Jimmy Parks

Although a Cody man insisted under oath that he’d been wrongly accused, a jury rejected his account and concluded that he had in fact sexually abused a teen. Following two days of deliberations, the dozen Park County residents voted unanimously on Monday to convict Jimmy Parks of all three felony charges he faced.

The 50-year-old now faces the potential of a lengthy prison sentence.

Over the course of a weeklong trial, Parks and his attorneys asserted that the teen was known to lie and that law enforcement had rushed to judgment.

However, Park County prosecutors stood behind the victim, pointing to biological evidence that gave credence to the teen’s claims and arguing Parks had destroyed potential evidence.

Deputy Park County Prosecuting Attorney Marina Tucker told jurors in her closing argument on Friday that Parks had preyed upon a child “who he thought no one would ever believe.”

“Thank God [the boy] had enough trust in someone to come forward about what was happening …,” Tucker said later in her remarks.

Initial arrest

The case began on Oct. 16, when the teen told a counselor that, on multiple occasions, Parks had shown him pornography, touched his genitals and had him touch Parks’ genitals. He was uncertain on the timeline, but indicated it had gone on for some time. 

The counselor notified law enforcement, who did their own interview with the teen.

Shortly after hearing the boy’s account, Cody police pulled Parks over and arrested him. Parks said they didn’t explain the charges or interview him beforehand, and he ultimately refused to speak with police without an attorney.

One of his lawyers, Tim Blatt, said it wasn’t as if authorities were going to let Parks go free, arguing they’d already decided he was guilty.

“He did the right thing saying, ‘I want an attorney,’” Blatt told the jury.

Parks has been unable to make bond since his initial arrest, held in the Park County Detention Center on bail that was initially set at $100,000 cash and later hiked to $200,000.

While Parks was in custody, Cody police and the Park County Sheriff’s Office sought evidence that might bolster the teen’s claim.

Biological evidence

The teen indicated that some of the abuse occurred at Parks’ since-shuttered IT business, PC Cowboys, and police gathered 14 samples of apparent biological material from Parks’ office.

One sample, collected from a floor mat beneath Parks’ computer chair, was determined to contain human semen. The Wyoming State Crime Laboratory concluded there was “very strong” evidence the semen contained DNA from Parks and another, unknown individual; Ashlee Lynch, a forensic analyst at the state lab, testified the second piece of DNA was “uninterpretable.”

In his testimony, Parks said the semen must have come from having sex with his wife in the office and that he didn’t know who the other DNA was from.

Searching a computer

Investigators also seized Parks’ work computer from his desk and found it had been used to access a trio of pornographic websites over 9,600 times; the teen had told law enforcement that Parks used the laptop to show him those three specific sites.

For his part, Parks testified that he’d left his computer unlocked and that the teen must have accessed the porn on his own. Parks added that, in his experience dealing with computers, a customer might have 600 or 700 pornography-related files on their machine; he said the more than 9,000 visits suggested that someone had repeatedly tried to pull up the sites but kept running into age verification restrictions.

Cody Police Det. Tyler Eubanks said Parks’ laptop had also been used to access the sites of some Las Vegas-based escort services and Omegle, a site where visitors were randomly paired with strangers from other parts of the world for a brief video chat.

Omegle “is very common amongst perpetrators of sex crimes, particularly child sex crimes,” Eubanks said, though he acknowledged on cross examination that he had no idea how the site was used in this instance.

Parks didn’t testify about Omegle and wasn’t asked about it, either.

A wiped cellphone

The teen also said Parks had shown pornography on his cellphone and authorities attempted to search that device, too. However, they struggled to find it.

According to court testimony, Parks had left the phone on his desk at work before being arrested; a PC Cowboys employee then turned it over to Parks’ wife, Amanda.

On Oct. 23, authorities began a court-authorized search of Parks’ home, looking for his phone and other evidence. Amanda was not home at the time, but in a 7:23 p.m. phone call with Deputy Jerimiah Ringler, she reportedly said she’d be home later.

At 8:21 p.m., Ringler tried calling Parks’ cellphone, and Amanda answered, saying she had “just picked up his phone from the office,” the deputy said. She turned the device over to authorities a short time later, but they found all of its data had been manually deleted or wiped at 8:19 p.m. — roughly two minutes before Ringler called.

That it was a manual deletion “means that somebody physically had it in their hand and pushed the button to wipe it,” Eubanks said.

Jimmy Parks said he knew nothing about the phone being wiped and that he did not tell his wife to delete that data.

When asked why Amanda would do so, Parks said he didn’t know.

“You would have to ask her,” he said.

A destroyed device

However, Parks did admit that — in a couple of calls he made from jail in October — he’d arranged for his wife to destroy a hard drive from the business. 

Though prosecutors didn’t play the clip for the jury, Parks reportedly told Amanda, “that thing can probably just get, umm, like, I know [one of the couple’s children] likes to break things into little tiny pieces, OK?”

“Yup,” Amanda replied.

Amanda has been charged with misdemeanor counts of accessory after the fact and conspiracy to commit accessory after the fact. She has pleaded not guilty.

Cody police and a PC Cowboys employee suspected that the hard drive held surveillance footage from the store, which police thought could back up the teen’s account.

However, Parks testified that it instead held sensitive “client information.”

He said he believed law enforcement was conducting a “fishing expedition” and didn’t want his clients dragged into it.

“It was not evidence,” Parks insisted to Deputy Park County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Eichele. “It was my client information, and I would have done everything I could to protect that information. … It was definitely something that I didn’t want you guys to have.”

When asked if the destruction of the device looked suspicious, Parks offered that, “I think it does now.”

