Darrell L. “Pete” Petry, 66, was living on a remote, off-the-grid property along the Sublette–Lincoln county line when a long-running missing-person investigation abruptly collided with his secluded life. On June 19, 2021, detectives served a search warrant at his place as part of the Sublette County Sheriff's Office investigation into the disappearance of Vanessa “Nessy” Orren.
The search drew in a wide net of outside help—specialized search resources and multiple agencies—turning a quiet stretch of Wyoming sage and timber into a working crime scene measured in grids, evidence bags, and long days of methodical digging.
Then, in the middle of that multi-day search, Petry was simply gone. Investigators said he left the property on June 20 while the warrant operation continued, and he didn't come back. Two days later, on June 22, deputies and the Wyoming Highway Patrol found him dead. The sheriff's office opened a separate investigation into his death and concluded it was self-inflicted, adding that they did not suspect foul play. Beyond that, authorities kept the details close, offering little about what they found, what they feared, or what questions still echoed in the empty spaces he left behind.
The search of Petry's property was tied to Orren's disappearance—an old mystery that had lingered for years, troubling her family and neighbors and never settling into an answer anyone could live with. Reports described Orren as Petry's former girlfriend, and the warrant was presented as an effort to locate evidence connected to where she might have gone and what might have happened. The timing made the story feel like a dark hinge: investigators arrive, sift through a life, and within days the man at the center of their search is dead.
As for arrests, suspects, or charges, public statements tied to Petry's death did not announce any. The sheriff's office said the death was self-inflicted and emphasized that no foul play was suspected, which meant there was no homicide case to prosecute from his death alone. In the missing-person investigation that brought law enforcement to his property in the first place, officials also did not publicly name suspects or report arrests in connection with Orren's disappearance, and they declined to release additional investigative details while the case remained active.
In the end, the official narrative left a stark contrast: a coordinated, multi-agency search pressing into a lonely landscape for a woman who never came home, and a man who walked away from his cabin during that search and was found dead days later. Authorities continued asking the public for information about Orren's disappearance, signaling that whatever was uncovered—or not uncovered—during those days on Petry's property did not close the larger mystery.
