Tracking Earbuds Helped Wyoming Trooper Catch Man Who Took Off With Utah Teen

Using tracking data from a 17-year-old girl’s earbuds and a photograph of her, a Wyoming Highway Patrol trooper caught a 33-year-old man accused of taking the girl from her Utah hometown without her parents’ consent, authorities say.

Alex Pete Guy, 33, is now charged out of Utah County, Utah, with one count of aggravated kidnapping, which is punishable by between 15 years and life in prison.

As of Tuesday, Guy was in Wyoming awaiting extradition to Utah, the Utah County Sheriff’s Office told Cowboy State Daily.

A mother called law enforcement to say that her 17-year-old daughter was missing and hadn’t come home, says a case affidavit the Utah County Attorney’s Office filed Monday.

A friend reported the girl had been speaking to a male in his 30s online and was likely with him.

Planned To Marry

The affidavit says the pair had been talking online for about three months. Guy knew the girl was 17 and planned to marry her — and flew from Florida to Utah to pick her up, says the document.

In Utah, he rented a car, picked her up from her home in Utah County without her parents’ knowledge or consent “to marry her,” it adds.

Because the girl’s phone could only use WiFi rather than cellular connections, authorities were unable to track her phone, the affidavit says.

But they could track her Airpods. Their data showed her traveling into Wyoming, says the document.

Utah County sheriff’s personnel did not have a description of the car Guy was driving because it was a rental car, Utah County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Dallin Turner told Cowboy State Daily.

Other than the last known location from the Airpods, the department had just a photograph of the girl to offer to the Wyoming Highway Patrol, he added.

Using that data and a photograph, a WHP trooper saw the man and girl leaving a truck stop gas station at about 11 a.m. Sunday in Sinclair, Wyoming, Turner said.

“They were walking back out to their car,” said Turner. The trooper “happened to be in the area and spotted them walking back to the car from the truck stop.”

The trooper who handled that case did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment sent to him by WHP Officer Arron Healy, the latter told Cowboy State Daily.

Guy was booked into a Wyoming jail, Turner said, and the girl’s mother picked her up Sunday.

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