He did not say, nor was he asked, where the surveillance footage was.

Weighing testimony

Much of the case centered around the teen’s credibility. Testimony indicated that, because of mental limitations, he functions at a level well below his age.

To accommodate his needs, the teen was allowed to testify from another part of the courthouse, with only two of the attorneys and an advocate in the room with him. Jurors, presiding District Judge Bobbi Overfield and observers watched his testimony via a live video feed in the courtroom.

In his testimony, the teen reiterated that he was sexually abused by Parks and that Parks showed him pornography.

However, the account differed in significant ways from his initial report to law enforcement. For example, unlike early accounts, he said that he’d objected to Parks’ conduct and that Parks had locked him in and restrained him. The wording that he used to describe the assaults was also notably different.

The teen was unclear on when exactly the abuse happened, but said it occurred more than 10 times.

“It happened a lot of times until I told somebody,” he said.

After the state rested, Parks’ other defense attorney, Sam Krone, asked Overfield to dismiss the counts against Parks.

“There are glaring inconsistencies in the alleged victim’s testimony [and] there’s no appropriate timeline of when these specific instances occurred,’ Krone argued.

However, Overfield denied the routine motion, noting in part that it’s up to the jury to weigh any inconsistencies in a witness’s testimony.

Questions of credibility

The defense then proceeded with its case, including presenting testimony from a half-dozen people who said the teen had a reputation for being untruthful.

A Cody woman who previously served as a respite care provider for the boy testified he would “kind of make things up to suit himself” and that she “couldn’t really trust the first thing he said.”

Dr. Adam Peters, who knew the boy both professionally and socially, told the jury that the teen is a “sweet kid, but just as you’d treat a 3- or a 4-year-old, you don’t believe everything that he says, and you try to check that for validity.”

The defense also presented evidence that the teen had been abused by other adults when he was younger.

Natasha McColl, who counseled the boy for over two years, testified “there was definitely early childhood trauma” and that the teen “definitely struggled to be truthful.”

McColl gave an example where the boy initially said he’d gotten in trouble for saying a bad word, but eventually acknowledged it was related to getting into art supplies. On cross examination, the therapist gave a second example in which the teen recalled suffering a broken bone in an accident that “didn’t happen.”

However, later testimony indicated the boy’s story about the accident was actually true. Further, the counselor that the teen initially confided in, Ashley Skates, painted a different picture of his truthfulness during the state’s case.

Skates said there were instances where the boy was dishonest, but that he would admit it when confronted and apologize.

“He understands the difference between the truth and a lie,” she testified, adding that the teen has a sense of responsibility.

According to court testimony, the boy also accused Parks of sexually abusing a different child and of planning to shoot another juvenile. However, the teen later acknowledged that he was just guessing about the other accusation of sexual abuse and had just made an assumption about a potential shooting because he’d seen Parks angry.

Questions of conduct

Meanwhile, witnesses for both the state and defense said they had never seen Parks act inappropriately toward a child. 

“There’s nothing that has transpired that would make me think that he [Parks] is a pedophile,” said Peters, who attends the same church as the Parkses.

However, Tucker, the prosecutor, later countered in her closing that, “I would put to you all today that child sexual abuse wouldn’t occur if it was just obvious to everybody …”

She called a former PC Cowboys employee as a rebuttal witness, who testified she had seen Parks be “aggressive.”

The former employee said Parks would be “bright and bubbly” when customers came into the shop, but “much different” when they left.

“There was a lot of yelling, high yelling, from Jimmy. A lot of swearing,” she said, specifically recalling altercations between Parks and another staffer. “And it sometimes felt hostile.”

Closing arguments

During his closing, Blatt asserted that the defense had likely shown Parks was innocent. However, he reminded jurors that their sole task was to determine whether the state had proven Parks guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

“If you don’t reach that high burden, [believing] ‘I don’t know, maybe he did, maybe he didn’t,’ then you have to return a verdict of not guilty,” Blatt said. 

He spent a significant portion of his hourlong remarks focusing on the teen’s credibility, arguing law enforcement should have vetted the teen’s account before arresting Parks.

“I think this whole thing could have been handled completely different,” Parks told jurors in his own testimony. “If a proper investigation would have been done, we wouldn’t be here.”

Blatt argued in closing that authorities “were not interested in his [Parks’] side of the story” and only started investigating after the arrest. He suggested it was a case of, “If you look for something hard enough, you’ll find it, even if it isn’t there.”

Tucker, however, disputed that idea.

“It takes a special kind of arrogance to destroy evidence and then say that law enforcement didn’t find enough evidence and do their job,” she said, asking jurors if they’d like to know what was on the destroyed hard drive and the wiped cellphone.

She also countered a comment Blatt made about the jurors not being there for the teen, but for Parks.

“We are here for [the teen] today,” Tucker said, adding, “This is his case, this is his life, he is the one that suffered from this situation.”

A verdict and more

After starting on Monday, April 13, the case was handed to the jury around 11:15 a.m. Friday. The 12-member panel deliberated until 7 p.m. that night, then returned to the courthouse at 8 a.m. Monday to start up again. They reached their guilty verdict around 3 p.m.

Sentencing will likely take place in a month or two. Parks’ charges could theoretically carry up to 80 years in prison, though there is no minimum.

Parks also continues to face a separate pair of felony perjury charges, which allege he lied to a judge about his financial assets and whether he owned a cellphone. 

In addition to the misdemeanor counts of accessory after the fact, Amanda Parks, also faces her own felony count of perjury, alleging she falsely told a judge she didn’t have any income.

She filed for divorce from Jimmy Parks in January, in a civil case that remains pending.