After Douglas Mark Smith called 911 to report two men had been shot and killed during a 2015 robbery at The Coin Shop in downtown Cheyenne, he wasn’t searched by police. Neither was the neighborhood surrounding the shop in case the gunman had ditched a weapon.
Also, Smith’s vehicle was never searched, nor a gunshot residue test performed on Smith or his vehicle.
That’s according to testimony from Friday’s preliminary hearing for Smith, now 68, who has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder nine years after the fact.
Smith initially wasn’t considered a suspect, Cheyenne Police Detective James Pendleton testified Friday. Also, Smith passed a polygraph test a few months after the crime.
After that test, Smith moved back to Canada for a few years, where he’s a citizen, Pendleton testified. He moved to California after that.
He was arrested June 25 in Siskiyou County in northern California after new interviews with investigators in 2023 revealed inconsistencies with what he told police at the time of the killings.
Smith’s attorney, Rob Oldham, argued Friday that returning to the U.S. from Canada is an indicator that he “wasn’t running from anything.”
Despite a seeming lack of physical evidence connecting Smith to the robbery, he was bound over to Laramie County District Court.
Most of the Cheyenne Police Department’s case against Smith relies on him being at the scene of the crime around the time it was committed, coupled with inconsistencies in his statements to investigators, his attorney argued during the hearing.
Nevertheless, Laramie Circuit Court Judge Sean Chambers showed no hesitation in binding the case over to District Court.
Chambers also rejected a request to allow a bond for Smith, who remains in custody at the Laramie County Detention Center.
Some Holes In The Case
Oldham argued the state’s case against Smith lacks sufficient evidence to implicate his client.
“To be quite frank, there’s absolutely no physical evidence that I’m aware of,” Oldham said. “It’s all circumstantial evidence.”
Along with making the initial 911 call, Smith at the time claimed that he’d walked in on a Hispanic person robbing The Coin Shop, who pointed a .45-caliber pistol at him and told him to get out of the shop or he would shoot him.
Oldham said Smith always thought he was considered a suspect in the case, but police claimed he was not.
“I don’t blame him. If I was in a store and somebody got shot a few minutes later, I’d think I was a suspect too,” Oldham said.
Detective Pendleton said Smith was completely cooperative throughout the investigation, but provided a somewhat unusual amount of detail in doing so.
Glaring Inconsistencies
Authorities interviewed Smith in California in 2023, where serious discrepancies in his recount of the murder scene made him a prime suspect in the case, Pendleton said.
These discrepancies involved the timing of Smith’s actions on the morning of the murder and things he claimed he saw in the store concerning the murder scene that he couldn’t have based on his alleged position in the store.
Although Pendleton said he’s confident that Smith was at The Coin Shop for multiple minutes the morning of the crime, Smith couldn’t definitively prove that he spent most of that time in the shop.
Early on in the investigation, Smith identified with strong confidence someone he claimed committed the murders when shown a police lineup. This person was arrested on an unrelated crime, but never charged with the double murder.
During his 2023 interview with police, Smith reversed course and said he’s 100% sure the person he saw robbing The Coin Shop was not the one he identified in 2015.
Last Gasp
Oldham offered to surrender Smith’s Canadian passport and have him wear an ankle monitor in exchange for the judge offering him a $50,000 cash or surety bond, which Oldham said would be low enough for Smith to be released from jail.
Chambers rejected the request and said details like this would need to be put in place prior to any cash bond being established.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
