Kenneth Stone

A Cody man was impaired when he crashed into an oncoming car and injured four people in October, Park County prosecutors say — and they’re seeking to put him behind bars for the rest of his life.

Kenneth William Stone, 60, is alleged to have been under the influence of alcohol and a sleeping pill when he went into the wrong lane and drove into oncoming traffic east of Yellowstone National Park. Both he and the four occupants of the other vehicle were injured in the Oct. 6 crash, with one woman breaking her back, neck and sternum and being airlifted to Billings.

The Park County Attorney’s Office filed two felony charges against Stone in connection with the incident last week: aggravated assault and battery; and driving while under the influence of alcohol and a controlled substance, causing serious bodily injury.

The charges would normally carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, but with Stone having multiple prior felony offenses, the county attorney’s office wants to classify him as a “habitual criminal” and seek enhanced penalties.

“If you’re convicted … you could be sentenced to serve the rest of your life in incarceration,” Circuit Court Judge Bruce Waters warned Stone at an initial court hearing last week.

Citing concerns about public safety and Stone’s potential as a flight risk — he absconded to Australia while facing federal charges more than two decades ago — Judge Waters set bail at $750,000.

A whitewater scandal

Stone became infamous in 1994, when he destroyed a rock formation within a wild section of Arizona’s Salt River known as Quartzite Falls.

Then known as William Kenneth “Taz” Stoner, Stone said he and others had come to believe that the stretch of river within the Tonto National Forest was simply too dangerous; the year before, two rafters had drowned in Quartzite Falls, falling prey to a dangerous undertow created by an underwater ledge. So, Stone and seven other men — who became known as the “Quartzite Eight” — used a large amount of explosives to dislodge a massive chunk of rock and make the river easier to navigate.

News of the destruction and taming of Quartzite Falls quickly drew outrage from naturalists and the river rafting community; some accused Stone of having acted to boost the river outfitting business.

It was, the L.A. Times said, “the blast heard around the world of wilderness travel and whitewater rafting.” The sound was also heard within the U.S. Department of Justice, which brought criminal charges for destruction of federal property.

Shortly before he pleaded guilty in December 1994, Stone told the L.A. Times that he felt bad about violating a natural setting. However, he defended the group’s actions.

“We had a purpose that will benefit all people for years to come, and ultimately save lives,” Stone told the paper. “And if we’re guilty of anything, we’re probably guilty of weighing out human life as being worth more than that rock.”

Stone agreed to serve an 18-month prison sentence for altering the river, but then he failed to show up for his April 1995 sentencing hearing. Federal authorities would later learn that he’d fled to New Zealand and Australia with a fraudulent passport; Stone also obtained cash before he left, opening more than 15 credit accounts and fraudulently borrowing $145,343.02 from various credit card companies and other lenders, according to a summary from federal authorities.

Australian Federal Police caught up with him in April 1996 and he was extradited back to the U.S., finally being sentenced — for both the original case and a new one related to his flight — in 1998.

Stone served a 42-month federal sentence, paid full restitution and was allowed to end his supervised release early, in September 2002. And according to a criminal history report compiled by the federal government, he stayed out of trouble for the next decade-and-a-half.

The wrong bear

However, Stone came back on law enforcement’s radar in May 2017. That’s when he contacted the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in Cody to register a black bear he’d killed in the Shoshone National Forest.

But Game and Fish personnel quickly realized there was a problem: What Stone mistook for a black bear was actually a grizzly— a species that enjoys federal protections and cannot be hunted. It only got worse from there: Investigators with the Game and Fish, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives learned Stone had used a fake name to obtain his hunting license and, despite indicating he was an archer, Stone had shot the bear with a rifle. He had not only unlawfully killed a threatened species but had, as a felon, illegally possessed a firearm.

Stone pleaded guilty and was placed on five years of supervised release, also being ordered to pay $30,111 in court fines and fees and restitution for the dead bear; the grizzly’s two orphaned cubs, meanwhile, wound up being taken to the Riverside Discovery Center in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

Stone successfully completed his sentence in February 2020 — about three years earlier than expected.

“He has complied with the rules and regulations of supervision and is no longer in need of supervision,” U.S. Probation officers wrote, and U.S. District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl closed the case.

But then came the morning of Oct. 6.

‘He was totally in our lane’

Aaron Zellner, of Cincinnati, Ohio, was heading west along U.S. Highway 14/16/20, about 11 miles from Yellowstone’s East Entrance, when he saw Stone approaching in a 1997 Ford Ranger.

“He came around the corner and he was totally in our lane,” Zellner later told the Wyoming Highway Patrol.

Zellner said he waited for the Ranger to move back into the eastbound lane, but it never did.

“Approximately 50 yards out, Aaron [Zellner] hit his horn, began to brake and then swerved left to avoid a collision,” Patrol Lt. Lee Pence wrote in an affidavit included in court records. Zellner’s 2020 Dodge Charger and Stone’s Ford collided shortly after 9 a.m.

Zellner had been recording the drive with a mounted camera and captured an image just before impact. Pence said the photograph showed Stone in the wrong lane and making no apparent effort to correct his course.

“Rather,” the trooper wrote, “the vehicle is either drifting farther into the westbound lane or being steered left.”

