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Murders of Percy and Gertrude Cota

A Former Blue Rapids Girl Killed in Wyoming

Mrs. Percy Cota and Husband Murdered at Ranch Home July 2, Near Laramie, Wyo

Mr. and Mrs. Percy Cota, Laramie, Wyo., were shot and instantly killed at their ranch home near Laramie Friday night, July 2. Mrs. Cota was the former Gertrude Jewell, Blue Rapids, where she was born and reared. For 13 years she was a teacher in Marshall county rural schools.

The couple were found dead the morning of July 3 by Charles Johnson, foreman of a neighboring ranch. Mrs. Cota had been shot through the head and her husband through the throat. Their bodies had been dragged by the feet from the doorway of their home to a garage 100 feet away and thrown together beside the wooden building. A short piece of rope was knotted about Mrs. Cota’s throat.

The couple apparenlty were killed the night before, on their return from a grocery shopping trip to the Tie Siding store at Dale Creek, small depot on the Union Pacific railroad.

Cota drove to Laramie July 2 to get his wife, who had been attending summer school for teachers at Wyoming university. Together they started home and stopped at the Tie Siding store.

They had carried one load of groceries from their car into their house and were shot as they went back to their car for the rest of the purchases.

Their killer apparently had stolen into the house after Cota left for Laramie and lurked there awaiting their return. A meal had been eaten in the Cota’s kitchen and one bed looked as if someone had slept on it for short time. Nothing of value apparently had been taken from the home.

Two empty .32 shells lay near the front door. Near the bodies was a man’s green sock in which were found about 30 loaded .32 shells.

Johnson had gone to the Cota ranch after he found the Cota’s coupe – blood on one running board – bogged down in a mudhole on a country road a few miles from the ranch.

Sheriff Ed A. Wood, Laramie, theorized that the killer drove away from the ranch in the coupe, got on a road that grew smaller as he drove, tried to turn around, got stuck in the mudhole, then fled on foot.

After an intensive search by police officers and ranchmen, first degree murder charged were filed July 6 at Cheyenne against Howard W. Pichell, 24, alias Pickell, ex-convict from New York, who was jailed at Cheyenne as Wyoming’s mad triple killer.

Pichell is believed to be the man who also killed Matt Katmo, 44, Cheyenne war worker, June 30, in a mountain camp ground near Laramie.

Katmo was killed and his companion, Mrs. O. W. Larson, Laramie, was beaten and her hands tied by a man who accosted them as they stepped out of Katmo’s car to pick some flowers.

Mrs. Cota was married in 1915 to Al E. Hanson and moved from Blue Rapids to Green River, Wyo., where her husband was express agent for the Union Pacific. Later the family moved to Laramie and a son, Jean, was born. When then son was 10 years old, he and his mother were walking along a Laramie business street when the boy slumped to the sidewalk. He was rushed to a hospital, where it was learned that a rifle bullet had penetrated his abdomen and he soon died. It was later learned that a boy, cleaning a rifle in a second-story barber shop, accidentally discharged the rifle that sent the bullet into the child’s body. Three months after her son’s death, Mrs. Hanson’s husband died on the operating table, while undergoing a major operation.

After the death of her son and husband, she returned to teaching and four years ago married Percy Cota.