1915
On February 12th, 1915 a fire burned down at least nine businesses before the townspeople put it out.
about 0:05:37The story
In the autumn of 1996 Berry Alexis Bryant, an 18-year-old from Riverton, Wyoming, arrived at Northwest College in Powell to study fashion merchandising. Born in Lewiston, Montana, on March 21st, 1978, she had lived in half a dozen places around the northwest before her mother Sharon left an abusive marriage and brought her children home to Riverton. Berry was a whirlwind at Riverton High School: saxophone in the jazz band, cross country and track, 4H, the drill team, a place in the state 4A cross country meet in her first year, and a 1996 graduate. Friends remembered a gregarious girl who gave everyone a nickname and was always laughing.
He had been captain of the football and basketball teams and homecoming king at a high school with six students in its graduating class. Teachers described a polite, well-mannered young man, and two citations for underage alcohol were the only trouble on his record. In the summer of 1996 he and Berry had both attended a 4H junior leaders' conference and the Wyoming State Fair in Douglas. At freshman orientation he saw her in a dorm lounge and told another student: "I'm gonna get her."
On October 4th, 1996 Berry and her friend Jessie went to a dance, found it dull and moved on to a party in a dorm. He had been pursuing Berry for a month, and she had been politely declining. A short time later a witness saw the two of them leaving the dorm parking lot together in his car. Berry had not told Jessie she was going.
At about midnight the resident advisor phoned Jessie to ask where Berry was. Jessie got up, searched the campus and found Berry's car still in the lot, with none of her belongings missing. The call went to Berry's mother, who rang every hospital within a hundred miles.
He told his three roommates he had been in a serious fight with a man and had stabbed him. On the way he changed his story and admitted that he had raped and murdered a girl. The roommates tackled him, restrained him and called the police. A woman also later said he had attacked her in 1995, when he was 17.
Detectives pointed to the scratches on his face, hands and forearms and told him the story did not fit. He then admitted the killing but blamed Berry, saying she attacked him with a beer bottle after consensual sex. Investigators drove him out into the countryside for hours while he gave false directions. The prosecutor in the convoy lost patience, told him the games were over, and he immediately led them to the body.
Berry was found in the sagebrush on the flats known as the bench, about 16 miles north of Powell. She was partially clothed, her face and head extensively bruised, her torso covered in stab wounds and her throat cut from ear to ear, nearly decapitating her. She had defensive wounds on her hands and arms and her fingernails were broken. She had been raped.
Berry's mother Sharon told the court his hell on earth had begun and hoped his nightmares were haunted by the sound of her dying.
The college installed emergency phones around campus. In 2022 Sharon and Berry's friends raised money for a memorial bench in Powell, bearing Berry's picture and the name Strawberry. Berry is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Riverton, and a scholarship endowment in her name exists at Northwest College.