Longtime listeners of this podcast have heard a lot about all the benefits there are to growing up in a small town. It’s like being a big fish in a little pond: the star of every talent show or football team, and feeling safe to try new things and learning leadership skills. For many kids, small town life provides the perfect childhood.

But it also has plenty of downsides too. Growing up, I didn’t fit in very well in my small class of 22 kids. Sure, my dad worked in the oilfield but he also was a hippie, and raised me and my brother with some oddball opinions that didn’t always jive with our classmates. I ended up dealing with a lot of bullying, like, getting followed home by gangs of older girls and getting my shoes thrown in the boys bathroom. In the end, my parents opted to move us to a larger city to get away from all that.

After I went to college, though, they moved back to my hometown of Walden, Colorado. And I ended up moving back too. Because there’s this weird relationship us rural kids have with our hometowns. It’s something like you feel for a family, both comforted and rejected.

Today, we have a story from my colleague Caitlin Tan about her hometown of Pinedale, Wyoming. Last year, that complicated dynamic of love and rejection by a town erupted into a full scale split in her community.

Caitlin’s Story

Almost everybody has a memorable first date story. Maybe it sticks out because it was just that bad. Or maybe it was love at first sight. Or maybe…

“You know, that night that we hung out at the bar became international news,” said Betty.

We’re not using Betty’s full name because of the events that unfolded that night. It actually led to death threats. It’s a night that has left a permanent mark on her life, and on many people in Wyoming.

So what happened? Let’s rewind to a cold winter night in late February, 2024, in Sublette County on the western side of Wyoming. A cowboy community in the mountains with just a few thousand living there, one of those places where everyone knows everyone.

“I had just moved here, and I was looking to meet people,” Betty said. “So I was on online dating. I was on Tinder, and I'd been chatting with this guy briefly, just like, ‘Hey, let's go grab a beer and a bite and talk in person.’” 

So it was a date. Betty started getting ready.

“You know, nothing special, but I made sure I brushed my teeth and looked nice,” Betty remembered. “But it's not a place you have to dress up. It's not a place you have to put on airs. You could just go and enjoy yourself. So that's what I thought I was doing.”

Betty’s date picked her up at her house in the county seat of Pinedale and they drove the 15 minutes up the highway to Daniel. They decided on the Green River Bar, or GRB. The GRB is in an old log building, typically with big ranch trucks parked outside. Inside are photos of local cowboys and horses on the wall. There’s always a familiar face bellied up to the bar.

“They have the best slaw dogs and the pork wings,” Betty said. “Somebody's gonna chat with you. You're gonna feel a part of what's going on there. And that's great if you like it and don't mind smoking inside while you're eating.”  

So Betty and her date popped into the GRB, walking across the old creaky wooden floor. The jukebox was likely playing a classic country tune. It was kind of sleepy inside. A couple gals were chatting at the other end of the bar. Funny enough, Betty knew them. She met them earlier on a group snowmobiling day trip.

“So it felt very like, ‘Oh, I'm part of this place, like, I know people here.’ So that was cool,” Betty said. “It gets a little busier. It picks up at the bar, maybe like 15 people now. And then Cody walks in, and he goes, ‘Hey, anybody lose a cattle dog? Found one in the road.’ I was like, ‘Oh no. But if he needs someone to watch a dog like I'll always take in a dog that needs to be found.’”

She’s talking about Cody Roberts. He’s the heart of this story. And you’re gonna hear a lot about him. But not from him. His family declined an interview last year and didn’t respond this year.

So Betty was curious. Who was Cody and what was he up to?

“Then the bartender goes, ‘Cody you better not bring in an effing lion,’” Betty remembered. “Like, I don't know if that's happened before or what, but he's apparently, like, pulled some kind of crazy stunts.

A couple things about Cody. He hunted mountain lions, which wasn’t that uncommon around here. And he’s also a Roberts, a multi-generational ranching family here. If you walk into the GRB, there’s a good chance you’ll bump into a Roberts. And on this day, Betty was bumping into Cody and he had an animal with him.

“He kind of leaves the door cracked, and we're sitting right by the door, and I see him dragging this giant dog out of his truck,” Betty said. “It kind of sits down, hunches back. It’s kind of pulling against the leash, and he kind of pulls it in the bar and he brings it in. I'm just like, ‘Oh, my God, this dog. Like, what is wrong with it?’”

Then Betty realized it wasn’t a dog.

“Like, that's a wolf. Am I crazy? Or is that a wolf? Its paws were huge, and it was laying down with them towards us. And the ears and the tufts around the face and the nose,” Betty said.

That’s right. A wolf. Cody brought a live wolf into the bar. Leashed, muzzled and apparently injured.

