The Cowboy | Paper Trail

Laura Beil (0:00)

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It's a chilly Wednesday in December, when Julie Mosbacher pulls up to the post office in Matitzi, Wyoming.

Julie Mosbacher (0:27)

We don't get home mail delivery, so we all have to go to the post office.

Laura Beil (0:33)

Matitzi, population 300, give or take, is an outpost on the Gray Bull River in one of those wind-whipped Wyoming counties that has more cows than people. Just around the corner from the post office stands the Cowboy Bar, a saloon that served renegades and ranchers for more than 100 years. Butch Cassidy once got arrested as he was leaving there and sent to jail for horse theft. Today, you can still find men on bar stools with their cowboy hats pulled low, perched next to tourists in sensible shoes on their way to Yellowstone.

Julie Mossbecker has lived here for almost 15 years. She's a nurse at a hospital in Cody, about a half hour up the road.

On this chilly day, she's sifting through the usual stack of envelopes. There's bills, bills, junk mail, another bill, a few Christmas cards. And then something odd falls out.

A small folded scrap of paper.

Julie opens it up to find a photo of a man staring back at her. He's middle-aged with the stunned expression of someone who's just been caught doing something he shouldn't. It's a police mugshot. And then above, in big bold letters, the word alert. Julie scans through the text. My name is Rita and I broke my ankle this summer and this doctor did a terrible job. I looked up this doctor and found this recent arrest. He's already been investigated for drunkenness when on call at the hospital and has a dozen lawsuits that he lost. How can they let someone like this practice? Julie stares at the note. She knows this man. He's a surgeon at West Park Hospital, the same hospital where she works.

Julie Mosbacher (2:31)

My first thought was whoever did this is full of shit.

Laura Beil (2:35)

She throws it in the trash and drives off, convinced that someone is playing some kind of childish game. But when she walks into the hospital's nursing station, it's the only thing folks are talking about.

Julie Mosbacher (2:48)

Everybody was like, did you get one? Did you get one? We were all finding out how widespread this mailing was.

Laura Beil (2:56)

It wasn't just Julie or the staff at the hospital. Thousands of people were getting the letter. Fourteen thousand, to be exact. All morning, in towns scattered across the Big Horn Basin, from Powell to Lovell to Grable and Shell. And now, the hospital's phones won't stop ringing.

The people of Northwest Wyoming might be shocked to learn that a doctor has been accused of harming patients drunkenly.

But it's not the doctor in the photo that residents would need to worry about. It was another man, an outsider. Like so many stories from the Old West, he'd come to town looking for a fresh start. And he would leave families devastated, searching for answers, trying to comprehend what had gone wrong and who he really was.

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Laura Beil (4:40)

From Audible Originals, I'm Laura Beil, and this is the fifth season of Dr. Death, The Cowboy.

I probably spent too many hours as a kid watching re-rends of TV westerns. Gunsmoke, Alias Smith and Jones, Bonanza. I decided I wanted to be a girl with a horse, and for a while I was. I rode a spotted gray Appaloosa named Salty Mama. The TV cowboys of my childhood were tough, independent, often a little reckless. They were usually the good guys, but even the heroes had an edge, a kind of dangerous charm. The American frontier always had a mythical aura, but it was and remains a real place. Today, many of the folks in these old frontier towns are older. A lot of them have made a living with their hands and backs. In their bones, they carry the pain that comes from a lifetime of hard work. For relief, they often have to drive long distances across vast open country to find a surgeon to help them. This is the story of a doctor who fashioned himself as a cowboy. He rolled into Wyoming in his dress boots, ready to saddle up and be a hero. But the legend he left behind was one of broken bodies, lawsuits, bankruptcy and fraud.