Zellner and his girlfriend fractured their arms in the crash, while two family members in the back seat suffered more extensive injuries, the affidavit says. David Zellner reportedly suffered a fractured wrist, a cracked rib and a dislocated shoulder while Stephanie Zellner had to be flown to a Billings hospital via helicopter after breaking two vertebrae in her neck, one in her back and her sternum.

Stone suffered hip injuries in the crash, and Pence reported finding him “in a trance-like state.” A witness and an EMT both reported smelling alcohol on Stone’s breath, while Pence found “multiple prescription-type pills strewn within the cab of the truck.”

Additionally, Stone expressed confusion about where he’d been driving, had a hard time following commands from medical personnel at the scene and, hours later, repeatedly asked what time it was and whether anyone else had been injured, Pence’s affidavit alleges.

“This furthered my belief that Mr. Stone was impaired due to a combination of alcohol and medication,” Pence wrote.

Stone reported taking sleeping pills and muscle relaxers the previous evening and said he’d drank a “couple beers” before stopping around midnight, the affidavit says. If that timeline was correct, Pence said he didn’t think there would be any alcohol in Stone’s system.

However, when authorities drew a sample of Stone’s blood, about three hours after the crash, testing pegged his blood alcohol concentration at 0.021%.

That’s well below the 0.08% mark where a driver is too intoxicated to drive, but Pence noted the blood alcohol level would have been “much higher” had the blood been drawn closer to the crash.

Meanwhile, the blood testing also reportedly showed the presence of opiates and zolpidem — a sleeping medication that is not supposed to be taken in conjunction with alcohol. A person’s ability to drive can be impaired the day after they take zolpidem, the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s MedlinePlus service warns, separately adding that “alcohol can make the side effects of zolpidem worse.”

“I believe Mr. Stone’s similar impairment traits [were] shown the day of the crash,” Pence wrote. “He was unable to safely operate a motor vehicle, causing a serious injury crash, under ideal road conditions.”

Multiple aliases

During his investigation, Lt. Pence said he found no criminal history for “Kenneth Stone,” but he found multiple offenses, 18 aliases and nine different dates of birth tied to Stone’s Social Security number.

Park County prosecutors ultimately listed 11 aliases for Stone when they filed charges this month. In addition to similar variations on his name — William Kenneth Stoner, William Stone, William Kenneth Stone and Kenneth Stoner — the felony information suggests he’s also been known as Robert Renato Aalders, Wayne Anderson, Gene Alan Carpenter, Barry John Gamble, Collin Jeen Oostenrijk, Warren Curtis Reed and Robert John Tattley.

Circuit Court Judge Waters read off each of the names at Wednesday’s initial court hearing in the case.

“But one way or the other, you are the Kenneth Stone mentioned in this felony information, is that correct?” Waters asked.

“Yes, your honor,” Stone said.

The aggravated assault and battery charge alleges that, by crashing his vehicle into oncoming traffic while impaired, he “did knowingly cause bodily injury … with a deadly weapon.”

Aggravated assault and battery qualifies as a violent felony under Wyoming law and prosecutors can seek enhanced penalties for those crimes if the defendant has two prior felony convictions.

If the person has three or more prior felony convictions — as Stone does between the Quartzite Falls bombing, the flight to Australia and the illegal possession of the rifle in 2017 — prosecutors can seek a sentence of life in prison.

Bond arguments

On Wednesday, Deputy Park County Prosecutor Jack Hatfield argued Stone’s bond should be set at $1 million, citing “the very serious nature of the charges” and an “extreme flight risk.”

Hatfield brought up a note Stone penned to a judge in 1995, as he fled from federal authorities to Australia.

“I had to leave on short notice to God knows where,” Stone wrote to the presiding judge at the time, adding an 18-month prison sentence would have been “just too much.”

Hatfield argued that, “when he’s facing life in prison, he [Stone] has every reason to flee the jurisdiction and not show up for court.”

The prosecutor also noted Stone obtained a $250,000 grant from the Wyoming Business Council’s Coronavirus Business Relief Endurance Fund — a pool of federal money intended to assist businesses impacted by the pandemic — in early December.

“It appears to be the same tricks that he did back in ‘94 as far as obtaining monies so that he can flee the country,” Hatfield charged.

However, Stone’s defense attorney, Lindsey Krause-Crandall, disputed that the grant was obtained for any nefarious purposes.

“My understanding [is] … the family did receive this money, but that they received it truthfully and accurately,” Crandall said. She said Stone’s wife, Anette, works as an IT consultant “and does extremely well in the business that she does and was entitled to that money, justly.”

Crandall also noted Stone didn’t flee after receiving the funds nor did he flee after the October crash — more than three months earlier.

“My client did not try to run, he did not try to do anything. He remained at home,” Crandall said.

As for Stone’s international flight decades ago, “my client was an entirely different person at that time,” Crandall said, noting he successfully completed the previous sentence.

In arguing for bail to be set at $20,000, she described Stone as a dedicated father and husband, who has a family and a house in the Cody area, among other significant ties to Park County. She added he has “very significant health issues” that cause him daily pain and currently require him to remain at home.

In mulling over bond, Judge Waters said, “in most cases, when there’s been a substantial passage of time and the person hasn’t fled, ... that’s certainly a good indicator that they’re not going anywhere.”

However, he ultimately decided it was appropriate to set bail at the “substantial” sum of $750,000.

“Flight risk and danger to the public,” the judge said, “are both of concern here.”

Stone remained in custody on Monday, with a preliminary hearing tentatively scheduled for Friday.