Eight years later, justice finally served

Posted 11/4/14

Block’s family had urged her to get a wheelchair ramp and home oxygen, but she didn’t want either of those things, because “he” might see them; “he” might realize she was sick and return to kill her.

Block succumbed to her ailments in …

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Eight years later, justice finally served

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Man gets seven to 10 years in prison for 2006 assault, counterfeit cash

Cynthia “Syndie” Block was dying of cancer, five years and 250 miles removed from the attack, yet still she feared the man who’d broken into her Powell apartment and inexplicably, brutally beaten her.

Block’s family had urged her to get a wheelchair ramp and home oxygen, but she didn’t want either of those things, because “he” might see them; “he” might realize she was sick and return to kill her.

Block succumbed to her ailments in October 2011, but “the man who beat her up killed her five years before cancer took her,” said Rennie Gray-Tupy, Block’s oldest sister.

In her last hours, Block remained haunted by the assault and certain that police would never catch the man; Gray-Tupy, however, said she promised to do everything in her power to bring the assailant to justice.

Neither she nor Powell police forgot about the case and on Oct. 22 — more than eight years after the beating and three years after Block’s death — a former Powell resident with a long criminal history was convicted of the crime.

Joseph Gould, 40, pleaded no contest to a felony charge of burglary in connection with the 2006 break-in and was sentenced to seven to 10 years in prison.

“I don’t know if you guys realize how damn lucky you are, but you guys have a hell of a crew,” Gray-Tupy said of local enforcement.

By pleading no contest, Gould admitted the state had enough evidence to convict him — specifically DNA evidence that tied him to Block’s apartment — but didn’t explicitly admit he’d committed the crime.

The sentence approved by District Court Judge Steven Cranfill was part of a package plea deal. It involved the Park County Attorney’s Office reducing an original count of aggravated (armed) burglary and dismissing counts of aggravated assault and forgery while Gould accepted the prison time, pleaded no contest to the reduced burglary charge and guilty to two counts of forgery.

The forgery charges related to his passing counterfeit cash in Powell in 2012 (see related story below).

“All I’d like to say is since before these crimes (were prosecuted), I have started to change my life around, your honor,” said Gould. He said he’d started going to church, being a family man, caring for his elderly mother-in-law and successfully running a roofing company while living in Worland.

“I just plan on going down, doing what I need to do and getting out and getting back to a normal, productive life,” Gould said.

His court-appointed attorney, Brigita Krisjansons of Cody, said Gould had told her many times that “he wants to get this part of his life behind him.”

Back in 2006, Gould was in and out of trouble with the law. He was out on parole for a 2000 burglary in Idaho and on supervised probation for March 2006 convictions for larceny and burglary in Big Horn County, state records show.

Meanwhile, Block was spending her 2006 summer working as a temporary certified nursing assistant for Powell Valley Healthcare. As a traveling CNA, she was staying in an apartment provided by the health care organization.

She awoke early one July morning to a man breaking into the residence, beating her in the face with a hard object and yelling, “Where is your phone?”

The man grabbed her cell phone and fled.

Responding Powell police officers found Block covered in blood, crying and saying she couldn’t understand why someone would do that to her.

“It was about as senseless as it gets,” said Gray-Tupy, Block’s sister.

Police never found a motive for the attack.

For years, they didn’t have a suspect, either.

It was ultimately a call from the Wyoming State Crime Lab in the middle of last year that led to solving the case. A staffer at the Cheyenne lab had called Powell Police Investigator Mike Hall, wondering what to do with the evidence that had been collected from Block’s apartment in 2006.

After looking through the list of materials, Hall concluded that, “I think there’s some things we can do here.”

He and lab staffers searched through the inventory for things to test. Some ideas didn’t pan out, but a couple items did: the laboratory was able to pull a DNA profile from a male hair found in Block’s bedsheets and a partial profile from blood left behind on the rock apparently used to bludgeon her.

On Dec. 9, 2013, Hall got a call from the crime lab’s Scott McWilliams: the hair had come back as a match for Gould (whose DNA was in a database of convicted felons) and the blood on the rock was also consistent with Gould’s DNA.

That, combined with police’s knowledge that Gould was living in Powell at the time, essentially made law enforcement’s case.

Gray-Tupy wishes Gould would have received 20 years in prison, but also feels satisfaction in that he’s basically losing the same amount of his life to prison that she feels he took from Block.

“He took a girl who never knew a stranger, was bouncy, was full of bubbles, was full of piss and vinegar, got along with mostly everybody — and he turned her into a girl who was scared to go to the bathroom by herself at night,” Gray-Tupy said.

Block, 46 years old at the time of her death, stopped her work as a CNA after the attack, Gray-Tupy said. She was a mother (her daughter is now a CNA), grandmother, sister, aunt and niece.

Gray-Tupy, who lives in Kansas, expressed deep gratitude on behalf of her family for the work of law enforcement — from Powell police to the Park County Attorney’s Office — in closing the case.

Even though the case was old and probably difficult, “they went after it and they got it,” Gray-Tupy said, adding that others might not have pursued the case.

Gray-Tupy said the sentence brought her a little bit of peace, adding, “I don’t know that there’s any way for Syndie to have any clue, (but) if there is, she has peace.”

Gould has already served more than 10 months in jail, unable to post a $30,000 bond since his December 2013 arrest. As part of his sentence, he must pay $471.58 to Powell Valley Healthcare for the damage to the apartment.

Court records indicate it was at least Gould’s fifth conviction for burglary.

It was Joseph Gould’s sweatshirt that first helped Powell police tie him to the $520 of counterfeit bills that he passed in town around Christmas 2012.

Police received surveillance footage of a man passing $320 of the bogus $20 bills at Hansel’s & Gretel’s. (Suspiciously, police learned, the man had paid for each new drink with a $20 instead of his change.) Police couldn’t make out the man on the video, but were able to read the logo of an Illinois company on the man’s sweatshirt.

Officers contacted the business and learned they did have an employee — Gould — who’d been in Powell over the Christmas holiday.

In an April 2013 interview with Powell Police Investigator Mike Hall and U.S. Secret Service Agent Rick Near, Gould came clean about having known the currency was bogus. Gould said he’d gotten the money from his boss in Illinois and that she and her family had shown him how to make counterfeit cash.

Around the same time police caught on to Gould, his boss’ daughter was nabbed passing counterfeit bills (apparently made with an Epson inkjet printer) at an Iowa casino. She received a 13-month sentence in federal prison.

On Oct. 22, in coordination with another case, Gould was ordered by District Court Judge Steven Cranfill to serve seven to 10 years in prison on two felony counts of forgery, pay $585 to the court and pay back the $520 worth of bogus money he passed in Powell.

— CJ Baker

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