Cody Man Found Hallucinating After Mother's Stabbing Sent To Mental Hospital

The prosecutor and defense attorney for a Cody man accused of stabbing his mother before chattering happily about his hallucinations and complaining about “little people” last fall have agreed to keep the man in the state’s mental hospital until he’s sane enough to go to court. 

The case is on hold indefinitely. 

Robert N. Rednour, 39, was charged in November with aggravated assault, domestic battery and marijuana possession.

Cody Circuit Court Judge Joseph Darrah filed a March 13 order to keep Rednour at the Wyoming State Hospital until he’s sane enough to participate in his prosecution. From Darrah’s review of a December mental-health evaluation, the judge concluded “there is a substantial probability” that the hospital can make Rednour well enough to come back to court. 

He ordered the Wyoming State Hospital to check in with him on Rednour’s progress every three months.   

‘No Coming Back From That’

Rednour called Park County law enforcement in the early-morning hours of Nov. 18 to announce that he’d “accidentally” stabbed his mother, says the case affidavit. 

Park County Sheriff’s Deputy Tom Caudle drove to Rednour’s mother’s home. Meanwhile, Rednour’s mother also called the 911 dispatcher that morning, saying she wasn’t stabbed, and she was OK. 

Later when Caudle got the mother on the phone, she changed course and said yes, Rednour had stabbed her, the affidavit says. 

“Well there’s no coming back from that,” Caudle heard Rednour say in the background. 

Deputies arrived to find Rednour, with both hands in the air. 

His mother had a two-inch cut across her belly, says the document. 

The house reeked of marijuana; the kitchen was in disarray as if there’d been a fight, and a large amount of blood littered the master bedroom, wrote Caudle in the affidavit. 

Emergency Room First

Rednour told deputies he had a head injury from the scuffle, so they took him to the emergency room. 

His MRI came back clear and the injuries Rednour claimed to have received that night to his thighs and chest “were all deemed as old injuries by the hospital staff,” says the document. 

There was one new injury, the staffers told the deputy: a scrape on Rednour’s left shin.

While waiting for results, Rednour talked nonstop, Caudle wrote. The man said he was upset with his mother because she told him she was selling the house in three days, and he had to move out. 

Rednour claimed his mother had been aggravating him for days by making weird noises, hiding around corners or in the couch cushions. She’d brought in “little people” to annoy him as well, the document relates.

“Note: it would be impossible for (her) to hide in the cushions of a couch,” Caudle wrote in the affidavit.

During that hospital stay, Rednour showed signs of hearing voices, referenced a door opening in a wall with no door, and he asked Caudle if he’d seen things that Caudle knew to be nonexistent, the affidavit says.

The document says Rednour repeatedly said he’d smoked “weed” over the past few days, he mentioned stabbing his mother in the head, and he was so giddy he blurted, “I don’t know why I am so happy.”

Hospital staffers cleared Rednour and Caudle took him to the jail.

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.