Mathew Caggiano was a 27-year-old male construction worker who had come to Laramie, Wyoming, for a job, far from the California childhood and Idaho home where his close family lived. Raised in California, he later moved with his parents to Idaho in 2020, and by 2022 he was traveling for construction work, helping build projects and a future that his siblings and parents believed would be long and full.
Family members would later remember his loud truck pulling into the driveway, his country music turned up high, and his habit of marking special moments by wearing a signature bowtie. They spoke of the gazebo he built in his parents' backyard and the way they still saw traces of him in the details of their daily lives.
In June 2022, Mathew crossed paths with a couple temporarily staying in Laramie: Hunter Orion Fulton and Erin Wade. On the night of June 24, the three were at Copper's Bar in downtown Laramie. Witnesses later told police that Wade walked up to Mathew and kissed him, while Fulton watched, brooding and visibly upset. Drinks were bought, conversations stretched into the late hours, and beneath the noise and neon of the bar, a tense triangle formed. At some point, Fulton and Wade invited Mathew back to their room at the Gas Lite Motel on North 3rd Street, a decision that would become the center of police affidavits, courtroom arguments, and a family's grief.
What happened in that motel room emerged slowly through interviews, forensic reports, and shifting stories. Wade told investigators that she and Fulton bought cocaine that night and used it in the room. In her version, Fulton stepped out briefly, leaving the door partially open, and Mathew entered and tried to assault her at knifepoint, threatening restraints with zip ties and duct tape. When confronted by police, her story changed more than once, and investigators later noted that they never found a knife, duct tape, or zip ties in the room. Fulton, for his part, told officers that he came back to find his girlfriend under attack, fought with Mathew, and shot him to protect her. Prosecutors would ultimately point to the physical evidence as contradicting that clean self-defense narrative. The main bloodstain from the fatal 9 mm gunshot wound to Mathew's head was found near the motel room door, suggesting that he was either entering or leaving when the shot was fired, not in the middle of a struggle deep inside the room.
Mathew died there in the Gas Lite Motel. Instead of calling the police, Fulton stayed with the body for days. He drank heavily, leaving the room repeatedly to buy tools and supplies. Surveillance and receipts later showed Fulton purchasing saws and trash bags at local stores, and when investigators finally searched the motel room, they found Mathew's body in the bathtub, bearing postmortem cuts consistent with an attempt to dismember and dispose of him. The lacerations on his torso were determined to have been made after death, confirming that, beyond the killing itself, a deliberate effort had been made to mutilate his remains.
Outside that room, life went on, but the silence around Mathew grew loud. On Monday, June 27, his supervisor and friend, MJ Sisneros of Rocky Mountain Contracting, became worried when Mathew failed to show up for work and had been out of contact for several days. Sisneros asked for a welfare check, and Laramie police opened a missing-person investigation. A public appeal went out asking for help locating Mathew, noting that he had been last seen on June 25. His parents, in Idaho, learned he was missing on June 27—their wedding anniversary—and immediately drove to Laramie, joining the search, talking with officers, and clinging to the hope that their son would be found alive.
As detectives pieced together Mathew's last known movements, their attention returned to the Gas Lite Motel. On June 29, officers found Fulton sitting in a running vehicle outside the motel. He was taken into custody, and according to reports, he told officers they would find what they needed inside the room and insisted that anyone whose girlfriend had nearly been raped would have done the same. When police entered the room, they discovered Mathew's body in the bathroom, along with the saws and bags Fulton had purchased days earlier. The missing-person bulletin was quickly updated to say that Mathew had been located. The next day, in a hotel room where Mathew's parents were staying, the lead detective and the Albany County coroner knocked and delivered the news they had feared: their son was dead, the center of a homicide investigation in a town where he had come only to work and build.
The investigation soon reached beyond Fulton. In early July 2022, police announced that Erin Wade had been arrested in California on a Wyoming warrant. She was charged as an accessory after the fact to second-degree murder and with conspiracy to commit mutilation of dead bodies, a reflection of prosecutors' belief that she had helped conceal the crime and plan the disposal of Mathew's remains. Court documents and later reporting described how Wade's original denials about Mathew ever visiting the motel room unraveled when confronted with evidence, including store surveillance that showed her and Fulton together buying tools later found in the bathroom where his body lay.
Fulton initially faced charges including second-degree murder and mutilation of a dead body. As the case progressed, investigators and prosecutors compiled an extensive record: dozens of reports and warrants, hundreds of pieces of physical evidence, and the testimony of bar patrons, store employees, and officers who had walked through the cramped, grim motel room. Rather than risk a trial, Fulton entered guilty pleas in January 2023 to manslaughter, mutilation of a dead body, and possessing a deadly weapon with unlawful intent, formally acknowledging that he had unlawfully killed Mathew and then desecrated his body afterwards.
The sentencing hearing in May 2023 unfolded as both legal proceeding and family reckoning. In an Albany County District Court courtroom, Mathew's siblings described the echo of his absence—the Fourth of July weekend when his loud truck should have rolled up their parents' driveway with his music blaring, the wedding where his sister walked down the aisle with his bowtie in her hand instead of his arm at her side. His parents spoke of getting the late-night knock on the door in Laramie, of watching their life split into “before” and “after,” and of traveling back again and again for hearings that forced them to relive the details. The judge called the crime horrific and violent, rejected the defense request for a shorter sentence, and imposed a term of 26 to 30 years in prison, the maximum allowed under the plea, along with an order that Fulton pay restitution to Mathew's family.
Wade's case resolved differently. After initially facing the serious accessory and conspiracy charges, she ultimately reached a plea agreement in which she admitted to a single misdemeanor count of interfering with a peace officer, based on her false or misleading statements during the investigation. In June 2023, a judge sentenced her to a year in jail, but credited most of that time for the months she had already spent in custody, leaving only a short stretch left to serve, along with fines and costs. For Mathew's family, her lighter sentence closed the legal file on her role in their son's death, even as they were left with lingering doubts about her early claims and the full truth of what happened behind the motel room door.
In the months that followed, the City of Laramie publicly honored those who had helped bring the case to its conclusion. Detectives and an evidence technician received commendations for their meticulous work, and MJ Sisneros was given a Citizen Service Citation for raising the alarm when Mathew did not come to work and for supporting the family through the long search and court process. At the ceremony, officials spoke about how the investigation had required hundreds of pieces of evidence to be cataloged and dozens of warrants to be executed, all to assemble the story of a single, terrible act in a small motel room. For the community, those honors symbolized determination and cooperation in the face of a brutal crime. For Mathew's loved ones, they were a public acknowledgment that his life, and the quiet heroism of those who sought justice for him, would not be forgotten, even if nothing could bring back the man they remembered in every song, every family gathering, and every empty space where his laughter used to be.
