The aftermath of the wolf incident in Sublette County – tensions on the ground and death threats from around the world

You’ve probably heard about the man who brought a wolf into a bar in Daniel, Wyoming.

The state fined Cody Roberts $250 in March for possessing a live wolf in Sublette County, as originally reported by KHOL. Photos and videos show the wolf’s mouth being taped shut and later muzzled at a local bar, with Roberts posing for a photo. He later killed the wolf.

This sparked international outrage – people called it torture and demanded Roberts’ arrest. There are now also strong local Support for Roberts. Hatred is pouring in from Wyoming residents, most of whom were not involved in the incident.

The tensions on the ground.

Cali O’Hare is editor and reporter for Sublette County’s weekly newspaper, the Pinedale Roundup.

“What could be more stressful than running a one-woman newspaper and doing almost everything yourself?” O’Hare said, adding that the full-time reporter was recently laid off.

Caitlin Tan

/

Public Media in Wyoming

O’Hare’s bright eyes darted between several computer screens and a long to-do list – one of the items? Wolf follow-up coverage.

“And that has completely consumed me,” she said with a deep sigh. “It really is one of those things where you’re damned if you do it and damned if you don’t.”

She said it was a gut punch to report the story. That’s partly because Sublette County, with its 8,728 residents, is a tight-knit community and everyone knows everyone. Some are quite protective of the Roberts

– a multi-generational family here.

“My partner of 11 years grew up with Cody Roberts,” O’Hare said. “We practically lived next door to him.”

She remembers coming home and telling her partner, “Hey, I have to write this article. And it might be hard to read and might have negative consequences.”

And that was certainly the case.

“I don’t know if it would be helpful for you if I read these,” O’Hare said, flipping through some printouts of comments from the Pinedale Roundup Facebook page.

She has received more than she can count. A post from mid-April had 162 comments. Many of them come from around the world, some from Sublette County condemning Roberts. Others are from locals rebuking O’Hare.

“This guy works for roads and bridges,” she said, showing a printout of his Facebook comment. “It says, ‘Go practice real journalism, Cali O’Hare, you bitch who’s doing a witch hunt on a man’s family.'”

Caitlin Tan

/

Public Media in Wyoming

In another comment, the county treasurer called on O’Hare to stop reporting, and an employee of the Sublette County Planning and Zoning Department accused O’Hare of a lack of objectivity.

“I’m just doing my job. It’s nothing personal,” she said. “And I have great sympathy for everyone involved in this.”

O’Hare has received some positive feedback from the community and added that her safety was not threatened. However, she and her partner have lost many friends.

“I thought we had a great relationship with someone, and now all of a sudden he won’t even look at me or talk to me because I covered this story,” she said.

But there is a downside.

Death threats from all over the world.

Hate comments also came from animal rights activists who not support Roberts. They accuse him of mistreating and torturing the wolf and they make their loud statements.

Thousands of online threats are being made against Wyoming residents as a whole, with hashtags like #wyomingtorturestate and #boycottWyoming trending. Yet many of these people are reserving their most hateful rhetoric for those closest to the incident – or so they think.

“I mean, I’ve had death threats from Ireland, Russia, Japan, Australia. I don’t know how many thousands of messages I’ve had. I think it was 15 this morning,” said Cody Roberts of Thayne, Wyoming.

This is not The Cody Roberts – his family declined an interview. The Cody Roberts lives nearly two hours away and is not related. He didn’t think much of it when the news broke, but many people have confused his Facebook page with The Cody Roberts.

Some of the messages are quite violent.

“This one, for example, simply says: ‘You are a psychopathic wolf torturer, kill yourself’,” Roberts has read.

It’s not just him – his parents’ phone number has been shared on Facebook and his wife has received messages with rape threats. In another message, Roberts read: “I’m going to run over your grandson and break his legs.”

He said he had responded to every single Message explaining that he is not the same guy anymore, which some people don’t accept.

“One lady even went up to him and said, ‘I don’t care if you’re not the right guy, do me a favor and put a bullet in his head and it’ll all be over,'” he said.

Roberts added that he was also disappointed with what The Cody Roberts did that, but he finds these verbal abuses worse. And now he even has compassion.

“Does he deserve what he gets? No, I don’t think so,” he said. “He’s still human.”

So far, Roberts, of Thayne, Wyoming, isn’t too worried about his family’s safety. But a group of protesters is planning a motorcycle brigade from Texas to Daniel, Wyoming, later this month. Hogs for Hope is raising money for some animal welfare groups to push for legislative changes in Wyoming regarding predator abuse. Notably, state lawmakers have formed a subcommittee to do just that. But the group is marching on, and Roberts said some of the people who say they’ll participate are the ones who have sent him violent messages.

“I’m sure some people will be OK with it and protest peacefully,” he said. “But will that be the case for the whole group?”

This is just one of the wolf-related issues that local authorities are monitoring.

An unprecedented number of threats.

The Sublette County Sheriff’s Office is located behind a glass door and down a few stairs in a dimly lit basement. Inside, Press Secretary Travis Bingham was hard at work. There is an ongoing investigation into whether Cody Roberts violated animal cruelty laws, as well as an unprecedented number of related investigations.

“There were threats against people’s lives or against their businesses,” he said.

Caitlin Tan

/

Public Media in Wyoming

In addition, they are receiving thousands of frustrated calls from across the country, overloading the headquarters. On their Facebook page, a recent, unrelated cryptocurrency informational post received 595 comments – almost all of them angry at Roberts or Wyoming, with comments like “#justiceforthepreciousgraywolf,” “DO NOT GIVE THIS STATE YOUR MONEY YOU WORK HARD FOR,” and even a photo of a piece of paper with a phone number that the commenter claimed was Roberts’ business number. By comparison, posts before the incident had no comments, aside from similarly angry comments made after the fact.

Bingham said they had set up a separate hotline to contain the chaos.

“We still have to help our citizens, and they still expect 911 and the police to be available to us for other things,” he said.

Meanwhile, all this global attention and hate is playing out mostly behind keyboards. But not for the locals. When you move around the city – in bars, the supermarket, the post office – the tension is palpable. Bingham said the focus now is on the future.

“We will learn from this and move on,” he said simply.

Part of that action is to complete the investigation, but Bingham said the timeline is unknown at this time.

Copyright 2024 Wyoming Public Radio