A single-engine Pilatus PC-12/47E turboprop airplane that crashed Friday afternoon in northeast Wyoming, killing all seven onboard, reported an equipment malfunction consistent with problems that model of aircraft is known to have, says a longtime pilot and crash investigator.

National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway said in a Saturday statement that preliminary information shows the plane went down after reporting an “autopilot issue during flight.”

The plane left Nebraska about midday Friday and was bound for Billings, Montana. It crashed about 1 p.m. near the Montana border in northern Campbell County.

Among those killed were three members of the Gospel Hall of Fame group The Nelons — co-founder Kelly Nelon Clark and husband Jason Clark, and daughter Amber Nelon Kistler. Also killed were Nathan Kistler, Melodi Hodges and Larry and Melissa Haynie.

That the plane reported an autopilot issue, along with violent pitching up and down before plummeting from an altitude of 26,000 feet, doesn’t surprise Dan Gryder, a pilot who investigates aircraft incidents and crashes. He reports his findings on his popular YouTube channel.

He told Cowboy State Daily he doesn’t know the exact cause of the crash, but based on the information the plane relayed before it went down, reported by Flight Aware, frantic whipping up and down at 300 mph would have caused the plane to break apart.

“Like, when you stick your hand out going down the road,” said Gryder, describing the air’s effect. “It forces your hand up with a lot of force.”

NTSB investigators are on site and will issue a preliminary report in about two weeks, according to agency protocol.

“The aircraft is in a remote location, and once (investigators) gain access, they will begin documenting the scene, examining the aircraft,” Holloway said in the Saturday statement. “The aircraft will then be recovered and taken to a secure facility for further evaluation.”

A Domino Effect

The force the plane could have been under could have started what Gryder called a domino effect of parts breaking off the plane, then more breakage.

Campbell County law enforcement scanner communications Friday afternoon responding to the crash attested to this as well. One agent noted finding plane parts in a larger perimeter than one would expect from just the impact of a crash.

The plane must have been breaking apart while still airborne, the agent said.

Photos of debris scattered over the area published by the Gillette News Record also seem to corroborate Gryder’s hypothesis.

Something may have gone wrong with the autopilot system just before the crash, said Gryder.

The Pilatus is a good plane, he said, but any one of four or five other companies could have manufactured the autopilot system, and he said he does not know which one built the one on this particular plane.

The autopilot is hooked to the elevator pitch trim servo, which moves a tiny tab that controls pitch — especially at high speeds, he said.

That tab can have an “absolutely huge” effect on the plane’s position. Gryder likened it to the power of the nation’s top executive.

“It’s amazing to me that the president of the United States can have that much power, but he does,” he said.

Once the plane starts to break apart, “you’re done,” he said. There’s no way to reverse the inevitable crash at that point.

The fall would have unfolded over about two violent minutes, and Gryder said it’s his opinion everyone on board would have been alive to experience it until impact.

Jet Fuel

The plane had fueled up in Nebraska shortly before flying over Wyoming. It was probably carrying around 300 gallons of jet fuel when it approached the Wyoming-Montana border, Gryder said.

The jet fuel crashing down into Wyoming’s sage lands helped spark a large fire that Campbell County authorities fought both via air and from the ground.

Firefighters were combatting the last smolders Saturday, the agency reported.

The Race Is Run

The Gaither Management Group, which handles The Nelons, acknowledged the deaths of the members in a statement late Friday.

“One of the best loved Gospel music families in America, The Nelons, were involved in a tragic, fatal plane crash on Friday afternoon on their way to join the Gaither Homecoming Cruise to Alaska,” the statement reads.

Autumn Nelon Streetman, the youngest daughter of Jason and Kelly Nelon Clark, was not on the plane and confirmed their identities in a separate statement.

“Thank you for the prayers that have been extended already to me, my husband, Jamie, and our soon-to-be-born baby boy, as well as Jason’s parents, Dan and Linda Clark,” her statement reads. “We appreciate your continued prayers, love and support as we navigate the coming days.”

The Nelons performed vocally powerful ballads and pop-bluegrass worship songs. Their YouTube profile features such works as a soulful cover of Casting Crowns song “The Only Scars In Heaven” — a song about looking forward to an eternity with loved ones in heaven.

They covered the popular Christian version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in a campfire-side film featuring layered harmonies, and they tackled the folk classic “Gentle On My Mind” with a banjo.

