Carlene Dawn Brown was a 22-year-old White woman from Worland, Wyoming whose life revolved around her family, her young children, and the close-knit communities of the Big Horn Basin until her life was violently taken in August 2022. She was born on April 4, 2000, to Donald Christian Brown and Andrea Michelle in Worland, the same town where she would later lose her life.
Friends and family remembered her as “the light of all that knew her,” the kind of person who smiled easily and turned hardships into something hopeful; one friend summed her spirit up with the simple phrase that when life gave her lemons, she'd make lemonade. She grew up loving school and participating in almost everything it offered: volleyball, ballet, choir, playing flute in the band, helping manage the girls' basketball team, and acting in drama club productions. After becoming a mother, she continued to compete in volleyball and was known as a dedicated teammate who put her energy into cheering on others as much as she did into playing the game herself. One of the proudest chapters of her life was her service as a Manderson volunteer firefighter for about a year and a half, where she never backed down from a challenge and was just as willing to rescue injured animals as she was to answer emergency calls for her neighbors.
At home, Carlene's identity was deeply tied to motherhood and family. She had a daughter, Chelsea Rebecca Crait, and her relatives recalled how seriously she took the role of being a mother, doing everything she could to nurture and protect the children in her life. By the summer of 2022 she was pregnant again, expecting a son she planned to name Colin Michael Brown. Her extended family network was large and close: parents in Basin and Worland, a sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins spread across the region, all of whom would later gather to mourn her. In the days after her death, her father described publicly how devastated the family was, calling her a victim of domestic violence and organizing a fundraiser to help cover her funeral and burial costs.
The events that ended Carlene's life unfolded in mid-August 2022 at a property along U.S. Highway 20, north of Worland. On August 16, around late morning, the Washakie County Sheriff's Office was asked to conduct a welfare check on a woman living at an address on Highway 20 North after concerns were raised about her wellbeing. Deputies went to the residence on the west side of the property and repeatedly tried to make contact but got no response at the door. On-site employees told them the woman they were looking for should be inside the home with her boyfriend, deepening their concern when no one answered.
Realizing that something was wrong, deputies decided they had to get inside. The front door was heavily barricaded, and officers had to force their way in. Once they breached the entryway, they discovered a grim scene: two bodies inside the residence. One was quickly identified as Carlene. The Washakie County Coroner later determined that she had died from four gunshot wounds and confirmed that she had been pregnant at the time of her death, meaning her unborn son died with her.
The second body belonged to 50-year-old Donald M. Orr, identified by authorities as Carlene's boyfriend and the suspect in her killing. Investigators concluded that Orr died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. After processing the scene and reviewing the evidence, the Washakie County Sheriff's Office and the Washakie County Coroner's Office determined that Orr had shot and killed Carlene before turning the gun on himself, an act of lethal domestic violence that unfolded sometime during the late evening of August 15 or the early morning hours of August 16, 2022. Officials stated that no other suspects were involved, and the case was classified as a murder-suicide. Because the only identified suspect was deceased when law enforcement arrived, there were no arrests, no criminal charges filed, and no trial; the legal process ended with the investigative finding that the perpetrator had died at the scene.
In the aftermath, Carlene's death reverberated far beyond the walls of the small home where she was found. Local news outlets framed it as a tragic instance of domestic violence and gun violence in a rural Wyoming county, and online memorials highlighted not just the brutality of the crime but the person whose life it took. Her obituary painted a portrait of someone who loved her community and threw herself into school activities, fire service, and caring for others, even small animals that other people dismissed. A funeral service was held on August 22, 2022, at CrossPoint Baptist Church in Worland, followed by burial at Donald J. Ruhl Memorial Cemetery in Greybull, Wyoming, where she was laid to rest with her unborn son Colin. Family, friends, and community members gathered to remember her as someone who met life's trials with resilience and kindness, even as they struggled to come to terms with the sudden, violent way her story ended.