“The bartender was like, ‘You can't have that in here, man.’ But she's got people to serve. And it didn’t sound like she was surprised that he didn't listen to her. She wasn't surprised,” Betty said. “But it’s her business. Like, those are the people who give her business.”

Cody draped the leash on a coat rack and the wolf laid on the bar floor, barely moving…for hours.

“It just laid there. It would growl sometimes, and kind of snarled, lift its teeth, but not its head,” Betty said.

She even took a video. You could hear people laughing and chatting like normal, a girl giggled and yelled “Daddy.” Many in town assumed that was Cody’s daughter. In one frame, you can see Cody leaning down to kiss the wolf’s snout. 

“He's like, just petting it, calling it a good dog,” Betty remembered. “He'd be like, ‘Oh, you’ve got to pet the dog to enter, or whatever. You know, like [he] kept it by the front door, right where people were coming and going.”

Betty thought the wolf was tranquilized or that this was somehow a domestic wolf.

“I'm not thinking it's animal cruelty or torture because he just kept calling it a good dog. It was just so bizarre. I had just moved to Wyoming,” she said. “Wyoming is legendary. It is notorious. It is the Wild West. It is the mountains. It is the people.”

In the moment, she even quickly Googled, ‘How long do dog tranquilizers last?’ Like, was this wolf going to wake up and attack everyone?

“I had no idea, though, it was just laying there internally bleeding, just dying in front of us,” she said.

Betty learned later that the reason the wolf was dying was because Cody had run over the wolf with a snowmobile. That’s actually a legal practice in this part of Wyoming. But typically, it’s a practice that ranchers sometimes use to kill a predator if they find them on their property to keep them from killing their livestock. It’s not a practice people advertise though.

“There are the three S's. You shoot, shovel and shut up,” Betty said frankly. “You don't torture it as it's dying. You don't drag it to a bar for people to laugh at.”

And remember, during all of this, Betty was still on a first date.

“It became very much just the topic of our conversation,” she said. “I wasn't really focused on getting to know my date.”

Betty was pretty uncomfortable at this point, and not really that into the date either. She eventually went home, not knowing the fate of the wolf. It was later reported Cody shot the wolf that night.

I know what you might be thinking. Why did Betty stay that long? Or why didn’t she call Cody out and all the people in the bar joking along with him? But you need to know, small town dynamics are tricky.

“I didn't really know what was going on, so it was hard for me to be outraged. And I think that a lot of people were like, ‘Well, I would have done this. And how could you have not done that?’” Betty said. “But you don't always realize what's going on in the moment. I am obviously not in a place to tell this person to leave, to stop doing what they're doing. Like, I can leave, right?”

And remember, Cody’s family has deep roots in this area. He’s kind of a good ol’ boy, and the bar was full of his friends and family. At this point, Betty was kind of an outsider. To say something right in that moment would be really hard. That’s a lot of peer pressure.

And I would know. I grew up in Pinedale – in Sublette County. And I have a complicated relationship with my hometown, but also a deep love.

Betty’s story might feed into some weird small town stereotypes. But actually, the people here are some of the hardiest, most remarkable characters anywhere. The outdoors – they’re unmatched. High elevation sprawling sagebrush desert, three towering mountain ranges where you can spend days not seeing a single person, and some of the world’s largest mule deer and pronghorn herds.

Between the people and the setting, it’s like living in a National Geographic magazine every day. You’re 75 miles from the nearest traffic stoplight and 100 miles from a Walmart. If you want a reasonably priced flight, you’re looking at a 4-hour drive. So all this to say, this kind of super remote, rural living brings a level of toughness, charm and quirkiness. But it also brings a feeling of us versus them. Sublette County versus outsiders, the big city folk.

Sublette County is the least populated county in the least populated state in the nation. It consistently votes across the board red. In fact, the few Democrats here are usually registered as Republicans so they can have a say in the primaries. And while the community’s heritage is ranching, the backbone of the economy is fossil fuels.

One of the country’s largest producing natural gas fields is here. Growing up, I remember so much of our community and school was funded by that: laptops, a new football field, a state of the art rec center, etc. And lots of locals remember those glory days.

But the natural gas fields aren’t pumping so much anymore and that’s led to economic pressure and political tensions in my hometown. Bumper stickers like ‘Obama sucks’ or ‘fuck Biden.’ One of the businesses on Main Street has a series of pro-Trump flags.

So statements and opinions are big and bold in this town. And to stray too far is basically signing yourself up for a scarlet letter – kind of for life.

I tried to stray once. Pretty publicly. It follows me like a shadow.

