TORRINGTON – Not much has changed in the small community of Torrington in 20 years. Throughout the passing of time, buildings and businesses remain the same while faces come and go. Twenty years ago, I was elbow-deep in my first reporting job with Wyoming Newspapers Inc., writing the agriculture beat for a tri-state publication. I saw the walls of the Telegram office once a week. 

I will never forget the day I glanced at our paper rack and as I passed by, a face, plastered on the front page, caught my attention. I froze in my tracks when I discovered the photo was of a missing Torrington woman whom I happened to know, Renee Diane Yeargain.

I met Renee when she was hired to work beside me at the Little Moon Lake Super Club near the Wyoming/Nebraska state line in the late spring of 2003. Renee was a colorful soul with a large heart and we connected instantly. Both young mothers, Renee and I shared a friendship, not even 20 years could break. 

“What authorities thought to be a child abuse case with child abandonment now has police and family members wondering what really happened to a Torrington woman,” Denise Heilburn wrote in the Torrington Telegram on Friday, April 15, 2005.

Heilburn went on to explain Renee a 24-year-old mother of four, had been missing since August 10, 2004, however, there was no information released to the press until suspicions started to arise within the community regarding her whereabouts.

“The story the Torrington Police Department got from her boyfriend of three years, Josh Minter, was that she had left and abandoned her four children on August 9. He reportedly took the three kids to former foster parents, then called department of family services the day following her departure. Minter kept the infant since it is his and Yeargain’s son together,” Heilburn explained in the front-page story. 

According to Heilburn’s article, Torrington Police Detective Lieutenant Jeff Lamm investigated Renee’s disappearance. 

“’The next day is when we opened the missing person’s case,’ said Torrington Police Detective Lt. Jeff Lamm.’ On August 12 (2004), Yeagain’s white 1987 Subaru station wagon was found at the Meriden rest stop between Cheyenne and Torrington. In the car officers found keys, a cell phone and a purse, which contained her wallet, checkbook and a few other items, but no money,” Heilburn said. 

“Lamm said it was reported that Minter was home with all of the children when Yeargain left on August 9, and that the oldest child told officers that the two adults had a bit of an argument about Yeargain wanting to bring a rat and a snake into the home. Minter told police that Yeargain had said something about hooking up with some bikers and making some extra money tattooing,” the article reads. “’I think she left town on her own,’ Lamm said when asked if he suspected foul play.” Heilburn quoted in the article dated April 15, 2005.

Diane Van Horn, Renee’s mother, spoke with Heilburn for an interview. 

“Van Horn said law enforcement officials from Douglas searched her home twice for her daughter. ‘Why would they search my home when I’ve been in Torrington looking for her?’  she said. ‘They need to be searching elsewhere. Maybe my daughter missing isn’t a priority with them, but it sure is a priority with me,’” Van Horn told Heilburn during the April interview. 

Over the years, I have gotten to watch Renee’s daughter grow from a toddler into a spitting image of her mother. 

“I could know all the words in the world and still never know how to describe my mom,” Angel Yeargain, Renee’s daughter said. “Renee Yeargain went missing when I was only three years old. You’d think I wouldn’t have any memories of her or what my life used to be like, but you’d really be surprised to know that’s just not true. My first memories are of my life, with her. Coloring in a Johnny Bravo coloring book in our living room, our car accident, the house fire. The house fire specifically is probably the closest memory I’ll have of her and what she might have looked like.” 

Just a few months before Renee vanished, the home she shared with her children and boyfriend in Torrington, caught on fire. 

“Local residents Renee Yeargain and Josh Minter received an unexpected phone call last Friday (January 2, 2004) as they were running errands. Their house had caught on fire. The family, who lived at 1717 East J Street, is now trying to put all the pieces back together again,” Marsha Coffield wrote in a January 7, 2004, Torrington Telegram. 

Coffield continued to explain, through the investigative efforts of Torrington Fire Chief, Dennis Estes, the home received extensive damage to the master bedroom as well as smoke damage throughout the house. 

“The house received at least $80,000 in damage, Estes estimates,” Coffield stated. “Yeargain said that there might be a few furniture items that can be salvaged, but everything else is completely ruined.”

