D.M. Baker, reported in online records as a 69- or 70-year-old White male deputy sheriff from the Powell-Cody area of Park County, Wyoming, stepped into the path of a widening crisis in March 1939, when local authorities were trying to contain Earl Durand, a young hunter and woodsman whose troubles had begun with a poaching case. After Durand and companions were caught in an out-of-season elk killing near the North Fork of the Shoshone, he was taken into custody in Cody, pleaded guilty to
killing two elk, and was sentenced to six months in jail and a fine. What should have ended as a wildlife case turned suddenly violent when Durand seized an opening during the evening meal at the jail, struck Undersheriff Noah Riley with a milk bottle, took weapons, and escaped, forcing Riley to drive him toward his parents' home near Powell.
By the time the car was reported heading toward the Durand place, Baker and Powell Town Marshal Charles Lewis had gone out to intercept the escapee. The confrontation at the farmhouse ended in gunfire. Baker was killed there, and Lewis, badly wounded, was taken to a hospital, where he died later that night. Riley managed to get away in the confusion, but the killer disappeared, leaving the county shocked and leaderless for a few crucial hours. Baker's death was not described in the records as a mystery with unidentified suspects; online historical accounts consistently name Walter Earl Durand as the man who shot him while resisting recapture after his jail escape.
The killings ignited a manhunt that gripped northwest Wyoming. With the sheriff out of state and Riley injured, officers, former game wardens, and armed volunteers assembled in force. Posses spread through the country around Powell and Cody, planes searched from the air, bloodhounds were requested, and residents reportedly bolted their doors and carried rifles as fear settled over the community. Durand, however, stayed ahead of them for days, hiding near Bitter Creek, appearing at rural homes for food, fuel, and guns, and even leaving a taunting letter for Sheriff Frank Blackburn in which he wrote as though he already expected to die. The atmosphere was tense enough that the whole county seemed to be waiting for the next shot.
As for arrests, the online sources point to two distinct phases. First came Durand's original arrest and jailing for the elk-poaching case, which directly set the stage for Baker's death. After the shooting of Baker and Lewis, there was no later arrest of Durand for their murders, because he was not taken alive again. Instead, the case moved from arrest to pursuit. Some records also note that two civilians assisting officers were killed by Durand during this same violent episode, deepening the sense that the manhunt had become a regional emergency rather than a single homicide inquiry.
The story ended not in a courtroom but in another burst of public violence. Several days after Baker was killed, Durand emerged in Powell and attempted to rob the First National Bank. During that robbery, a hostage was also killed. Townspeople and armed citizens opened fire, and Durand was shot and killed at the scene, bringing the chase to an end and closing off the possibility of charges, trial, or conviction in Baker's case. So the record that survives online leaves Baker's death as part of a grim chain of events: a poaching arrest, a jailbreak, an ambush at a farmhouse, a countywide hunt, and finally a bank robbery that ended the suspect's life before the law ever could.
