Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming, for Friday, November 22nd. I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by the Cowboy State Daily Morning Show with Jake. From 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., Monday through Friday, Cowboy State Daily's Jake Nichols takes you deeper into the stories that matter - and keeps up with the news, weather and sports in your part of Wyoming. Just tune into Cowboy State Daily Dot Com and join the conversation.

Frederica Lefthand held a doctorate degree in education. She was part of an outreach program supporting Native American nursing students. Lefthand served as dean of admissions at Little Big Horn College on the Crow Indian Reservation.

Then she fell into the clutches of a drug cartel. And amid a recent bust of a meth ring in what's now referred to as the "Spear Siding" case, Lefthand and 26 others were prosecuted.

Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that her story is just one heartbreaking tale in a larger narrative of how drugs have devastated Native communities.

"There are several reasons why the story about Frederica Lefthand is tragic. One that the community has lost her as a leader. She used to work at the college as a dean of admissions. You have the sheer number of people who receive sentences, 27 in this wave alone. And then you have on top of it, the name Spear Siding brought into the story, which is a sacred site where they perform a Sundance."

Lefthand's rise and fall as a drug queenpin of the meth ring based in a small community just north of the Wyoming border also reveals details about the role women now play in the hierarchy of reservation crime.

Read the full story HERE.

When drugs and evidence started vanishing from shipping boxes on their way from Rawlins to the Wyoming State Crime Lab in Cheyenne, Rawlins authorities called the Laramie Police Department to investigate.

Though Laramie police originally scrutinized the Rawlins PD and the Carbon County Sheriff's Office, the case soon shifted to a UPS worker, in whose house they found electronics, drugs, toys and other items, according to Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland.

"The Carbon County Sheriff's office and the Rawlins PD both had boxes with drugs and evidence on their way to the Wyoming State Crime Lab, where the boxes showed up at the crime lab, missing everything, or nearly everything. And so they're like, oh, we gotta get an outside cop here, because this starts at the cop shop. So they called in Laramie… and then he's thinking, their chains of custody are different, right?... how can there be a… common thief in law enforcement, if there's different chains of custody. So then he's like, Okay, where do these packages meet up? That was at the lumber store, where that's also a UPS pickup site."

32-year-old Deseree Martinez faces one count of felony theft, and if convicted, could spend up to 10 years in prison and have to pay $10,000 in fines.

Read the full story

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