The Nelons have won 10 Gospel Music Association Awards and was inducted into the GMA Hall of Fame in 2016.

Contact Clair McFarland at clair@cowboystatedaily.com

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

Ur-Energy Inc. said Friday that it’s raising $60 million in a public offering of stock to help pay for possible acquisitions of mining claims in the fragmented uranium industry and to ramp up development of mining projects.

Much of the U.S. uranium boom is happening in Wyoming.

“We are preparing our war chest so that we are ready for any opportunities. There is nothing that we can discuss publicly,” said John Cash, chairman, CEO and president of Casper-based Ur-Energy.

“There certainly is room for consolidation and efficiencies at the mine and at the corporate level,” Cash told Cowboy State Daily. “We think there are some strong possibilities for consolidation in the industry.”

The chief executive declined to discuss potential takeover targets or say whether his company had been approached with an offer.

“To be clear, we have no direct line or sight on anything. We are just being prepared in case anything becomes available,” Cash said.

In a filing made Friday, the company mentioned that it “frequently evaluates” acquisition opportunities to expand its portfolio of uranium projects.

“We are currently bidding on an acquisition opportunity involving a significant nonproducing uranium asset in the United States, although there is no certainty that we will continue to pursue that bid or be successful in acquiring the asset,” the filing stated.

No other details were made available.

Consolidation Picks Up

Evidence of consolidation in the uranium space in Wyoming and globally is beginning to emerge.

For instance, Australian-based Paladin Energy Ltd.’s $1.14 billion all-stock takeover of Canada’s Fission Uranium Corp. would make the combined entity the third largest publicly traded uranium producer in the world.

The combination, which was announced last month, is expected to close in the fall.

The business would rank the combined Paladin and Fission Uranium as third in output behind top producer Kazatomprom, which is controlled by the government of Kazakhstan, and Canada’s Cameco Corp., which has uranium positions throughout Wyoming and in the eastern neighboring state of Nebraska.

Kazatomprom is the world’s largest producer and seller of uranium.

Cameco’s facilities include the Smith Ranch-Highland in situ uranium mine near Glenrock and a satellite in situ uranium mine near Wright, as well as the Crow Butte in situ uranium mine near Crawford, Nebraska.

In-situ mining involves drilling with water derricks that can go down a few hundred feet into a bed of porous sandstone where there’s a very thick layer of uranium deposits to tap.

Cameco also operates uranium processing factories at Smith Ranch-Highland and Crow Butte where they can produce up to 7.5 million pounds of uranium yellowcake each year that, after further processing elsewhere, becomes fuel for nuclear reactors.

Besides the Paladin and Fission Uranium deal, two smaller uranium mining companies based in Canada merged in recent months.

ATHA Energy and Latitude Uranium completed their merger in March while IsoEnergy combined with Consolidated Uranium in December.

‘Little On The Larger Size’

Cash told Cowboy State Daily that his company’s $60 million stock offering is “a little on the larger size,” but there are larger mining companies that have raised several hundreds of millions of dollars in the uranium space.

Though smaller than Ur-Energy’s raise, Canadian Global Atomic Corp. made a $14.5 million (U.S.) stock sale to a group of private investors earlier this week.

The money is needed for a uranium project in the Republic of the Niger.

Over the past year, there has been a boom of uranium mining companies rushing to Wyoming to open mining and production facilities as the U.S. government has stepped in to embrace the industry’s strategic importance and push a “green revolution” agenda, according to Ur-Energy.

Ur-Energy anticipates using some of the proceeds from the public offering of 57.2 million shares to supplement working capital for the continued ramp-up at its Lost Creek mining and production site in Wyoming’s Red Desert and development at its Shirley Basin mine in central Wyoming.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, uranium companies rushed to Wyoming while others took their dormant operations out of caretaker status as part of a broader effort in the industry to develop an alternative enriched domestic uranium fuel supply.

The invasion of Ukraine led to growing nervousness in the U.S that the nation was relying too heavily on foreign sources, especially since Russia already was a major fuel supplier.

The U.S. took steps to alleviate over-dependence on Russia should the fuel supply line get cut.

Wyoming’s senior Sen. John Barrasso spearheaded an effort to ban Russian uranium imports that was signed into law by President Joe Biden in May.

Companies like Ur-Energy are being closely watched to see what kind of impact the resurgence in the industry might have on their bottom lines.

Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.