The community holds an annual festival celebrating the area’s history between the mountain men and Native Americans. About 200 years ago, mountain men, trappers and Native Americans would gather there every year. The way the history goes, they’d trade and barter pelts, guns, horses, swap stories – it was a bit of a party, for days. Then, they’d go their separate ways until the next year. It’s known as the Green River Rendezvous.

So nowadays Pinedale celebrates that history. Partly through reenacting it in an outdoor play. People take it pretty seriously – rehearsing for weeks before. They train their horses to run an intricate pattern between teepees and covered wagons. Historians get involved. People do their best to make it accurate.

But Sublette County is a majority white county and most of the actors are white. So, they dress up in “red face” – painting their faces and bodies a dark tan, almost red color. Most spray paint their hair black or wear a black braided wig. I took part in all of this as a kid. It was just part of growing up here – we all looked forward to it every year. Dressing up, riding our horses bareback – running them like the wind to show off to the crowd.

So it wasn’t until I left home and went to college that I thought twice about it. My college friends were shocked, disgusted even. They said it’s like doing “black face.” But, I tried to defend my community for a long time. As small town insiders, I think sometimes we harbor secrets from the world that we don’t know what to do with.

But eventually I realized my friends were right. Painting our bodies a dark, reddish brown is offensive and dismissive of white people’s oppression of Native Americans. And it isn’t ok. Kind of like letting an injured wolf lay in a bar for hours isn’t okay.

So, as any budding, angsty journalist does, I took pen to paper. I wrote an op-ed for the college newspaper basically calling myself and my community out, saying that red face wasn’t ok. And boy, did I get blow back. Hundreds of comments flooded in – even threats. Someone from the Pinedale sheriff’s office wrote that I wasn't welcome back to town.

My manager pulled me aside, asking if I feared for my safety. I didn’t – I mean, these are people I've known most of my life, but I was horrified. I lost a lot of my childhood friends. One friend who I spent many days riding horses with, shared my op-ed on Facebook. And he said about me, “It’s these kinds of people that are what’s wrong with the world.”

It was a gut punch. I felt like I’d lost my whole community – my home. I was an outsider looking in now. I didn’t go back for a long time. And I felt so much shame. Like, that I went behind my community’s back, that this place I grew up in and loved dearly thought of me as a traitor – an outsider.

I did move back to Pinedale years later, but even then, it followed me. This past summer, almost a decade since my op-ed, I was out with friends and a man came up to me and said, “You’re not that girl that wrote that piece about Rendezvous?” I lied and said, “No.” I couldn’t face his backlash. And he said, “Good. What a piece of shit she was.”

So yeah. I get why Betty didn’t say anything that night when Cody brought the wolf in. And I’d have understood if she’d never said anything. It’s nice to feel like an insider, like part of a community, and have friends. We all want to be liked, right?

But here’s the thing. Betty did say something – the next day. She had that video of the wolf slowly dying on the barroom floor.

“I sent it to people,” she said. “Everybody was like, ‘Holy crap. That's crazy.’”

I was actually one of those people she sent it to. I remember seeing that text from Betty come in and figured it was a fun story about her date. I hit play on the six-second video and my stomach turned. It was hard for me to even watch. Something about seeing that wild animal in such a domestic setting – the wolf looked like a prisoner that’d accepted its fate.

But I didn’t break the story for the public radio station where I work – a different news outlet did. Betty and I talked about this during our interview.

“I knew about it. I'm a journalist. My mind didn't even go to ‘Oh, this should be something that's in the news’ because I think that's how scary it felt to me,” I said to Betty. “And I don't know if scary is the right word, but it's a small community, and people are very loyal to each other.”

“Yeah, absolutely,” she replied. 

“And if you were to put someone on blast,” I trailed off.

“Absolutely,” she nodded.

I think I was scared to be thrown in with the outsiders again. But Betty couldn’t get past her curiosity – was bringing a wolf into a bar totally normal behavior in Sublette County? She also sent the video to someone else.

“I had an acquaintance with Game and Fish, not in this county, just Wyoming, and I sent it to him, and was like, ‘Is this normal?,’” Betty said. “And he's like, “Where?””

Betty said she was hesitant to reveal the bar because she didn’t want the GRB to get in trouble. She really liked it there. But, she eventually shared with him the location.

“And he says, “Do you know the guy's name?” And I said, “I think I remember. I think his name was Cody,”” Betty said. “And the next text comes almost immediately, “If it's Roberts, please let me know.””

Betty said she just wanted to know if what she’d seen was normal. And the resounding answer was “no.”

Game and Fish used that video to write Cody a ticket for possession of live wildlife – the fine totalled $250. Game and Fish actually could’ve gone further – putting Cody before a judge where he would’ve faced a fine of up to $1,000 and six months in jail. But the agency didn’t.

And it seemed like that was going to be the end of it. Other than some town chatter, especially at the local business where Betty works.

