Former Bonneville County sheriff was a ‘self-taught, hard-working’ man who solved 2 murders
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Editor’s note: This is the eleventh in a series of stories about former sheriffs in eastern Idaho.
IDAHO FALLS — Friends and family are celebrating the life of Lester Hopkins, a former Bonneville County sheriff who passed away on Wednesday at age 92.
He was living in Kuna at the time of his death, but his funeral was held in Afton, Wyoming Saturday morning. His son, Bryan Hopkins, tells EastIdahoNews.com his dad loved Star Valley, and Afton is where Lester and his wife wanted to be buried.
Bryan spoke with us on Friday ahead of the funeral to share his memories of Lester’s life. He describes his dad as a serious, hard-working man who was a good storyteller.
“He never sat around. He just worked all the time, which is part of what was heartbreaking at the end, having to be in bed and not being able to communicate much,” Bryan says.
He and his brothers would often get together, telling tall tales that delighted Bryan and his siblings.
Lester was a self-taught carpenter and built his first home when he was 22. He built multiple houses that are still standing today, including a four-plex at 1849 Grandview Drive in Idaho Falls.
At age 14, Lester ran away from home to join the Navy during World War II. He was too young, but that didn’t stop him from enlisting to fight for his country.
“The attitude back then was that everyone was dying to get in (the war),” Bryan explains. “He got his papers falsified, and they eventually caught him and sent him back home.”
That led to a stint in the Air Force.
After returning home, his desire for excitement and doing the right thing led him to pursue law enforcement. He had a long and distinguished career that lasted more than 50 years, including a five-year stretch as Bonneville County sheriff from 1965-1970.
Lester’s daughter, Carolyn Wygans, says one of the reasons Lester ran for sheriff was to improve the working relationship between law enforcement agencies.
“The other thing is he was always interested in modernizing law enforcement. That’s something he always took pride in,” says Bryan.
He was innovative in other ways as well. Lester had a pilot’s license and Bryan says he was one of the first sheriffs to utilize his plane in search and rescue efforts.
Wygans and Bryan recall two cases that stood out most to Sheriff Hopkins. One was a murder at a service station on North Yellowstone Highway and the other was the killing of a migrant worker’s baby.
An unintended shooting
On December 22, 1966, Wygans says a group of young men were playing poker at a venue on 1st Street. One of them — whom Lester identifies as Gordon Watson in his personal history — lost a substantial amount of money during the poker game. He showed up at the service station on the outskirts of town intending to rob it.
Gordon ended up killing the man behind the cash register. The victim, 43-year-old Versal Hunter of Shelley, was “shot six times around the middle of his body” with a .25 caliber pistol.
“Dad said that it appeared (Gordon) may have killed (Hunter) because he was frightened,” says Wygans. “It looked like the attendant was facing the cash register and started to turn back around. The young man panicked and emptied the gun (in what appeared to be an unintentional killing).”
Gordon took most of the bills from the cash register and took off. He “fled to Mexico soon after the murder occurred” and later Canada, according to Lester.
Hunter was reportedly working two jobs at the time to support his five children. Lester’s other daughter, Debbie Allen, says Hunter was working his last shift that night to have Christmas money for his kids.
There was a fresh snow on the ground, and the only set of tire tracks on the road belonged to Sheriff Hopkins and the suspect. Hunter had been dead for about an hour when Hopkins arrived. His personal history indicates there were six shell casings on the floor next to the body.
It didn’t take long for Hopkins to figure out who did it, but he couldn’t prove it.
“He suspected the guy was someone he knew. He followed tire tracks … and determined the boy’s mother was (one of his neighbors),” Bryan explains. “He remembered that he’d once gotten after (Gordon) for shooting a gun (at) a tree. My dad went and dug through the tree and got the bullet out.”
After speaking with his mom — who provided an alibi for the boy’s whereabouts that night — they tracked Gordon down. Gordon’s attorney surrendered him to the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office at 2:40 p.m. on Feb. 8, 1968, Lester’s written account says. Ultimately, he confessed and went to prison for a time.
“He went to prison over in Boise. A couple years later, he was able to get a college education and get married while he was still (incarcerated),” Wygans says, explaining there was a big push for rehabilitating inmates at the time. “I don’t think anybody paid for (Hunter’s) five children to go to college, so it’s a sore spot with me.”
A dominated woman, a hot-headed man and a dead baby
In the summer of 1965, Pansy Jones and her boyrfriend, Leo Daniels, of South Dakota, got a job working in the apple harvest in Idaho Falls. They had a baby together, whom they named Ellen Mae Jones. On August 4, they crossed the border into Wyoming. For reasons Wygans didn’t explain, the baby was killed.
The body was buried in Idaho near Palisades “covered with wood debris and limbs,” wrote Lester.
With the assistance of Boy Scout troops and other law enforcement agencies, Sheriff Hopkins was able to find the baby’s body after three days of searching.
An autopsy revealed the baby’s stomach was empty at the time of death and there was severe trauma to the body, Hopkins wrote.
“I figured (Daniels) beat the child to death over a period of weeks or months,” Hopkins’ personal account says. “The baby cried all the time because it was hurting and its stomach was empty because it could not eat.”
When Lester questioned Jones, she initially said the baby died from pneumonia but eventually admitted Daniels had been beating her.
“The final blow to the baby was when Daniels took it by the feet and swung its head against the car fender,” Lester wrote.
Daniels and Jones both went to prison, but Wygans says Jones only served a three year sentence. There were other factors surrounding her involvement in the baby’s death.
“It seemed to me that Pansy Jones was an immature young woman of below average intelligence who was easily dominated by a man. I knew less about Daniels but I was sure he was easily emotionally upset and a hot head,” Hopkins’ written history says.
Hopkins indicated he didn’t believe Jones wanted to kill her baby and was sympathetic to her loss. It was a case that haunted him for many years.
“I still remember how upset my dad was over that situation,” Wygans says. “That crime would’ve never been solved without him.”
Today, the baby’s remains are buried in the Rose Hill Cemetery in Idaho Falls. Bryan and his siblings have memories of visiting the gravesite and placing flowers on the headstone.
Hopkins’ legacy
Lester was re-elected for a second term in 1969, but he stepped down about a year into it because he was offered a high-paying federal job with the U.S. Department of Justice. He went on to serve in other capacities on the state and federal level before retiring sometime in the 2000s.
Wygans is proud of the fact that her father had a long and prosperous career, despite growing up poor and never obtaining a high school diploma.
“He ended up graduating from the FBI Academy. He took many college courses … and he improved a lot of his investigation skills by reading. He was self-taught in so many ways,” she says.
Hopkins’ example inspired some of his posterity to go into law enforcement. Allen has a degree in law enforcement and recently retired from the Juvenile Corrections Department in St. Anthony. Several of Hopkins’ nephews in Texas are currently working in law enforcement as well.
Bryan and Wygans say their father was always there for them and they’re going to miss his advice, example and stories.
Hopkins leaves behind his wife, Deanna, seven children and many grandchildren.
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