Green River man pleads guilty to killing big game, ending years-long investigation

CASPER, Wyo. — A Green River man has served a prison sentence and will be banned from hunting for 10 years after ending a five-year big game killing investigation with a guilty plea.

According to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, Timothy Crooks was charged in October 2023 with five counts of willful killing of a big game animal and four counts of using a silencer to kill a big game animal. On February 27, 2024, Crooks changed his guilty plea and pleaded guilty to five counts of willful killing of a big game animal.

The charge of using a silencer was dropped as part of a plea agreement.

Crooks was sentenced April 9 in Sweetwater County District Court to 15 days in jail for each count, with three days of jail time to run concurrently. He was stripped of his hunting privileges for 10 years and forfeited his .22 Marlin rifle with scope and homemade silencer.

The years-long case began when a deer was shot and left for dead in a neighborhood along the Green River, Game and Fish said. Over the course of five years, at least five deer were shot in the Arkansas Drive area.

During their investigation, game wardens and Green River police responded to numerous calls about dead or injured deer and recovered bullets from three deer.

On August 17, 2018, game wardens were called to a home on Arkansas Drive to investigate what appeared to be a shot deer. Witnesses had heard sounds that sounded like gunshots from a small-caliber rifle in the early morning hours and later found the deer dying near a home. Witnesses also reported seeing a bullet hole in their garage door. Game wardens analyzed the scene to determine the bullet’s trajectory and interviewed neighbors, but were unable to identify a suspect.

Nearly three years later, on August 9, 2021, game wardens were called to Arkansas Drive to investigate a deer that was believed to have been shot – and a bullet that appeared to have come from a small-caliber rifle was found in the buck. From an animal control officer, game wardens learned that another buck had been removed from the neighborhood by city workers and taken to the landfill that same morning. A game warden went to the landfill and performed an autopsy on that buck, finding that it too had been shot, although the bullet had penetrated the animal and was not found.

In September 2022, students at Harrison Elementary School found an injured deer near their playground. At first glance, the deer appeared to be sick, but an autopsy revealed a bullet under the animal’s skin. On August 12, 2023, wardens were again called to the neighborhood on Arkansas Drive for a report of a suspected fallow deer and wardens recovered a bullet from that deer as well.

On August 17, 2023, Wyoming game wardens and Green River police executed two search warrants on Crooks’ residence. Officers confiscated several firearms, ammunition and a homemade silencer from Crooks’ apartment. In August 2023, three bullets were sent to the DCI crime lab in Cheyenne along with firearms seized as part of the search warrants.

Ballistics testing confirmed that the bullets recovered from the 2022 deer and the 2023 deer were fired from the same .22-caliber Marlin rifle seized during the August search. The bullet recovered from the mule deer in 2021 was too worn to clearly identify or rule out that it came from the same rifle.

“I would like to thank the numerous reporting agencies that promptly reported the injured, dying and dead mule deer. Accurate and timely reports often make the difference between solving a case and not. Without these reports and the assistance of Green River Animal Control Officers and the Green River Police Department, this investigation could still be ongoing,” said Rock Springs Game Warden Justin Dodd. “I would also like to thank the Sweetwater County District Attorney’s Office for their assistance in solving this case.”

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