"A guy comes in and he is like, ‘Oh, man, Cody is in it. Game and Fish is on him,” Betty remembered. “And my ears perk up, but I don't say anything. I'm not trying to let people know that the reason Game and Fish is on him is because of me. I just didn’t talk about it."

Mostly because of the potential backlash.

But about a month later, everything changed. The news picked it up. Similar videos to Betty’s were leaked, and also a photo of Cody posing with the live wolf. In that one, it appears he’s in a home, smiling, holding a Coors in one hand and the other draped around the sitting wolf, who’s muzzle is bound with red duct tape.

These visuals spread like wildfire on social media.

Across the world, people condemned Cody for abusing an animal in public for fun. From what I understand he and his whole family – kids included – got lots of death threats, worded in unspeakable ways. An angry public even came in person – doing drive-bys of his house. I’ve heard that the family felt driven to the edge of unbearable.

Which all made it hard if you happen to share the same name as Cody.

“My name is Cody Roberts and I live in Thayne, Wyoming,” said Cody Roberts.

This isn’t THE Cody Roberts. This Cody Roberts lives almost two hours away and isn’t related. I called him up last year during the heat of the outrage.

“I mean, I've had death threats from Ireland, Russia, Japan, Australia,” he said. “I don't know how many thousands of messages I've had.”

Because some people mistook his Facebook page for the OTHER Cody Roberts.

“Like this one just says, you're a psychopathic wolf torturer kill yourself,” he read.

This Cody said he responded to every message explaining that he’s not the guy.

“One lady even went and said, ‘I don't care if you're not the right one, do me a favor and put a bullet in his head and this will all go away,’” he said. 

So, it’s not just small town people that say and do sometimes bad things. Case in point.

This Cody said he was also disappointed in what the Cody Roberts did, but he actually thought these international threats were worse.

“Does he deserve everything that he's getting? No, I don't think he does,” he said. “He's still a human.”

And this global anger spilled out onto all of Sublette County and the state. ‘Boycott Wyoming’ was a trending hashtag. In fact, Wyoming Office of Tourism’s social media and ads went dark for about a month – inundated with furious comments. Local businesses were stained online with one-star reviews, only because they’re in the same county.

And at the time, the media – including myself – we scrambled to keep up with coverage on all this. Most of us are statewide or national outlets, but not the Pinedale Roundup. It’s a one stop shop for the weekly news in Sublette County. I visited the lone office plopped in downtown Pinedale about two months after Cody ran down the wolf. 

“My office is back there on the right,” said Cali O’Hare as she led me back to the newsroom.

Cali is the sole employee – editor, reporter, secretary. Like many small town papers in America, the Pinedale Roundup is shrinking.

“What could be more stressful than being a one woman newspaper and doing nearly everything?,” she said with a slight chuckle.

And at the time, it was just a couple months since Cody Roberts brought the wolf into the bar.

Cali’s bright eyes jumped around from multiple computer screens and a long to-do list – one of the items? Follow-up wolf coverage.

“It is truly one of those, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't,” she said.

Because it was her job to cover the local news. But it wasn’t easy in a small community where everyone knows everyone.

“My partner of 11 years grew up with Cody Roberts. We almost lived next to him,” Cali said.

She remembered first hearing about the wolf incident and coming home to tell her partner, “Hey, I have to write this article. And, you know, it may be hard to read, and it may have blowback.” 

And it did. Some townspeople were actually mad at her. They didn’t like hearing about an incident that cast a shadow over one of their own and the entire area’s reputation. Cali leafed through some printouts of comments from the Pinedale Roundup Facebook page.

“This guy, he works for road and bridge. It says, “Go practice real journalism Cali O’Hare, you bitch on a witch hunt for a man's family,”” she read. 

Others asked Cali to stop the coverage, one accused her of not being objective or embellishing.

“I'm just doing my job. It's not persona,” Cali said. “And I have great empathy for all of the folks involved in this.” 

There's lots more about Cali’s experience covering the wolf incident in another episode of this podcast.

So in the midst of Cali’s reporting last spring, the local Sheriff’s Department was getting the international blowback. Thousands of calls, emails and social media comments - some angry and aggressive. They even set up a separate tip line.

People the world over wanted the Cody Roberts to get arrested. They wanted Wyoming to change its wolf laws, and they wanted Wyomingites to take accountability for the western culture that allowed this all to happen.

And I can see where they’re coming from. When Betty sent me that video I was totally disgusted, but not completely shocked. I grew up hearing stories at school about people roping coyotes off their horses and dragging them through the sagebrush. Basically, treating predators as objects. It’s kind of normalized – even by down to earth people, the ones who’d give you the shirt off their back. I think that culture is partly why Cody was so bold to parade a live wolf around a bar – perhaps he felt insulated from judgement. 

