Wyoming attracts millions of tourists annually to its array of seven national parks, highlighted by Yellowstone, renowned for its iconic Old Faithful geyser and the largest hot spring in the United States. It is a small state with less than 600k people and not a lot of serial killers. However, several killers have left their mark on the state of Wyoming. In this article, we will take a look at 4 most famous serial killers in Wyoming.
Charles Raymond Starkweather
Charles Raymond Starkweather was an infamous American spree killer, responsible for the gruesome murders of eleven individuals across Nebraska and Wyoming during a harrowing spree from November 1957 to January 1958, while he was merely nineteen years old. His most brutal spree occurred between January 21 and January 29, 1958, ultimately leading to his apprehension. Starkweather’s deadly journey was marked by his association with Caril Ann Fugate, his fourteen-year-old girlfriend.
The young couple’s murderous rampage led to their convictions for the killings. Starkweather faced capital punishment and was executed after just seventeen months. Fugate, on the other hand, spent seventeen years behind bars before being released in 1976. Starkweather’s electric chair execution in 1959 stood as Nebraska’s last until 1994, when Harold Lamont Otey met a similar fate for murder.
Criminologists and psychologists have intensely scrutinized the Starkweather case, striving to decode the motivations and contributing factors behind such brutal spree killings. This case also etched itself into the public consciousness as one of the early true crime stories that captured national attention.
Polly Bartlett
Polly Bartlett, also recognized as The Murderess of Slaughterhouse Gulch, is believed to have been a 19th-century killer from Wyoming Territory. Allegedly, she was the first serial killer in Wyoming, pre-dating its statehood. According to accounts, in 1868, Bartlett, aided by her father Jim, supposedly murdered 22 men who entered their family lodge.
The story is that Bartlett enticed affluent travelers, often carrying valuable belongings like gold, into her lodge. After serving them meals and whiskey laced with arsenic, they dies.. Jim assisted in burying the victims, and their disappearances were blamed on indigenous Americans and outlaws.
Beginning their criminal careers with a saloon in Ohio, Polly and Jim adopted a strategy where Polly would isolate men for s*x while Jim robbed them. The duo then established the murder-conducive lodge east of South Pass City, frequented during American gold rushes.
Their scheme was exposed when they killed Theodore Fountain, son of mine owner Bernard Fountain, leading to Pinkerton investigators’ involvement. Fleeing in August, they were eventually captured. Ed Ford, whose brother fell victim to the Barletts’, tracked them down, killed Jim and brought Polly in for trial. That evening, Polly was fatally shot in her jail cell by Otto Kalkhorst, an employee of Fountain’s mines.
Mark Hopinkson
Mark Hopkinson was a convicted serial killer hailing from Wyoming who faced execution in 1992 for the brutal murders of Vincent Vehar, Beverly Vehar, John Vehar, and Jeffrey Green. Born on October 8, 1949, he stands as the sole individual to have received the death penalty in Wyoming since the 1960s.
Hopkinson’s conviction stemmed from the 1977 bombing that claimed the lives of Vincent Vehar, his wife Beverly, and their son John in Evanston. Additionally, he was later implicated in the 1979 murder of Jeffrey Green while he awaited trial for the Vehar murders.
Despite being found guilty of all four homicides, Hopkinson maintained his innocence until his execution. Governor Mike Sullivan of Wyoming declined to commute or pardon him, despite pleas from death penalty opponents, including Amnesty International.
Lethal injection brought an end to Hopkinson’s life at the Wyoming State Penitentiary. He shared a final meal of pizza with his mother and family. In his last statement, he reiterated his innocence, declaring, “They have killed an innocent man.”
Choosing not to have witnesses at his execution, they were later summoned to verify that his sentence had been carried out. At 12:57 a.m. on January 22, 1992, Hopkinson was pronounced dead. His execution marked the 159th in the United States since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.
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Walter Earl Durand
Born on January 9, 1913, Walter Earl Durand’s life encompasses both his role as a mountain man surviving off Wyoming’s wilderness and his darker identity as a spree killer and bank robber. Proficient in wilderness survival and marksmanship, Durand’s life took a grim turn in 1939. Arrested for elk poaching and calf theft, he was sentenced to jail. However, he escaped custody two days later, killing a deputy sheriff and a Town Marshal at his parents’ home.
For ten days, Durand evaded capture, even eliminating two members of a pursuing sheriff’s posse. As he neared the Wyoming/Montana border, Montana’s National Guard intervened. Efforts to apprehend him, including dropping teargas from a plane, proved futile. Eventually, he carjacked a radio operator and returned to Powell.
His desperation ultimately led to his end in a violent bank robbery at the First National Bank, resulting in a standoff with armed residents. Durand took bank employees hostage, marching them out before a hail of bullets killed one hostage and triggered an exchange of fire.
Amid the chaos, a seventeen-year-old, Tip Cox, bravely intervened, shooting Durand in the chest. As Durand crawled back into the bank lobby, he inflicted a final gunshot wound on himself. The bank’s president later ended Durand’s life with a gunshot to the head.
Durand’s life was also immortalized in a 1974 Hollywood film that depicted him in a more heroic light. Yet, when screened in Powell, the movie’s portrayal was largely rejected by the community.
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