CASPER — Big, bold headlines and at least seven front-stories in the Casper Daily Tribune tell the tale of the day in 1924 a cloud of evil “unspeakably shocked” and “profoundly grieved” the Oil City.

A well-known and well-connected businessman gunned down his 10-year-old son and pretty wife, dumped their bodies in the North Platte River and headed east to Douglas. There, he was confronted by a familiar face in a hotel corridor during the early morning hours of a Sunday 100 years ago.

Following an exchange of gunfire, the Converse County sheriff walked away alive and the businessman, Fred Van Gorden, was dead.

“It is difficult for those who knew the affable Fred Van Gorden in life to realize that he committed the act that he did,” the Casper Daily Tribune editorialized March 17, 1924, two days after his gruesome crimes. “Were he in possession of his reason, we all know he would not have done it.

“It is not charity to the dead to believe he was temporarily insane, it is simply believing the truth. … Fred Van Gorden was in no manner so deeply involved that he could not have been saved by friends, had they but known.”

A Casper real estate and insurance agent, Van Gorden appeared to be the guy you wanted to know. He served on the Casper City Council, was an upstanding member of the First Presbyterian Church, a Mason and member of the Kiwanis Club.

Fred was married to Pearl. They had grown up in the same town in Iowa, married, moved to Nebraska, where they had a son, Arthur.

Arrival In Wyoming

In 1914, the couple moved to Douglas and lived there for a year.

During their time there, they likely came to know Albert “Al” Peyton, who had served a term as sheriff from 1912-1913, and in 1914 was operating a grocery store.

In 1915, the young family headed west to Casper and Fred Van Gorden got a job at the Golden Rule Store, which sold clothing. He later worked for Webel Commercial Co. and was in charge of the ladies’ department. When the company sold out, Van Gorden started his own company in May 1921.

His first office was in the Daily Tribune’s basement, then he moved to an office at the Rialto Theater. He specialized in real estate transactions, bond selling and insurance.

In 1924, the couple lived in a new house they recently had built on a city lot at 412 S. Grant St. Their previous little home sat in the back part of their lot. Arthur had a collie dog.

They were living the American dream.

Van Gorden was active in his church. He was listed as a contact for men who wanted to know more about a “brotherhood class” at the church, according to a Jan. 20, 1924, article in the Casper Sunday Tribune. Van Gorden also appeared in the paper the previous year on April 29, as a captain of the church’s building fund.

Sheriff, Again

Meanwhile in Douglas, the former grocer Peyton had run for sheriff again in 1922 and was elected.

He was well-known for helping people in the community and trying to keep a lid on the illegal activity surrounding the Prohibition era. A biography written by his wife and published in “Pages From Converse County’s Past” recall how he was involved in several raids and received a written commendation from the town council in Lost Springs for putting two stills out of business.

Peyton would also lead efforts to find the victims of the Cole Creek train wreck in late September 1923, spending a week scouring the North Platte River for bodies, several of them friends. He caught pneumonia for his efforts.

But appearances can be deceiving.

Van Gorden, 42, saw his financial debts and woes closing in by March 1924.

Friends told the Daily Tribune that his mortgage was beyond his means, and it was known in the community that his business was not thriving. Van Gorden had told his wife the house was paid for, but in reality he had a mortgage of $5,400, friends told the newspaper.

At Van Gorden’s business, he had received $6,100 from Casper businessman R.J. Fuchs to invest in first mortgages. According to the Daily Star Tribune, Van Gorden faked signatures on mortgages that represented $4,122 of Fuchs’ investment.

Fuchs discovered the forgeries and his attorneys gave Van Gorden an opportunity to make good on the money without ruining him in the community.

Meanwhile, the paper reported Van Gorden also owed $2,500 to insurance companies and had been threatened with a March 15 deadline for payment or a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of embezzlement would be issued.

Van Gorden had told Fuchs earlier March 15 at a meeting that he had raised the money to make his forgeries good. He asked Fuchs for a few more hours to get him the money.

Van Gorden had allegedly asked other creditors as well to meet him in his Rialto Theater office at 4 p.m. on that Saturday.

Evil Manifests

Instead, late that afternoon at his 412 S. Grant St. residence, Van Gorden called to his son, Arthur, who was outside playing with his dog.

Van Gorden asked Arthur to come down into the basement. As the son looked to his father, Van Gorden lifted up a .45-caliber revolver and shot Arthur once in the head and once in the heart.

Van Gorden also shot and killed the dog, likely to keep it from barking at the loss of its master.

