Zakary Diller

On the morning of Aug. 23, 2021, workers at Cody’s Old Trail Town discovered someone had broken into several of the tourist site’s frontier buildings and made off with antique guns, knives, a bullwhip, a 130-year-old buckskin shirt and other items. But it wasn’t long before Cody police had a suspect, receiving a tip that a homeless young man was offering old firearms for sale.

Zakary A. Diller soon made a full confession and in November, he accepted a 9-12-year prison sentence for the thefts. He pleaded guilty to felony counts of aggravated (armed) burglary and — since he had a prior conviction for a violent felony — illegal possession of a firearm.

Diller also pleaded guilty to possessing a deadly weapon with unlawful intent, relating to an incident that took place in the Park County Detention Center last summer. Charging documents say that, while being held on the Old Trail Town case, Diller created a sharp shank that he planned to use on a deputy as part of an escape attempt.

In exchange for Diller’s guilty pleas, the Park County Attorney’s Office agreed to dismiss a few other charges related to the two cases. District Court Judge Bill Simpson approved the deal at a Nov. 28 hearing and formally sentenced Diller in a Dec. 21 order.

Had things played out a little differently, it’s possible that all of the trouble could have been avoided.

Roughly three weeks before the burglary, on Aug. 5, 2021, Diller was arrested in Cody on a warrant from Mesa County, Colorado, District Court. Authorities there alleged Diller had failed to comply with court conditions related to a 2018 case of second-degree assault. According to The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Diller had threatened to kill his girlfriend in that incident, putting a knife to her neck and also placing the weapon between his teeth as he “growled like a bear.”

However, Mesa County prosecutors later decided they did not want to extradite Diller from Wyoming and changed their warrant to in-state only, said Deputy County Attorney Jack Hatfield. Instead of being sent back to Colorado, Diller was released from the Park County jail on Aug. 11, 2021.

The break-in at Old Trail Town followed less than two weeks later. Personnel at the tourist attraction and historic site found someone had tried getting into the cash registers in the gift shop then broke into four other buildings at the property.

Among the missing items were an antique cartridge belt and holster, a valuable 1873 Springfield carbine, a pair of 1860 Colt revolvers, plus spurs, chaps, two Hudson Bay blankets, a cowboy hat, a pair of binoculars and a hide coat. The burglar wasn’t particularly careful, leaving behind the bolt cutters he apparently used to cut the locks — they had been stolen from a Cody store — and a Dasani water bottle. Cody police swabbed the items for potential DNA evidence, but it wound up being unnecessary.

The very next morning, Diller’s employer, who had hired him just a few days earlier, contacted police to report Diller had just sold some antique guns. The boss told police he was suspicious, “because he knew Diller was homeless and had been living on the streets of Cody, Wyoming with no job for some time,” Cody Police Detective Richard Tillery wrote in an affidavit.

Through a series of subsequent interviews — including with Diller himself — police learned Diller had sold the Colt revolvers, the Springfield carbine, holsters, gun belts and ammo belts to another Cody resident for $1,500, using the money on a motel room, a hatchet and some fireworks, police were told.

Following the burglary, they learned Diller had stashed the stolen goods at various locations, hiding some items in the bushes at a business next door to Old Trail Town and sticking one gun under a shed near the intersection of Canyon and Blackburn avenues. When police questioned Diller at his workplace on Aug. 24, 2021, he was reportedly wearing one of the stolen knives on his hip.

Diller was arrested and his bail set at $50,000 — an amount he was unable to post while his case was pending. Sometime last spring, Diller reportedly told a religious provider “that he was going to assault [jail] staff so that he could go to the hospital and then escape from there,” deputy Matthew Rathburn wrote in an affidavit. A few weeks later, Diller was spotted ripping a handrail off the wall of his cell and forming a sharp weapon. He tossed the item away in response to commands from responding deputies, then started breathing hard and fell to the floor as if he’d fainted, Rathburn wrote; a responding sergeant, however, reportedly warned Diller that “he was NOT going to hospital no matter what happened.” He wound up being moved to a different cell and was charged with the additional felony.

In June, Diller wrote a letter to Judge Simpson, asking if he “could get out for the summer and work, as well as be an informant on the streets here in Park County, if that would help the community.” The judge didn’t act on the request, but less than a week later, Diller’s court-appointed defense attorney, Sarah Miles, said she had concerns about his competency. An evaluation by the Wyoming State Hospital ultimately concluded Diller was fit to proceed and the case went forward, resulting in his recent sentencing.

Diller is now awaiting transport to the custody of the Wyoming Department of Corrections. The more than 16 months he’s already served in jail will count toward his 9-12-year prison sentence.