Big Piney Man Gets 75 Years To Life For Killing Autistic Victim With Bow And Arrow

A 20-year-old Big Piney man was sentenced Thursday to between 75 years and life in prison for fatally shooting a 23-year-old autistic man with a bow and arrow one year ago.

The Thursday sentencing of Rowan Littauer in Sublette County District Court brings finality - albeit tempered by a 30-day appeal window - to a pair of cases that started when Littauer texted a female last year, to tell her he'd killed somebody over the weekend of Feb. 1, 2025.

Rowan Littauer has amassed 378 days’ pre-sentence incarceration credit. He was also ordered to pay $4,431.50 in restitution, and standard court costs and fees.

He and his friend Orion Schlesinger, 19, trekked through a frigid night Feb. 1, 2025, entered the Big Piney home of Schlesinger’s friend Dakota Farley, and killed him.

Littauer fired the bow, sending an arrow through Farley’s arm, through his aorta and into his trachea, according to prior court testimony. He then riddled the man’s scalp with BBs; and Schlesinger stole a gun that Farley had.

Schlesinger conspired with Littauer to have Farley killed after a slight regarding Schlesinger’s then-girlfriend, according to court documents and statements.

Schlesinger was sentenced Jan. 8 to between 54 years and life in prison, on conspiracy murder and theft convictions.

In Wyoming, it is a felony to steal a gun regardless of the gun’s value.

Both men had established plea agreements and neither went to trial.

 ‘I Want Him Back’

Farley’s parents and sister wept in court, over what they’ve lost. His mother Pamela Mason described debilitating pain.

“I want him back,” said Mason. “I have a blanket with his photo on it, just so I can hug him.”

But he’s gone, she added.

“When I went to see him at the funeral home, I touched his arm,” said Mason. “It was just a cocoon. It wasn’t him. It was just a shell. A very cold, hard cement shell.” 

The Impossible Debt

While both Littauer’s family members and Farley’s family members delivered tearful statements Thursday to Sublette County District Court Judge Kate McKay, similarities emerged.

Littauer said he did not know Farley and believed when he killed him that he was protecting Schlesinger. Evidence in this case indicates that Schlesinger believes Farley had wronged his girlfriend in some way, though the girlfriend later told investigators he merely “creeped” her out.

“Dakota Farley died by my hands in his own home,” Littauer said Thursday. “I violated someone’s sanctuary and life. And although I cannot bring (him) back to life, I will spend the rest of my life trying to pay an impossible debt.”

Littauer added: “I did not realize how many lives I’d change and destroy in 15 to 20 minutes.”

But both Littauer and Farley struggled with making friends but cherished the few friends they made, according to their two families. Both struggled developmentally.

Littauer is also on the autism spectrum, his public defense attorney Elisabeth Trefonas said.

McKay cast the details in a tragic symmetry.

“Both these young men were seeking friendships, and valued those friendships,” she said. “But certainly took those friendships in very, very different directions.”

The judge noted Littauer’s childhood of trauma, history of childhood mental health episodes, and yearning for family stability.

Rowan Littauer’s grandmother Shirley Littauer said he was abandoned multiple times in childhood and yearned to be loved. COVID-19 wrought dysfunction and isolation onto him, after an already-harrowing upbringing, she said.

And she still loves him, Shirley Littauer added.

“He can be sweet, funny, polite, creative and caring,” she said.

Struck By This

The judge said she was struck by the horror of Farley’s killing and the life precipice he’d reached, of living on his own, trying to be independent and embarking on his life.

The crime against him is “horrible. It is terrible. It is tragic,” said McKay, who said Littauer acted on a whim without regard to “outsized consequences.”

Farley that night was likely “relieved and happy to see friends at the door.”

Days later when law enforcement responded and found Farley dead in his own home, Sublette County Attorney Clayton Melinkovich also went to the scene, he told the court Thursday.

“I remember standing in Dakota’s kitchen at about 1 o'clock in the morning, Feb. 6 of last year… This young man’s lifeless body just feet away,” said Melinkovich.

Another, much more innocuous detail struck Melinkovich as well, he added.

“On his fridge was a lined piece of paper,” the prosecutor said. The top of it read “budget,” and Farley had listed his simple expenses.

“That image seared into my brain,” said Melinkovich. He called it a token of Farley’s promise in his young life.

Another image seared into Melinkovich’s brain, he said, is a selfie Littauer and Schlesinger shot – in which they were grinning – after killing Farley.

Melinkovich noted that given Littauer’s young age and lack of criminal history, this case didn’t rise to the level of a death penalty case. When he first dropped the death penalty idea last year, he’d also pointed to the extreme public defender shortages Wyoming has been facing.

The prosecutor also noted that the plea agreement has helped the family and community avoid the trauma of going to trial.

The Text

An evidentiary affidavit in the case compiled by Sublette County Detective Sgt. Travis Lanning says investigators learned of Farley’s death when someone reported receiving a text from Littauer saying he’d “shot Dakota with a bow and 2 arrows.”

Sublette County Sheriff’s Deputy Ryan Tollison met with Littauer, who admitted he’d “shot a man with a bow and two arrows… in the arm and the head,” and that Schlesinger was with him at the time, the document says.

Littauer also showed deputies on a map application on his cellphone where Farley’s home was, which was also the death scene, Lanning wrote.

Lanning and other deputies and detectives converged on the home and found Farley lying face-down in the living room, the right side of his face pressed against the carpet with dried blood beneath it, says the document.

Lanning noticed eight wounds on Farley’s scalp which looked like BB punctures, but weren’t bloodied, indicating they happened post-mortem, the detective wrote.

Citing interviews with people familiar with the suspects, the affidavit says the pair were friends, and made a plan the evening of Feb. 1 to go to Farley’s home and kill him.

Schlesinger went to Littauer’s home, where Littauer gathered a compound bow, broadhead-tipped arrows, and a BB gun, the affidavit says.

They then walked the 1.4 miles to Farley’s home, it adds.

They entered the home, found Farley standing in his living room, and Littauer shot his compound bow and broadhead-tipped arrows through Farley’s right arm and chest, “resulting in his nearly-instantaneous death,” Lanning wrote.

At some point, Schlesinger “came to possess a purple and grey .22-caliber revolver” Farley had owned, the affidavit says.

Lanning wrote that Littauer was the one who shot eight BBs into Farley’s scalp.

When investigators searched Littauer’s home, they found a compound bow, black arrows, broadhead arrow tips and a BB gun pistol, says the affidavit.

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