job while pouring whatever hours remain into tracking down unidentified people and pushing law enforcement and coroners to enter them into NamUs.

Together, the sisters spend long stretches combing through ancestry records, burial registries such as Find A Grave, and newspaper archives, assembling family trees in hopes of giving the unidentified a name.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Success Stories"}]

This is part of their nationwide initiative, “Not Forgotten,” to track down unidentified people and get them entered into NamUs.

Once in the database, not only can law enforcement cross-check for missing people, but it also allows family members to provide DNA for possible identification should remains be found.

Without this database, there’s no central repository for law enforcement and families to find these individuals, many of whom have been reported missing.

They admit it’s an ambitious undertaking, but they have since recruited six volunteers to help tackle the vast territory, which they’ve broken down into geographic areas.

Between the eight of them, they have most of the country covered, but they still need volunteers in two areas: California, which is its own region, and a southern stretch comprising Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.

[{"type":"text","text":"The work is paying off, they say."}]

To date, they’ve worked with law-enforcement agencies and coroner offices around the country to enter 35 new Does into NamUs.

Of those, at least one has been identified. In January 2026, authorities in Washington state positively identified the remains of a former mayor, Clarence Edwin Asher, 

who drowned while crabbing in an Oregon bay in 2006

The twins successfully added into the database in March 2025, making that identification possible.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Many More"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"There are hundreds more still to be located in Wyoming and beyond.  "}]

More than 15,000 unidentified individuals are listed the NamUs database, Kroner said, but she believes that number is much higher.

Along with the two latest entries, Wyoming has nine unidentified people listed in NamUs dating to 1977, including two of the sisters’ personal favorites, whom they’ve affectionately dubbed 

“Motel Mike” and “Pine Bluffs Pete.”

“Mike” died of an overdose in a Cheyenne motel in April 1977.  “Pete,” a transient, was hit by a train while attempting to cross tracks in 1996.

Both men remain unidentified, but at least they’ve since been listed in the database, McWilliams said.

There are likely several more. To date, the sisters have located four unidentified people in Wyoming dating to the late 1800s.

The challenge lies in determining how far back law enforcement and coroners are willing to go — at what point a case becomes too old to be worth opening. Knowing many agencies are understaffed and overworked, the sisters try to be thoughtful about which cases they bring forward.

Technically, the oldest case in NamUs is from 1915, but they’ve found even older unidentified people in Wyoming.

Their oldest case is a 35-year-old man who died near Cooper Lake in Albany County in March 1899.

A John Doe died in a Laramie railroad yard in 1908 and another was killed in a train accident in Sheridan County in 1910. A John Doe from Natrona County died in 1921.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Trains And Drownings"}]

As the sisters have learned, train deaths were common back in the day. So were drownings.

Many were transients just passing through foreign places where they met their demise – far away from family and friends, who had for whatever reasons lost track of them.

[{"type":"text","text":"Sometimes they get lucky and find accompanying news articles."}]

It’s the stories that get you, both sisters agreed. That’s where their hearts catch, in the space between life and data.

They shared a news clip about the last man killed by the train in Natrona County in 1932.

He’d been standing at the west end of the Platte River bridge outside Casper when a Chicago and North Western train out of Lander hit him, hurling him down a 10-foot embankment to his instant death.

[{"type":"text","text":"He bore no identification except a hat with the initials “J.T.M.”"}]

The train engineer told authorities he had blown the whistle repeatedly. The man never moved.

Boys swimming in the river below likewise had tried to warn him. Again, he kept walking without so much as a glance backward.  

Later, authorities concluded that he was likely deaf and never saw it coming.

Worse, those who loved him hadn’t even known he died, and still don’t because he has not yet been entered into NamUs.

It’s stories like these that make this work meaningful for the twins and compels them to continue on behalf of the missing and unidentified, 

including the two recent Does in Cheyenne.

“They don’t have a voice,” Kroner said. “I want to be that voice.”

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<title>Who Are John And Jane Doe? Twin Genealogists Hope Tattoos Can ID Cheyenne Bodies | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Twin genealogists are working to identify a John and Jane Doe found two months apart in Cheyenne earlier this year. “They don’t have a voice,” the sisters said, “but their distinctive tattoos could help investigators track down who they are.”

Who Are John And Jane Doe? Twin Genealogists Hope Tattoos Can ID Cheyenne Bodies

A woman hiking in Canada nearly became a grizzly’s next meal and the video circulating right now is genuinely one of the most intense wildlife encounters you will ever watch....

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<title>You Still Here? Saturday, June 27, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

You Still Here? Saturday, June 27, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Legislature

The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office on Friday released body camera video 

of the Dec. 28 DUI arrest of state Rep. Bill Allemand in response to a Cowboy State Daily request.

Cowboy State Daily had viewed about 18 minutes of the body camera video in Buffalo Circuit Court at a March 

 hearing, but Friday’s release spans roughly one hour over the course of Allemand’s 

 and jail booking in Buffalo just after midday Dec. 28. 

The Johnson County Sheriff's Office on Friday released body camera video of state Rep. Bill Allemand's December DUI arrest. Allemand grew more adversarial toward the deputy throughout his arrest, ultimately calling him an "asshole." 