But Cody’s actions were certainly extreme, and not representative of the many people I love here. Many of which were also getting death threats.

I remember feeling really protective of my community, but also not wanting to support wolf torture. It was a weird limbo of not really aligning with the outsiders or the insiders.

Both of which dug in deeper over the coming months.

A small brigade of national wolf advocates organized a protest in May 2024 – a few months after the wolf incident. A few protestors drove motorcycles through Daniel, riding all the way from Texas and demanding legal reform and further charges to Cody.

But much of the community rallied around one of their own.

The one road through town was lined bumper to bumper with trucks, livestock trailers, semis – all blocking parking and a view of the GRB.

It was a spectacle. Hundreds of people showed up — mostly locals and only a handful of national wolf advocates. Cowboy hats peppered the crowd with people drinking coffee and beer.

“I probably know like 90 percent of everybody here,” said longtime local and horseshoer Lonny Johnson, wearing a tan cowboy hat and purple silk scarf. 

“We have a great community. The people are the best,” he said. “That's why we're here. No other reason than that.”

And I gotta say, it was a little awkward trying to cover the event. I too knew about 90 percent of the people there, including Lonny. And tensions were a little high – many felt resentful of outsiders meddling. Some were irritated that journalists like me were covering the event at all.

Behind the scenes, most agreed that what Cody did crossed a line, like local Pat Johnson.

“Boys and booze and wolves obviously didn't mix up well. What was wrong about it was bringing it to this damn bar,” he said.

But Pat didn’t think the snowmobile capture part was wrong.

“I call BS on the torture of the wolf with a snowmobile Yeah, it was caught from a snow machine, but with these 150 horsepower sleds and three inch paddles, if that wolf would have been absolutely tormented by the snow machine, there wouldn't have been any hair on it. None,” Pat said. “It would have been stripped off and blown across the prairie.”

In a dream world, Pat said Cody should’ve killed the wolf as soon as he hit it. But Pat thought that the national wolf advocates trickling into town before his eyes were taking it a step too far.

“What's crazy about this is we got people coming all the way from Texas up here to raise hell about our wolf management,” Pat said.

Frustration over Wyoming’s wolf management is nothing new. There’s a long, complicated history in our region.

About a century ago, wolves were largely exterminated out West…people homesteading would do anything to stop wolves preying on their livestock. The federal government even paid people to trap, shoot and poison wolves. And they all but disappeared from the western landscape.

Many decades later, in the 90s, the feds had a change of heart. They decided wolves were an integral part of the ecosystem. Fourteen wolves were trapped in Canada and released in Wyoming’s northern corner – up in Yellowstone National Park, just next door to Sublette County.

And while reintroduction is largely considered a success by the science and conservation communities, some ranchers are pretty upset. A well known sheep rancher in the area,Cat Urbigkit, wrote a book including her lawsuit against the feds for reintroducing the wolf. She said it’s a species that’s different from the wolves that used to roam the landscape. Even saying the reintroduced wolves are much larger in size, making it an unfair advantage over wildlife and livestock. Which Pat Johnson at the protest agreed with.

“Livestock owners are getting fed up with feeding the wolves,” Pat said. “Why should ranchers have to sacrifice so many animals out of their herd per year to keep the wolf packs going?”

A state report showed about 350 wolves roamed Wyoming’s landscape in 2023, and that they killed or injured 49 head of livestock – the lowest in two decades. The state compensates ranchers for those deaths, paying a total of $226,000 to ranchers in 2023.

Regardless, most locals you talk to don’t want to see more wolves here.

Although some think Cody's treatment of that wolf is a totally separate issue. Like Gary Garlick who was also at the protest.

Gary was pretty disappointed in Cody, and he agreed with the national wolf advocates. He said Wyoming needs to make political changes, and that penalties for Cody’s actions needed to be higher. But he worried what this could do to the community.

“I don't know if there'll be more cohesiveness among people or if it will create a deeper line in the sand,” Gary said.

Before our eyes, the latter seemed to be coming true. I stopped and took a photo of two California women posing for photos in front of the infamous bar, wearing red duct tape over their mouths – just like the tape that bound the wolf’s mouth in the leaked photo.

“We drove 13 hours to get here,” said Holly Smallie.

She talked to me as locals blared their truck horns in the background, partially drowning out her voice.

“Wolves are magical. We don’t deserve them,” she said. “We’re no better than them. You live, you coexist, you care about wildlife.”

Mid-sentence, Hollie was interrupted, by local Anna Welsh.

“Let’s talk about what happened. There's people that live here,” Anna said. “Yes, none of us were happy about it.