“’The insurance adjusters have to come and look at the house yet,’ Yeargain said. ‘” They have to decide if the house will be a total loss,’” Renee told Coffield. 

The house was later deemed a total loss. 

The last time I saw Renee, she walked past my office at the Telegram in the early summer of 2004.  I rushed out the door to greet her. As we caught up for a brief moment, she told me she was getting married in a few short weeks. She was excited to start a life and it was a life Renee worked hard for. 

“The raw unfiltered truth about Renee was that she was wild. She, much like me and our many other family members, suffered from an unhealthy mix of mental illness and drug addiction. She was free. She was genuine and real,” Angel explained. “It wasn’t always a good thing, but she was a pure person to her core. Not long after I was born, I was told we were taken by the state.”

During our time at Little Moon, Renee had confided in me regarding her struggles and how hard she had worked to overcome losing her children, addressing her mental health and becoming sober. 

“The thing people don’t understand is that when a child is taken like that it’s very hard to get them back. You can’t just show up and be like ‘Hey guys, I’m all good now.’  She really had to put in the work to get sober and get help,” Angel said. “No one is perfect, and I could never hold something like that over her head, but when she went missing it seems like that’s what everyone did.”

At the time of Renee’s disappearance, the April 2005 article Heilburn wrote explained Renee had been working on obtaining her CAN certification. She was working at County Vila in Torrington and following her passion in a local tattoo shop in Scottsbluff. 

“Let me make it very clear, as far as I know and have been told she was sober and, on her way, to becoming a CNA when she seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. And because of her troubled background, the worried calls were quickly swept under the rug,” Angel said. “Things were said along the lines of ‘Oh, this is normal’ and ‘She’ll show back up eventually.’ This case was disgustingly mishandled and because of that my family has suffered.”

“Yeargain’s mother, Diane Van Horn maintained, at the time, her daughter wouldn’t have left and not reached out to her. Despite Van Horn acknowledging a history of drug abuse, Van Horn told reporters she had been working to rehabilitate her life,” Logan Daily wrote in an October 2022 Torrington Telegram article. 

“Her finance, at the time, without a hesitation or a second thought, packed my older siblings and me up and basically dropped us off at our foster parents’ house,” Angel recalled. “Hardly any time had passed, and he was getting rid of every remaining trace of her. We were all split up. My older sister went to what I can only remember as almost a hospital, my older brother stayed with our foster parents, I ended up in the custody of my father, and as for my younger brother, he stayed with Josh simply because, well that was his dad.”

Throughout the years, Renee’s case has passed through many different hands as members of the police department circulated but a few folks around the community, still in law enforcement, remember the case well.

“I wish I had good news for you, but I don’t,” Goshen County Sheriff, Kory Fleenor said as he sat across from me this week. “My only involvement was to help Scoleri get the search warrant. I can remember when it happened. This was the first time the city asked me for help on this case. I didn’t want to just let him (Scoleri) type up a search warrant and I sign it. I wanted to work the search warrant myself.”

Anthony Scoleri from the Torrington Police Department (TPD) held Renee’s case for a short time. Court documentation filed on June 28, 2018, in the Circuit Court of Eight Judicial District, State of Wyoming indicates a warrant for search and seizure was issued on June 25, 2018, for property inhabited by Renee’s fiancé and his mother. 

“In furtherance of the investigation of this case, during the month of June 2018, Goshen County Search and Rescue, [TPD] Detective [Doug] Weeks, [TDP] Detective Scoleri, and your affiant have met about performing cadaver searches of several locations of interest,” Fleenor expressed in his deposition affidavit in support of warrant file June 25, 2018. 

The 2018 affidavit expresses a search of the property began on Monday, June 18, 2018, at 5 a.m.

“Upon their arrival, detective Scoleri found that items had recently been burned in a burn pit which was approximately 16 feet long by 10 feet wide. These items include what appeared to be women’s clothing and a pair of women’s shoes,” the affidavit reads. “When detective Weeks and myself (Fleenor) arrived to ask for permission to search on Friday, June 15, 2018, there were no indications that anything had recently been burned. An in-house search of our records system produced an incident which had been called in on Sunday, June 17, 2018, by Cathy Minter, Josh’s mother. The incident was for a controlled burn which Cathy advised that she would be burning a trash pit,” Fleenor explains. 

