Two teenagers have been charged with in connection with the murder of a Wyoming man they decided was a pedophile.
The Sublette County Sheriff’s Office said that Dakota Farley, 23, was found dead with significant injuries at his home in Big Piney on Wednesday afternoon last week.
In the course of their investigation, deputies identified Rowan Littauer, 19, as Farley’s killer, arresting him on Friday and charging him with first degree murder and mutilation of a human body. Orion Schlesinger, 18, was also arrested, charged with conspiracy to commit first degree murder and felony theft.
A probable cause statement said that deputies launched their investigation after receiving text messages that said “Rowan shot Dakota with a bow and 2 hours” and “one less pedifile (sic) now,” Law&Crime reported. They did not say who sent those messages.
The affidavit specifically noted that deputies had no “verified information” of any illicit behavior between Farley and minors and did not say why the two teens thought the man was a pedophile or why they thought they should kill him instead of reporting him to law enforcement.
The document says deputies met with Littauer, who told them he’d “shot a man with a bow and two arrows” then used his phone’s map app to show them the location of Farley’s home. He told them the other teen, Schlesinger, was there when he killed him.
Police went to the home and found Farley’s body in his living room. They also saw eight “circular shaped wounds” with BBs lodged inside the victim’s head.
Investigators said there was no accompanying blood with those wounds, so they believe he was shot after he died.
The affidavit said that the two teenagers made the plan to go to Farley’s house on February 1 and kill him. Littauer told detectives he got a “compound bow, broadhead tipped arrows, and a BB gun from his own house and then they walked to Farley’s home, about a mile away, where they found Farley standing in his living room.
Littauer shot Farley with arrows “through the right arm and into his chest, resulting in his nearly-instantaneous death,” the document says. Then he fired eight BBs into Farley’s head. Schlesinger took Farley’s .22 caliber revolver from the home.
Police said they recovered both the bow and arrow and the BB gun.
Littauer and Schlessinger are being held on $5 million bonds with a court hearing set for Thursday.
