Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Thursday, December 25th. I'm Mac Watson.

Merry Christmas!

For today's newscast, news slows down this time of year so we've asked our reporters to identify their most meaningful, important, interesting, or favorite story of the year for today's newsletter.

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We start with the tragic story of a mom in Byron who shot and killed her 4 daughters before taking her own life in their snow-clad home. Crimes and Courts Reporter Clair McFarland spoke to people in Byron about the tragedy, but she'll never forget the interview with the husband, Cliff Harshman, who agreed to meet and tell his story in a coffee shop in Powell.

"Often when you're doing an interview, you're just trying to ask the right questions, and you're angling and you're fishing, and sometimes it's confrontational, sometimes a person's accusing someone else of something, and then you have to go confront that person, and there's just a lot of ping pong and a lot of hardball and reporting, but surprisingly well, it's shocking at first that cliff Harshman agreed to have coffee with me, and then he agreed to have an interview. And it was unlike any interview I've ever done in my entire life. We sat down beforehand and discussed, like, why are we doing this? Why are you doing this? And he just said that, the truth is what matters at this point, and I want someone to have it."

Clair says that Cliff voiced a grim resolve to tell her the truth so that at the least, the gawking public would have the most accurate account of the already-exposed tragedy.

Read the full story HERE.

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Investigative reporter Jen Kocher introduced us to a Thermopolis native who went from flying planes to smuggling drugs for the infamous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. Jen says she still talks to Richard Pitt.

"He actually, apart from surviving run ins with other drug smugglers and drug lords, he also survived years in a Mexican prison where he was tortured and he has since become it's one of those unexpected friendships that make this job amazing, with all the people you meet and all

the random connections you form."

Jen says that the Wyoming native is now retired after serving his prison sentences both in Mexico and in the United States, and is now writing books and living in Denver, Colorado.

Read the full story HERE.

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Sometimes a reporter will become part of the story. Reporter Zak Sonntag wrote about a homeless couple in Casper who were living in an abandoned sedan. Zak tried to help the couple and things turned.

"This was a man named Malachi Springer and his partner, Kayla Riley, who were together, also expecting a child…And it was a really humbling experience to see this, and we developed a natural rapport. But what happened was that after I published the story, instantly after it published the story, the police came to their car and they said, You guys can't be here. You're on private property, and it's time for you to go. And it was directly because that I had brought attention to them, that I kind of exposed, okay, this is where you're living, and I put a target on them, and they lost that resource, and so they had to relocate to a freeway bridge on the opposite side of side of town."

Zak says he ultimately lost touch with the couple but often thinks, "did I make their lives harder by writing that story?"

Read the full story

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