The police chief of a small Colorado town is embroiled in a growing scandal, after his teenage stepson was accused of violently raping a girl in the family home, and a local newspaper that reported on the accusations was stolen from the shelves.
He Plain Ouray County Dealer was the first to report the arrest of Ouray Police Chief Jeff Wood’s stepson Nate Dieffenderffer, along with co-defendants Gabriel Trujillo and Ashton Whittington.
The three teens were arrested last month on warrants for alleged felony sexual assault, stemming from allegations that they violently and repeatedly raped a 17-year-old girl at Wood’s home in May, while the police chief and other members of the family were sleeping.
After the Plaindealer published a cover story about the charges Thursday, nearly all copies were stolen from Ouray County shelves, according to co-editor Mike Wiggins.
‘If you were hoping to silence or intimidate us, you failed miserably. We’ll find out who did this. And another press run is imminent,” Wiggins wrote in X.
The Ouray County Plaindealer first reported the arrests. Nearly all copies of the issue were stolen from Ouray County shelves after the report.
He Plain Trader Reportwritten by Wiggins’ wife and co-editor, Erin McIntyre, graphically details the sexual assault allegations contained in the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s affidavit for arrests in the case.
The 17-year-old accuser told investigators that she screamed and fought while being raped at least three times in a bedroom and a bathroom by two different people on May 14, 2023.
At the time of the alleged attack, Wittington had just turned 18 and they were celebrating his birthday, while Trujillo was 19 and Dieffenderffer was days away from turning 18.
The accuser described how he joined the three men at Dieffenderffer’s home and drank some mineral water and gin, before passing out on a bed in the house.
She said she passed out on a bed and woke up to find her clothes taken off and Dieffenderffer on top of her, having sex with her. She said she tried to fight back but was stopped.
She said one of the suspects was laughing, but another was sitting in a chair looking “horrified” but was unable to help her.
The accuser later said two different people took her down the hallway to a bathroom and raped her.
Hours after Colorado’s published a story about the alleged violent sexual assault of a teenage girl at the police chief’s home, hundreds of copies of the newspaper were stolen from nearly every newspaper rack in the county. Pictured: Ouray County Plaindealer Newspaper Rack
“I remember really trying to scream for someone to hear me and I screamed because of how painful it was,” she told investigators.
He said he fell in and out of consciousness and broke a tooth on the bathroom floor while his head was being held.
The accuser said that when she regained consciousness, she fled the house around 4:30 a.m., but could not find her clothes and grabbed a sweatshirt from a pile of dirty clothes.
The sweatshirt was later identified as belonging to Police Chief Wood, who has not been charged in the case or accused of wrongdoing.
After contacting a friend, the accuser went to the hospital that same day for a sexual assault examination, during which evidence was collected.
An Ouray County Sheriff’s Office investigator took an initial report at the hospital, but the case was later referred to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, presumably to eliminate conflicts of interest.
Investigators say DNA evidence from a vaginal swab matched Trujillo, and Dieffenderffer matched genetic material recovered from a bite mark.
Trujillo spoke to investigators and said he and Dieffenderffer had a prior “three-way” consensual sexual relationship, according to the affidavit.
He claimed he was just a “witness” to the events of May 14, saying Dieffenderffer and the accuser went to the bathroom and came out 10 minutes later fully dressed “and everything seemed fine.”
Additionally, he called the teen a “pathological liar” and an attention seeker, according to the report.
Trujillo, Dieffenderffer and Whittington are free on bail and could not be reached for comment.
Wood, the police chief, did not immediately respond to questions from DailyMail.com on Friday afternoon.
Meanwhile, the Plaindealer’s husband and wife have vowed to continue covering the case.
At X, Wiggins said those interested in supporting local newspaper journalism can donate to a Report for America Campaign which helps finance its operations.
Founded in 1877, the Plaindealer claims to be the second-oldest continuously published newspaper on Colorado’s Western Slope.
The weekly newspaper covers local news in rugged Ouray County, population 4,874, just north of the Telluride ski slopes.
Wiggins and McIntyre, both former Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reporters, purchased the Plaindealer in 2019.
In addition to running the business, the married duo also write many of the articles that appear in the newspaper.
“We invested in Plaindealer because we believe all communities, even small ones, deserve good journalism,” the couple said in a interview 2021.
“At a time when the headlines are full of stories about newspapers bought by hedge funds and dismantled for profit, newsrooms destroyed and printing presses going out of business, we have invested in a weekly publication and redoubled our commitment to journalism.” .