Richard Perkins

At a hearing last week, a judge found “ample evidence” to advance a sexual abuse case that’s been filed against a Cody man. The case against Richard M. Perkins will now proceed to an arraignment and toward a trial in Park County District Court.

Perkins faces a felony count of first-degree abuse of a minor; it stems from allegations that the 59-year-old had sexual intercourse with a child who was under the age of 13.

Testimony presented by prosecutors at a Friday preliminary hearing in Park County Circuit Court indicated that the case is based on the child’s account, along with corroborating evidence gathered by Cody police. Perkins refused to speak to investigators about the allegations and then reportedly fled the state — going as far as to use strangers’ cellphones in place of his own.

“It became very obvious … from the beginning that he was trying to conceal his location,” Cody Police Detective Rick Tillery said at the hearing.

Perkins was ultimately arrested in Bandon, Oregon, on June 9. He’s been held in custody since then — first in Coos County, Oregon, and now at the Park County Detention Center — with bail currently set at $250,000.

The alleged crime occurred in mid-May, Tillery said. A couple weeks passed before the girl told her mother that she’d been sexually assaulted by Perkins, the officer said, with the mother contacting Cody police on May 26.

Police launched what Deputy Park County Attorney Jack Hatfield described as a “very thorough investigation” that included multiple interviews and search warrants.

Perkins agreed to speak to police in a non-custodial interview at the Cody Law Enforcement Center, but reportedly cut it short when they began insinuating he’d done something illegal.

“As we started to try and interview [him] about the criminal complaint, he got very upset,” Tillery said of Perkins, adding, “He wanted to leave, and so we allowed him to leave.”

When police searched his home later on May 26, Perkins was not there and his phone went straight to voicemail, the detective testified.

In the following days, Perkins reportedly told his then-boss that he was in Rock Springs, calling from different phone numbers.

When Perkins’ employer tried calling the numbers back, “people would answer and say, ‘yeah, that gentleman [Perkins] just approached me, asked to use my phone,’” Tillery said of the employer’s account. “So it was obvious that his [Perkins’] phone was switched off and he was trying to use other means to communicate.”

Sometime around June 1, Perkins apparently set up a campsite on Cedar Mountain and made a stop at his home. On a copy of the search warrant that officers had left at Perkins’ trailer, Tillery said the suspect wrote a note that said he was leaving all of his possessions to a family member. In the note and a later phone call, Perkins also claimed the child had a secret boyfriend and suggested she might have been abused by another person, the officer said.

Tillery considered the comments to be an attempt at deflection; Hatfield said the statements were part of Perkins “trying to throw law enforcement off and create doubt regarding his guilt in this case.”

“But there is no doubt, he is guilty,” Hatfield argued, specifically pointing to calls that Perkins made to a family member while jailed in Coos County, Oregon.

In one call, Perkins “indicated that he was … willing to do a plea bargain, so that he didn’t have to spend the maximum amount of time in the prison because of his age,” Tillery said.

A conviction for first-degree sexual abuse of a minor carries a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison.

Perkins’ court-appointed defense attorney, Travis Smith, said Hatfield’s comments about Perkins’ alleged “consciousness of guilt” were a “red herring” in the context of the preliminary hearing.

Prosecutors face a relatively low bar for getting a case past a preliminary hearing, only needing to show probable cause that the defendant committed the alleged crime. It was in that context that Circuit Court Judge Joey Darrah found “ample evidence” to send the case to District Court. At trial, however, prosecutors will have to meet a much higher burden to convict Perkins — needing to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. Perkins is presumed to be innocent.

Prior to his arrest, Perkins was best known for his efforts fixing up and giving away thousands of bicycles to children around the northern Big Horn Basin. According to the information disclosed at Friday’s hearing, Perkins’ relationship with the child in the pending criminal case did not stem from that project.