Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming, for Monday, May 12th. I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by the Wyoming Community Foundation, who asks you to give back to the place you call home. "5 to thrive" is YOUR opportunity to leave a legacy for generations to come. Support the community nonprofits you care about with a gift through the Wyoming Community Foundation. Visit wycf.org to learn more.

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Richard Pitt grew up in Thermopolis - but he lived a life straight out of 1980s drug-running movies like "Scarface."

Now on the other side of 70, Pitt has spent a lot of years thinking about his life. Most of those years were in federal prison in Pennsylvania, where he spent 28 years. In an exclusive interview, Pitt told Cowboy State Daily's Jen Kocher how a kid from Wyoming, and a Vietnam veteran who had worked his tail off to become a commercial airline pilot, ended up smuggling for Pablo Escobar.

"I've never met a true adrenaline junkie to the extent that Richard Pitt is… in this story, can only begin to just chip away at the interesting moments of his of his life, because if you can imagine what it's like to fly under the radar at 300 miles an hour, across the ocean in the middle of the night… And I would ask him, How did you do that? And he said, Well, you've got to pay attention… And that's how he talks. You know, everything is not a big deal to him, because he's lived it… and he's paid the price for his crimes, and that's another, you know, I think aspect that it might get overlooked here… he's telling this story because his daughter visited him in prison and she said, Tell me. Tell me why you missed all those years. What were you doing? And this is his swan song, so to speak."

Pitt has been out of prison for five years and now lives a quiet life in Denver near his daughter, where he continues trying to repair their badly damaged relationship, and has been writing his memoirs.

Read the full story HERE.

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It's been 33 years since Wyoming Gov. Mike Sullivan stood in his office next to his priest, warring with himself over the execution of convicted serial killer Mark Hopkinson.

Wyoming hasn't executed anyone since that day. But it has tried. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland spoke to several legal experts about the hurdles that complicate death penalty cases in Wyoming.

"It is the task of a lifetime, in particular for Judge Thomas Campbell, back when he was carbon county attorney three inmates during a botched escape attempt killed a prison guard, very violent, very brutal. And his reasoning was, they were already in prison, and it didn't stop them from killing. So I'm going to try these as death penalty cases. And he did. But I mean, this is huge. It's exponential even to a normal murder trial in one there were something like 135 pre-trial motions, where most of the time we consider 10 a lot… he had to decide, do they deserve it or do they not? And having decided to go for it, he went for it… I talked to Governor Mike Sullivan, who, back in 1992 had pressure from all sides, some people urging him to commute Mark Hopkinson so that he would face life in prison instead of his execution.. What he told me was similar to Campbell's thinking - prison had not kept this man from ordering people's deaths."

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