The 2018 court documents indicate a search was performed by Jerry Numon who was a member of the Goshen County Search and Rescue and his nationally certified cadaver dog, “Pax”. 

“Your affiant knows from detective Scoleri’s research that cadaver dogs are specifically trained to locate only human remains. They can locate remains in all stages of decomposition which includes bones, teeth and hair,” Fleenor explains in the 2018 affidavit. “Cadaver dogs have been known to find gravesites from nearly 200 years ago. They can detect decomposition through water and many feet of ground cover.” 

Pax alerted Numon during the 2018 search. 

“Your affiant learned that due to Pax alerting another certified cadaver dog would be called to the scene to verify. Capital City Canine from Cheyenne was contacted and it was decided that four certified cadaver dogs would come to the scene on July 19, 2019 (the next day) to verify and continue the search.”

“Your affiant learned that all four [Capital City Canine from Cheyenne] dogs alerted around the area of the fire pit in seven spots. One of the dogs alerted in the exact spot at the fire pit that Numon’s dog Pax alerted the day before [July 18, 2019],” the Fleenor’s swore 2018 affidavit reads. “Due to the above-listed facts, I have cause to believe that human remains are present in the fire pit located at 5005 Road 61. I respectfully request that a search warrant be issued so that human remains may be exhumed for positive identification.” 

A search was conducted. 

Attached to the June affidavit deep within the copies of Numon and Pax’s national cadaver training certificates was a single piece of paper tittled, “TPD inventory receipt,” which mentions the discovery of “approximately 25 miscellaneous, unidentified bones”. The signature indicating who the evidence was “received from” reads Kory Fleenor. 

Unconfirmed reports have circulated stating the bones were not human. 

“I want to say I heard that, but I can’t tell you that for a positive. I do remember hearing at some point, a period of time after we did that search, I don’t remember exactly what was said. But they said something about how they were animal bones,” Fleenor explained this week. “Once I crawled out of that hole and they decided they were done, my involvement was done again.”

Through years of research, I was able to track down many sources who claimed the search was just “called off”. With every scoop of dirt which was removed from the area where the cadaver dogs alerted water would quickly fill the hole. 

“Every scoop that was taken out, I wouldn’t even say every scoop that was taken out. It got to the point where you could still see the water coming up after it should have leveled off,” Fleenor said this week. “I don’t remember any of the [Wyoming] DCI (Department of Criminal Investigations) agents. I think it was a collective agreement between DCI between the city. When I say the city, whoever was there on behalf of the police department. I really can not tell you who for sure called that off. I really don’t remember. It truly got to the point where all we were bringing up was a bucket of water. I can’t tell you who said, ‘We’re done,’’ Fleenor said. 

In the last six years, not much light has been shed on Renee’s disappearance, but the case continues to be passed around by detectives. 

“The [Wyoming] Division of Criminal Investigation has led the investigation since December 2021 with assistance from our fellow law enforcement partners in Goshen County,” Commander Ryan Cox with the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation released in a brief statement Wednesday. 

Twenty years later, the absence of a mother has left avoid only Angel’s words can explain.

“You always hear about stuff like this happening. The small-town missing person mystery, the who done it and where has she gone? No one ever thinks it could happen to them, but this is my life,” Angel explained. “I’m going on 24 this year. I have recurring nightmares about her. Ones where my brain is trying DESPERATELY to remember her face, but instead it’s nothing more than an ever-changing mash-up of photos you’ve seen and glimpses of possible memories. And her voice? I can’t remember what she sounds like anymore. So, when she speaks to me it’s many voices all at once trying to fight for dominance. I will never get that back. A voice that once brought me so much comfort for the first years of my life will never be heard by my ears again.”

“Renee’s case information is listed in NCIC, NamUs, Wyoming DCI Missing Person Clearinghouse, and Wyoming Cold Case Database. DCI has asked and continues to ask for the public’s assistance and information,” Cox said. “Anyone with information is asked to call the DCI Cold Case Team at 307-777-7181.” 

Attempts to contact Minter were unsuccessful.