In the pre-dawn hours of August 7, 1977, a monstrous explosion tore through the quiet of Evanston, Wyoming, obliterating a brick home and instantly killing three of its occupants. Beverly Vehar, a wife and mother, died in her sleep alongside her husband, Vincent Vehar, 67, and their youngest son, John Vehar, 18. The blast was so powerful it destroyed the house and shook the small town to its core.
The Vehars' older son, Tony, was also in the home and was injured but survived the attack.
The target of the bombing was Vincent Vehar, a respected local attorney and former Uinta County Attorney. He was representing the Fort Bridger Sewer and Water Board in a contentious lawsuit against a local man named Mark Hopkinson. Hopkinson was embroiled in disputes with the board over hookup fees for a trailer court his family was developing and had allegedly made threats against board members. Just days before the bombing, Hopkinson had been notified that he was scheduled to be deposed by Vincent Vehar on August 9.
The investigation into the triple homicide revealed a sinister plot of murder-for-hire. The man who planted the bomb, made of thirty sticks of dynamite, was Michael "Mike" Jack Hickey. Hickey, an associate of Hopkinson's, later confessed to the crime. He told investigators that Hopkinson had ordered him to bomb the Vehar home, promising him $2,000 and assistance in covering up a separate, unrelated murder of a 15-year-old girl that Hickey had committed. On the night of August 6, Hopkinson demanded that Hickey carry out the bombing. In the early morning hours, Hickey drove to Evanston, crept up to the Vehar residence, and tossed the powerful explosive through a basement window.
The case against Mark Hopkinson was complex and involved another murder. A key witness, Jeffrey Green, who had knowledge of Hopkinson's involvement in the Vehar bombing, was murdered in May 1979, just before he was scheduled to testify before a grand jury. Investigators discovered that Hopkinson had orchestrated Green's murder from a federal prison cell where he was serving time for another crime. This act further solidified the case against him. The surviving son, Tony Vehar, and a district judge formally requested that special prosecutors Gerry Spence and Edward Moriarity take on the case to bring Hopkinson to justice.
In 1979, Mike Hickey, fearing for his own life after Green's murder, confessed to his role in the bombing and agreed to testify against Hopkinson. In a plea deal, Hickey pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of the teenage girl he had killed earlier and received a 20-year prison sentence. For his part in the Vehar bombing, he was granted immunity in state court but received a concurrent 20-year sentence for maiming Tony Vehar. Hickey was released from prison in 1999.
Mark Hopkinson was brought to trial in September 1979. He was convicted on four counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Beverly, Vincent, and John Vehar, and Jeffrey Green, as well as two counts of conspiracy to commit murder. The jury recommended three consecutive life sentences for the Vehar family murders. For orchestrating the murder of witness Jeff Green, Hopkinson received the death penalty. He maintained his innocence until the end, but all his appeals were exhausted. On January 22, 1992, Mark Allen Hopkinson was executed by lethal injection at the Wyoming State Penitentiary. He remains the only person to be executed in Wyoming since the 1960s. The bombing that killed Beverly Vehar was not a random act but a calculated and brutal retaliation that silenced a respected attorney and shattered a family, leaving a lasting scar on the community of Evanston.