About 6, Pearl came home from a women’s group meeting, probably driving into the garage. She also was called down to the basement.

Evidence there would later show she was shot in the head. The bullet passed through and a fragment ended up in a hallway that was found by law enforcement.

In the basement, Van Gorden tried to clean up the blood stains, wrapped his wife’s body in a man’s overcoat and tried to fit the bodies into the back of his Chevrolet sedan. He drove out of the garage, closed the door from the inside leaving blood-stained fingerprints.

As he drove away, a neighbor would later told police she thought she saw Pearl Van Gorden sitting in the back seat and wondered if the couple had an argument.

Prior to leaving the house, a desperate man had penned a series of notes.

“Van Gorden wrote a brief note to W.B. Cobb, his attorney, saying he ‘could not stand the gaff any longer and asked him to settle his affairs,’” the Daily Tribune reported March 17, 1924. The note was marked “special delivery.” It was dropped off at the post office shortly before 7 p.m.

A note to an insurance adjuster in Denver asked him to take over Van Gorden’s business.

Disposing Of The Bodies

After driving down the Yellowstone Highway, he turned off on the road that led to the city dump and a recently constructed North Platte River bridge.

He dumped the bodies in frigid waters, leaving blood stains on the bridge. Van Gorden then drove to Douglas.

Meanwhile, the special delivery note arrived for attorney Cobb at about 9 p.m. Cobb alerted police, thinking his client was planning to kill himself.

Casper Police and Natrona County deputies discovered the apparent murder scene in the basement. Blood spray was on walls, boys’ overshoes clotted blood, and the ashes of burned clothing in the basement furnace.

They also found a bed stripped of sheets and a holster hanging on the wall without a pistol in it. Bloody keys were found in a box outside the garage door.

A notice was put out for police to be on the lookout for Van Gorden’s Chevrolet.

Van Gorden arrived in Douglas about 12:45 a.m. and parked his car at the Overland garage. He told an attendant he would pick it up at 6 a.m.

“The garage attendant noticed that there was blood all over the car and that the rear cushion has been removed,” the Casper Sunday Tribune reported March 16, 1924. “He notified the sheriff who took charge of the matter at once.”

The Natrona County Sheriff had notified Peyton that Van Gorden might be headed his way.

The Confrontation

The Douglas County Budget reported March 18, 1924, that Van Gorden registered at the Labonte Hotel under an assumed name.

News accounts relate Peyton had checked boarding houses throughout the town, and when he ascertained Van Gorden was at the hotel, the sheriff took a room next to him. When the murderer stepped out into the hall at 3 a.m., Peyton opened his door and ordered Van Gorden to surrender.

“Van Gorden fired at Peyton and missed, and a bullet from Peyton’s gun dropped Van Gorden,” the Budget reported. “Van Gorden was well-known in Douglas, having been employed here several years ago.”

Peyton’s wife wrote in her family’s biography that at 5 a.m. that morning she received a call that there had been a shooting. She was terrified her husband had been shot.

“It was seven o’clock before the family discovered that Al had killed Fred Van Gorden, who had murdered his wife and son in Casper,” Lena Peyton wrote. “Van Gorden was a Camp Perry marksman who fired first; AI thought that it was a miracle that he had survived. AI did not like to kill anything and the shock of the shootout in the LaBonte Hotel caused him much suffering.”

Meanwhile, Natrona County authorities had searched gullies and bridges for bodies and stopped at 2 a.m. on Sunday. They resumed later that morning and discovered the blood-stained bridge and, using grappling hooks, recovered both Pearl and Arthur Van Gorden’s bodies.

Funerals for Van Gorden’s wife and son were held Tuesday, March 18, 1924, at First Presbyterian Church. Their bodies were put on an afternoon train and sent to Greenfield, Iowa, for burial.

The murderer’s body was placed on the same train when it reached Douglas and was sent with them. Funerals for the family were held in Iowa.

The Casper Daily Tribune would again editorialize on Van Gorden in its Wednesday, March 19, 1924, edition. The tone of the editorial was less sympathetic.

“There is a lesson imparted in the Van Gorden tragedy, old as time. … It has to do with honesty and uprightness in daily transactions,” the editor wrote. “Had Fred Van Gorden adhered to his earlier training and not wandered off into the unfamiliar field of double-dealing, there would be a more cheerful story to tell today. When he ceased to be square, his troubles multiplied, and climaxed in horrible tragedy.”

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.