But Anna insisted it wasn’t torture, adding that you can’t prove it from the video clips. I hoped to see the two women engage in a real dialogue on the subject, but that didn’t happen. They couldn’t find common ground, despite both having valid points. Hollie was saying we shouldn’t torture animals, and Anna was saying most people in Sublette County treat animals with respect.

But it’s like they spoke different languages – California and Wyoming might as well be two different countries. The two states have been at odds with each other culturally and politically for many years, and it wasn’t about to change over wolf torture.

So, tensions stayed high in my community, and around the world. But in early summer, about a month after that protest, Wyoming’s political response came.

Rep. Liz Storer, a Democrat from the more liberal Teton County, led a workgroup of stakeholders. It included animal advocates, ranchers and politicians.

“It's our job not to put predator management on trial, but acknowledge that our laws do allow for this behavior,” Storer[1]  said.

Nine members met in person at a conference room in a community just over the mountains. They combed through potential changes to Wyoming’s predator laws – but the solution was tangled.

“I don't think there's anybody in the state – legislators, non-legislators included – that didn't look at this and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, what was he thinking? You know, why the heck did this happen?’ I've heard lots of words – reprehensible. It shouldn't have happened,” said former Senator Fred Baldwin – a republican from another neighboring county. “But I worry we put something on the books that's not enforceable. That's not going to make a difference.”

Baldwin warned that a similar incident could happen again.

“Something like this or something different, that's just as bad,” he said. “What can we do to change that behavior and prevent it from happening again? Likely nothing. We’re on thin ice when we start legislating about ethics and about morals.”

The Senator added that the incident itself – being publicized internationally – might be just what it takes to prevent it from happening again.

“Because they're gonna say, ‘Don't put this on Facebook. Don't take this wolf or this coyote or this whatever into wherever. Look what happened last time,’” he said. “And I don't think that individual, had he known what was going to happen – the threats to his family, the uproar it caused across the state – if he would have known that maybe he wouldn't have done it.”

But other workgroup members pushed back, like Jessi Johnson who’s with a local hunting and conservation group. She said Wyoming’s predator laws are outdated and the state could make changes to prevent that behavior.

“We know it's not hunting. We know it's not predator management, but it is human behavior. And there has been an allowance for that human behavior,” she said. “I think some of the perspective that I've had is that when these statutes were written we were in a very different time. We had different technologies, we had different things. And so as cultures change, so must we.”

But Jessi acknowledged changing Wyoming’s predator laws is tricky..

“Because also, you know, the culture that we came from, and where we're at has been incredibly successful in keeping the wolf on the ground, having wildlife in our state, having wonderful management for agriculture, and everything else,” she said. “So it has worked. So not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.”

As an avid hunter, Jessi tried to pinpoint which part of Cody’s actions upset people like her most.

“What was the real problem here?,” she questioned. “And it was that the animal didn’t die quickly.”

So lawmakers honed in on that. It took many months of back and forth on just how to change Wyoming’s laws, but eventually this past winter, they landed on upping penalties for cruelty to animals. Had this law been in place when Cody walked into that bar, he could've been fined up to $5,000 and potentially lost his hunting license.

But, many wanted it to go further.

“That issue has given my community a black eye, my county and this state a black eye,” said Rep. Mike Schmid, a Republican from Sublette County. “This isn't going to go away.”

Schmid was focused on how Cody captured the wolf. He wanted to ban the sport of running over wildlife on public land.

“It stops this senseless activity of just using a machine to whack an animal and torture it,” he said to fellow lawmakers.

The Representative tried twice during the recent legislative session. Both failed.

It was partly because of lobbying from the livestock industry. Like Jim Magagna with the Wyoming Stock Grower’s Association. 

“People in other parts of the country, in particular, simply don't understand the predator relationship that's so critical in Wyoming, and other western states,” said Jim in a phone call this past fall. “We've got these wide open spaces with livestock scattered over hundreds of miles, and we need all the tools we can have.”

Tools for managing predators. Like, to keep them from killing their livestock – their livelihoods. Jim gave the example of coyotes and sheep. In 2024, federal data show coyotes killed more than 14,000 sheep and lamb in Wyoming. A $3.3 million loss to those ranchers.

Jim said typically what happens is coyotes will prey on the flock in the spring while ranchers are busy caring for newborn lambs.

“But if they can go out there a month or two ahead, when the ground is still covered with snow, and with the snow machines conduct some predator removal, whether it's by shooting predators or by in some cases, running over them, that they can help prepare those areas,” Jim said. “And as long as we don't bring undue suffering to the animal, take them out of their misery, we don't see anything wrong with that.”

