Fremont County sheriff who served nonconsecutive terms shares memories of time in office

Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of stories about former sheriffs in eastern Idaho.

ASHTON – Tom Stegelmeier sips a cup of coffee as he sits in a corner booth at El Rincon at 580 Main Street in Ashton.

Visiting the Mexican restaurant is a daily part of the 81-year-old’s routine. It’s one of the simple things he enjoys about retirement.

Stegelmeier is greeted warmly as he exits the restaurant. Not only is he a lifelong resident of Fremont County, he’s also recognizable as a former sheriff of the county. He was in office two separate times — first in the 1970s for one and a half terms and another full-term in the early 2000s.

EastIdahoNews.com sat down with Stegelmeier earlier this week as he shared his memories of working in law enforcement. Though he prefers the quiet lifestyle he’s living now and doesn’t miss the job overall, he does miss the opportunities it gave him to help others.

“You get to help a lot of people,” Stegelmeier says. “Sometimes that’s not pleasant.”

Two prominent cases

Stegelmeier got his start as a deputy with the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office in 1968 under Sheriff Jess Butts. As Stegelmeier recalls, it wasn’t a career path he was seeking. He was simply “offered a job” and “decided to try it.”

U.S. Highway 20 was being built at the time and he remembers responding to numerous crashes along the old highway.

Stegelmeier was elected sheriff in 1972 when Butts decided to step down. Following the previous pattern, several people asked Stegelmeier to run so he “thought he might try it.”

Two cases stand out most to him during his time in office. One of them is a homicide that happened in the spring or early summer of 1973 in Parker. He describes it as “a lover’s quarrel” involving two gay men.

He doesn’t remember what it was about and declined to say their names, but he says one of the partners was from Buhl. Sometime between 8 a.m. and noon, the man from Buhl shot the other man from Parker with a .410 caliber shotgun. He ran away and escaped before deputies arrived. Stegelmeier later found the man in Buhl.

“It took us three or four weeks (to catch him),” Stegelmeier says. “We had enough evidence to get a warrant for his arrest. We went there and arrested him. His stepfather was a deputy sheriff in Twin Falls County.”

A deputy found the shotgun in the suspect’s vehicle as he was leaving.

“We brought him back (to St. Anthony) and through interrogation, he finally admitted it,” Stegelmeier recalls.

The suspect went to prison in Boise. Stegelmeier doesn’t remember the number of years, or whether he is still alive. The man who was killed still has living relatives in Parker.

Beginning about 1974, Stegelmeier was involved in another case over the course of several years. Numerous cattle were found dead in Wilford, Newdale and other areas. All the blood was drained from their bodies, and their tongue and sex organs had been surgically removed.

“We figured it was a cult, (a group of) Satan worshipers (who were doing it),” he says. “We had a couple of state investigators that worked with us on the investigation. The state told us they didn’t know what we were talking about (identifying the act as part of a Satanic ritual). They said it was predators.”

But Stegelmeier was sure it wasn’t predators. The mutilations were too precise.

The suspects were never found, and the case eventually fizzled out when the Teton Dam flood occurred in 1976.

In recent years, there have been reports of cattle mutilations happening in other states. Authorities in Texas launched an investigation in April after a cow was found dead along a highway.

Livestock mutilations have apparently been happening for centuries, according to the History Channel’s website. Despite widespread reports of mutilations happening today nationwide, the responsible parties remains a mystery.

“Some people (at the time) said it was aliens or predators, and they’re saying the same thing now,” Stegelmeier says.

Changing careers and returning to law enforcement

In 1978, two years into his second term, Stegelmeier decided to step down. Stegelmeier attributes that to a disagreement with county commissioners over funding issues.

“We were trying to (hire more dispatchers), and we were short on deputies. I only had two full-time deputies. When I came into office, the dispatch office closed at 5 p.m. and didn’t open until 9 the next morning. When everyone was getting calls at home, the response wasn’t real good,” he says.

Stegelmeier utilized reserve deputies to cover late-night shifts.

Despite the lack of personnel, Stegelmeier’s requests for additional funding were never approved. He quit and got a job with Union Pacific Railroad for two years.

Over the next 20 years, Stegelmeier had multiple jobs. He worked as a semi truck driver and a convenience store clerk.

After getting laid off as a truck driver in 2000, he ran for sheriff again and was elected.

A homicide near Pond’s Lodge is Stegelmeier’s most prominent memory during this time. A group of people were working in the area cutting trees for firewood. Two teenage boys talked one of the other guys into going some place and as they got to Forest Service Road, the boys stabbed the man 13 times and ran him over three times.

Their main motivation for doing this, according to Stegelmeier, is because they wanted the man’s pickup.

The kids left the scene of the crime and were later reported missing. The boys and the pickup were spotted in California. When Stegelmeier and his deputies went to arrest them, they found bloody stains and rags inside the pickup. But the knife wasn’t there.

“We only had circumstantial evidence (linking the boys to the crime). Throughout the investigation, getting enough evidence remained a challenge until finally one kid broke down and told us what happened,” Stegelmeier explains.

The boy explained that they’d hidden the knife and some rags inside a ceiling tile at a motel room in Casper, Wyoming. Stegelmeier boarded a plane and found the motel “right off.” He went inside the room and found the knife and rags just as the boy had described.

“That pretty well solved (the case),” says Stegelmeier.

Both boys went to prison. It’s unclear where they’re at now.

Stegelmeier lost his bid for re-election in 2005. He drove a truck for several years before eventually retiring.

Stegelmeier’s thoughts on law enforcement today

Today, Stegelmeier is enjoying a slower lifestyle at his cabin in Green Timber several miles east of Ashton.

Noting the influx of people moving into the area in recent years, Stegelmeier says the current sheriff has his work cut out for him. If Stegelmeier had to do it over again, law enforcement is not a profession he’d pursue.

“It takes a certain type of individual to do it nowadays because of the way the laws are. You’re always watching your back. We used to have to do that, but not like today. It’s a lot more dangerous,” he says. “If you make a traffic stop, you don’t know what you’re getting in to.”

Still, he’s grateful for the time he served and he’s supportive of the current sheriff and all the men and women in uniform serving their community.

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