Fallen Officers

The Wyoming Game Wardens Association conducted a ceremony to honor the service and sacrifice of game wardens Bill Lakanen and Don Simpson at Jack Creek Park on the Medicine Bow National Forest west of Saratoga on August 8, 2015. Lakanen and Simpson were murdered by John Malten, a German immigrant, at his cabin on Jim Creek on October 31, 1945. Approximately 60 people attended the memorial service and heard accounts of the incident by Bill Robertson, president of the Wyoming Game Wardens Association and Greybull Game Warden, and Saratoga Game Warden Biff Burton. The Wyoming Game Wardens Association Honor Guard also gave a 21-gun salute and played taps for the solemn occasion.

On August 6, 2014 Wyoming Game Wardens placed a memorial plaque near the site where Game Wardens Bill Lakanen and Don Simpson were murdered on October 31, 1945 in Nugget Gulch in the Sierra Madres. The team of Wardens included Daniel Beach, Jason Hunter, Brady Frude, Kelly Todd, Jason Sherwood, Irah Leonetti and John Demaree. As the Wardens finished for the day and headed back to camp, a rainbow appeared over the site.

October 2016 marked 25 years since the morning of October 16, 1991 when a chartered plane took off with two bear biologists in search of a radio collared grizzly bear that may have been wounded by an elk hunter. The plane never returned to the Jackson Airport and remained lost until nearly four years later.



The fatal crash launched the most extensive search in Wyoming history and left a wound in the hearts of families, Game and Fish coworkers, regional bear researchers and many Wyomingites in general. Lost were Game & Fish employees Kirk Inberg and Kevin Roy along with private pilot Ray Austin. Inberg, 28, was a game warden with the responsibility of investigating conflicts between grizzly bears and humans. He was a Riverton native who earned a bachelor's degree in wildlife biology from the University of Montana. He started his Game and Fish career in May 1982. Kirk worked on the construction crew, on the grizzly bear aversive conditioning research study team and was promoted to the Medicine Bow Game Warden district before returning to the bear program in 1990.

Roy, 26, had been a special projects grizzly biologist with the Game and Fish since June 1990. He graduated from high school in El Paso, Texas before earning a bachelor's degree in wildlife biology from Texas A&M University and a masters from the University of Montana.

Austin, 47, was an experienced pilot logging over 6,200 flight hours including 1,800 in a Maule M5-235, the plane flown that day. He had worked for Western Air Research of Alta, Wyoming for 18 months.

Nearly four years after the crash, a bugling elk led a pair of hunters to the wreckage on Soda Mountain near the Fremont-Teton county line between Togwotee Pass and Yellowstone National Park. It appeared the plane crashed at a steep angle and all three men were killed upon impact. Only two trees were clipped and wreckage was scattered only about 200 feet. The scene was so obscure, even with the exact location it took two sets of eyes in a subsequent flight 30 minutes to locate the wreckage. A brass plaque now commemorates the site. In 1992 the East Fork Wildlife Habitat Management Area near Dubois was also renamed for Inberg and Roy, and a memorial was placed just west of the Dennison cabin up the East Fork Road.