FUGITIVE CAUGHT: Pease apprehended in Fort Collins, ending long manhunt

A more than two-month search for wanted fugitive Anthony Pease of Byron ended Friday with the fugitive’s capture in Fort Collins, Colorado. Pease, 39, had been on the lam since early November in the wake of felony sexual abuse charges.

Pease, who also has used the last name Abraham, is facing “multiple sex charges against children,” according to information in November from the U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force. A U.S. Marshals wanted posting at the time said Pease was facing six counts of felony sexual assault involving a minor.

Pease was last seen in Byron on November 1, 2025, according to an alert posted on the Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page on November 6, which said Pease fled to avoid a felony warrant. The alert described him as a 39-year-old male approximately 5-11, 180 pounds, with blonde or red hair and blue eyes.

The U.S. Marshals Service joined the hunt on November 19, issuing an alert from the agency’s Wyoming Fugitive Task Force and offering a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to Pease’s arrest, later increasing the reward to $2,000.

According to Sheriff Ken Blackburn, Pease is facing a variety of charges in addition to the sexual assault charges. He said state law precludes him from speaking about any charges of a sexual nature, but he stated in an interview Tuesday, “Currently, we’re looking at a stolen vehicle and at least two burglaries, one of which is an aggravated burglary potentially in Park County. An aggravated burglary means that there was a weapon involved, whether they stole a weapon or used a weapon. So those are two additional charges, and then there are several other charges, and we’re just beginning to investigate a lot of what transpired in the last 60 days as far as other violations; we expect there will be several.”

Blackburn and deputy Keri Angell said Pease was also wanted by the Wyoming Dept. of Corrections for a parole violation related to a felony conviction of strangulation of a household member out of Park County in 2019. He was paroled in May of 2025.

“So there’s the rest of that sentence hanging over him,” Blackburn noted.

The search

Since the alert to be on the lookout for Pease went out in early November, there have been numerous sightings of “suspicious persons” in Byron and the surrounding area, and the community – especially Byron – has been on edge. The Sheriff’s Office reported a verified sighting of Pease in Byron on Saturday, Dec.13.

Blackburn said he believes Pease did not leave the area until last week.

“He has stayed in this area between Powell and Lovell for the entire 60 days, for the most part, and we will find that out further in the investigation,” the sheriff said. “The investigation includes cell phone use and a lot of different things, but it will have a lot of forensic components to it including social media and various communication devices.

“Many of the sightings were credible, certainly not all, but many of them were credible. One of the things about law enforcement is that it’s a lot like hunting any kind of big game animal. You go figure out your quarry, figure out their patterns, figure out their habits.”

Blackburn called the search for Pease a “cat and mouse game” but a very serious game in regard to the safety of citizens.

“It was considered very deadly serious by us and for protecting the citizens, and we ramped up a lot of our patrol in the communities as well as the other local law enforcement agencies,” he said. “We changed our tactics a lot to keep various people off base, and when I say various people, I mean not only Mr. Pease, but we believe that he probably received help from some members of the community. We knew that we were being watched, as well, on a lot of the things that we did. We do have proof that he was communicating with some of the people in the communities, and that will all be brought out in the ongoing investigation.”

The sheriff said Pease likely spent much of the past 60 days or so in the river bottom area near the Shoshone River south of Byron, an area thick with trees and brush and notoriously difficult to navigate, providing many places to hide. Generally warm temperatures and lack of snow, and the resulting lack of tracks, played a role in his lengthy evasion, Blackburn said. But the heavy foliage was the main impediment.

“One deputy described it very accurately: You could put 20-30 people side by side and walk through that brush and push out 20 deer in front of you. You could turn right around with those same people, go the other direction and push out 20 more deer.”

He believes Pease would sometimes stay in warm oil field pump houses and shacks and also used deer blinds and holes in the ground. He may have found food in some trailers and could have had some food given to him, as well.

“It was really smart to stay down there, but we knew he couldn’t stay down there forever,” Blackburn said.

He added that he’s glad Pease was apprehended out of the area, because while he doesn’t believe Pease was dangerous to the general public, it may have been a different story with law enforcement, including an ambush situation.

“All profiles indicated he was going to be confrontational with law enforcement if he had the chance,” Blackburn said. “And so it was a fine line for us, and that’s one of the reasons that people didn’t see us maneuvering around a lot. We didn’t want to put the public into any crosshairs, and we kept the focus on us as much as possible.”

The big break

Pease reportedly stole a pickup truck in the Cowley area on January 7 and drove to a friend he had in Cheyenne, then continued on to Colorado. The truck was identified and entered into the law enforcement regional system, then found parked on a street in Fort Collins on Friday.

“He did steal a vehicle from one of the local farms when some of the people were on vacation, so it wasn’t immediately missed, and then as soon as it was missed, we were able to input the description of that vehicle,” Blackburn said. “You can’t outrun Motorola. And so that was immediately forwarded, and that gave us the opportunity to start tracking in real time. It wasn’t very long before that vehicle started matching descriptions, and then we were able to put the marshals and the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation on it, and they were able to successfully track him with that and other means into Colorado. The Fort Collins Police Department located the vehicle and prepared a plan to surround him and execute what we call a dynamic, high profile felony arrest.

“He was parked on a curb and was coming out of a food bank. They had 14 officers on a shift and an arrest team and a SWAT team. This kid never knew what hit him. He’s in the Larimer County Jail in Fort Collins. The Department of Corrections and our county attorney are working on extradition, getting him back into Wyoming.”

Many thanks

In his Facebook post Friday, Blackburn thanked a long list of law enforcement and emergency response agencies in Big Horn and Park counties and at the state level, along with “many private citizens who came forward to make their community safer.”

He added, “We couldn’t have done it without you. I’m sure I have forgotten some others, and some wish to remain anonymous. This is an example of people coming together to protect the vulnerable in our community.”

Most of all, Blackburn said, he appreciates the work of his deputies, who worked tirelessly on the case.

“It’s kind of expected that we do our job, but these guys went above and beyond, and they spent countless hours through the holidays away from their families monitoring things and making sure that they were visible to keep him on his toes,” he said. “We knew we were being watched as much as we were looking for anybody else, and that’s strategically exactly why we did it. I don’t think any of us really got any rest over the holidays. It’s been a year.”

Blackburn had one last message to give to the public.

“Crime is getting worse in the Big Horn Basin. It’s getting more serious all the time,” he said, adding that people need to start locking their doors and taking other precautions.

“This was probably one of the turning point cases (for people) to realize that things are changing in the Big Horn Basin, and one of the big pushes we’ve had is for people to be safe.”