So that’s the livestock argument. But again, it’s also a cultural thing – a sport. It’s known as “coyote” or “‘yote” whacking. A Youtube go-pro video I found plays a modern country tune while a snowmobiler trails a coyote across wide-open, deep snowy terrain. The coyote runs to exhaustion, eventually turning to defend itself from the machine only to quickly be run over.

That video was pretty hard to watch. It gave me a possible glimpse of what the wolf went through when Cody ran it down.

But by no means do all locals condone this as a sport or a tool for protecting livestock. Like, rancher Tara Miller.

“I hope people don't generalize ranchers. We're all different,” Tara said over the phone. “I mean, we spend, we spend all our time taking care of animals.”

Tara’s opinion has sway. She and her family run one of the largest cattle operations in Sublette County.

“2,000 head of mother cows, and then we keep the calves and tell their yearlings,” she said. “And then we raise about 30 head of quarter horses every year, from my brood mares.”

Tara’s a longtime family friend. I remember actually grasping the controversy of wolves at her holiday dinner when I was in middle school. One of the guests really hated wolves. But Tara herself doesn’t. 

“Wolves, I think they're really an incredibly, awesome animal,” she said. “But no, we don't want them in our cattle. And we don't want to try to increase their numbers to where they are in the cattle.”

Tara said they cross paths with wolves and other predators now and then – it’s just part of ranching. But it isn’t really a huge issue for them. She said if it ever became a bigger issue?

“We would reluctantly ask some men that we know that are very good shots and very good hunters if they would go and shoot them,” she said.

But whacking predators with snowmobiles?

“No. We never feel we'd need to run them over snowmobile,” she said frankly. “We would never do that. We wouldn't allow it. It's just against our beliefs. It just rubs us wrong to the core. You don't torture animals. And anybody that does, there's something deeply wrong with them.”

Tara remembered hearing the news about Cody and the wolf last year.

“I was horrified. I was sickened. Terrible,” she said. “It was just so, so degrading of life. And then to hear in some of those videos, girls laughing. I mean, it's just like, I don't know, a horror movie.”

Tara said it didn’t have anything to do with managing predators or ranching or hunting.

“It was just somebody enjoying torturing an animal, that's all it was, plain and simple,” she said. “Some guy enjoying torturing an animal and bragging about it.”

Unlike Sen. Baldwin, she wasn’t confident all this public outrage would deter people in the future.

“I'm worried that snow machiners will still go out and run over them, but I don't think they're going to go mouth off about it,” Tara said. “But yeah, I'm worried. Until Wyoming makes really, really strong laws against it, not much is going to change.”

Tara said she thinks most people here don’t treat animals like Cody did, but, “it sure doesn't make it look good when we don't do anything about it.”

Technically, the county is still doing something about it. Over the last year, there’s been an active investigation into Cody Roberts and the treatment of the wolf. Which I went to talk about with University of Wyoming’s (UW) Law professor Meredith Esser. I met her on campus.

Meredith and I sat in her office almost exactly a year after Cody ran down the wolf. She hadn’t followed the case super closely but was familiar.

“It's odd to keep a case open this long,” Meredith said.

She said it’s odd because Cody already paid the $250 game and fish fine.

“The fact that this person has already paid the fine, that that sort of ends the matter,” she said. “You'd have to do kind of like a complex mental math comparing different criminal statutes and seeing whether the elements of the statutes are matched with other elements of the statutes.”

Basically, Meredith said keeping his case open could be construed as double jeopardy. Like, Cody can’t be charged twice for the same act.

“My guess is that it's remained open is more to sort of placate the media and animal lovers and wildlife enthusiasts who are maybe disappointed in the outcome,” Meredith said.

Technically, the case could remain open forever. That’s allowed for criminal cases in Wyoming.

I emailed Sublette County’s attorney, Clayton Melinkovich. And yes, I know him too from growing up in Pinedale.

Clayton said he couldn’t comment directly because it’s an active investigation. But he speculated generally about some things. Like, they have to do their best to work through a case and not keep it open indefinitely. Otherwise it looks like the state is trying to get an advantage over the defendant. Clayton also said that no prosecutor opens a case without thinking of trial down the road.

He spoke a little more openly with WyoFile – an online news publication in Wyoming. Clayton said the county was waiting on “lab results” and now they’re in, but he was vague on what they tested. He said charges that could apply include felony animal cruelty. 

In my email to Clayton, I also asked him his thoughts on if the community has healed from this past year. He said he doesn’t know. He added that he thinks some people are still embarrassed about Cody’s actions, while others are still angry at the attacks from outsiders.

Clayton ended his email to me saying that continued media coverage keeps bringing the incident back up, and is making it hard for people to get on with their lives. Specifically for him and the county attorney’s office. He said the coverage drums up more emails and phone calls which, “create a productivity-sucking distraction from each of our very full plates.”

