The morning of July 20, 2015 began like any other summer day in downtown Cheyenne, with people moving through the streets as nearby events brought extra bustle to the area. Inside The Coin Shop on West Lincolnway, the routine of a small business was about to be shattered. When police were called to reports of a shooting and robbery in progress, they arrived to a scene that would haunt the city for years: Dwight M.
Brockman, a 67-year-old white man, was found with apparent gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the shop, his death ruled a homicide.
The violence was not limited to one life. Brockman’s friend, George “Doc” Manley, was also discovered shot and killed at the same location, and the timing made the crime feel even more brazen—daylight, downtown, with large crowds circulating nearby. Early accounts framed the attack as a robbery, the kind of motive that makes a murder feel both sudden and cruelly impersonal, yet the case that followed would prove anything but simple.
For years, the investigation stayed open while leads were chased, tips sifted, and the case passed through multiple hands. Detectives eventually returned to the evidence with fresh eyes, revisiting what had been collected and re-evaluating it with newer approaches and technology. By the department’s own accounting, the renewed push involved extensive hours of work and coordination with numerous local, state, and federal partners, reflecting how determined investigators had become to resolve what had seemed destined to remain unsolved.
Nearly nine years after the killings, the story took a dramatic turn. On June 25, 2024, Douglas Mark Smith of McCloud, California, was arrested with assistance from the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office on a warrant alleging two counts of first-degree murder. Investigators identified him as the initial 9-1-1 caller and said they believed he killed the two men that morning in 2015; he was later extradited back to Cheyenne and booked into the Laramie County Detention Center.
The prosecution moved forward through the courts, and the case that had lingered for almost a decade finally headed toward a reckoning in front of a jury. In July 2025, jurors found Smith guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for the coin shop killings, a verdict that formally closed the question of whether anyone would ever be held accountable. In August 2025, a judge imposed two life sentences, ensuring that the man convicted in the deaths at The Coin Shop would spend the rest of his life in prison.