It took me a moment, but after re-reading, I realized Clayton was kind of pointing a finger at me. This story you’re reading right now, is putting a kink in the healing process for Sublette County.

But not everyone has that school of thought. Meredith Esser – the UW law professor, thinks more communicating is sometimes the answer. She’s really fascinated by how a community heals after intense, serious cases. It’s called restorative justice.

“Restorative justice it's a process that whereby a community can heal through kind of people sharing their perspectives around something,” she said.

Meredith thought it could be really impactful for Sublette County, but, she said a prerequisite is it has to be a safe space where a community comes together in a sort of “spirit of healing.”  

“It would require people to voluntarily participate, including the person who was charged here,” she said.

And to this day, Cody Roberts hasn’t talked publicly. Like, we don’t know his side of the story. And I don’t know if we ever will.

It’s a thorny issue. And talking about it is going to bring flack – whether it’s from those who live here or from across the world. I see what Clayton, the county attorney, is saying – that continued coverage keeps this wound open.

Even as I’m writing this story, I have mixed feelings about it. Am I welcoming backlash once again from my hometown? I’ve spent a decade trying to shove the red face op-ed under the rug, and slowly, I've mostly been accepted back into the community. So I ask myself, why am I bringing it back up – with the wolf issue? Two really hot button topics. When I told my mom about it, she suggested that I think really carefully about this choice.

But I kind of feel like I have to. Like, I’ve been on the inside and the outside of this community, and have a decent grasp on what makes it tick. I still really love my hometown and many of the people here. That’s despite pushback on my writing about the red face tradition and the wolf incident. So I don’t know how you square the two.

But I do know, ostracizing each other isn’t it. Like, locals hating on Cali, the Pinedale Roundup up editor, and making her life miserable – that isn’t helping her do her job or even feel safe in her day-to-day. But for all these outsiders – the national wolf advocates – who are non-stop harassing people who live here and sending death threats? That certainly isn’t helping either. I think some people here defend Cody just because of that. Not because they really think what Cody did was ok. We’re all getting pushed further apart and digging in.

I hope people on the outside can see that Sublette County contains multitudes. Like, if you were ever visiting here and say you got a flat tire – the person who pulls over with a warm grin on their face and changes your tire, that same person might support Cody Roberts.

But, I also hope the people here can see where the outrage is coming from. And that it’s okay to admit wrongdoing and change from it. Maybe if the community had boldly taken a stand against what Cody did, or Cody himself even publicly apologized, maybe all this outrage wouldn’t have happened. Maybe this podcast episode wouldn’t exist. Maybe Betty, the gal who was there that night on the date, wouldn’t still be thinking about it all a year later.

Because for her, it’s still something of an open wound. Mostly because it’s an open secret in town that she spoke to Game and Fish. Some blame her for the global backlash.

“I genuinely feel bad that they were harassed by the whole world, like his entire family, the entire town, the county,” Betty said.

But Betty said that part wasn’t her fault.

“That's talk of the town kind of thing. Like you don't bring a wolf to the bar if you don't want people to talk about it,” she said. 

And she stands by speaking to Game and Fish.

“It’s not about ‘never kill an animal’. It’s not about ‘don’t eat meat’ or ‘take their guns.’ No. It’s not about any of that,” she said. “But just don't drag a dying animal around. Like, what? Like, that's some sick stuff.”

A year later, she feels like a part of Sublette County. She’s found her circle of friends, joined a trivia group, got a puppy named Nutmeg and goes on hikes. In fact, she recently went on another first date with a different guy – stay tuned for that update.

The wolf deal hasn’t made her afraid to live here, but it isn't’ perfect either. She doesn’t go to the Green River Bar anymore. I don’t either. Too uncomfortable.

Also, Betty actually just lost some business recently over her connection to the wolf incident – she side hustles as a photographer. 

But for the most part, Betty said in a small town everyone finds a way to live together. And that was maybe displayed best with a certain customer she helped at her other job in town.

“There was no one else to help him. And I go, “Alright Cody, what do you need?,” Betty remembered. “I addressed him by name, looked him dead in the eye. And I got him what he needed. I sent him on his way.”

They made it work.

“We both knew it was less than ideal,” Betty said. “I was trying so hard. Like, I went in the back,stocked some shelves. I was trying so hard, and my co-worker just was not getting through the person in front of him, and he was okay to wait for a bit. But then more people started to come in, and I was like, “I gotta bite the bullet. I gotta do it.” I knew this day would come, because it's a small town, you know, and so he got what he needed. He paid and he left. Like, that's what it means to live in a small town.”

feels weird to use their first names? since they're politicians?