Mark Hopkinson was convicted in Wyoming of four first-degree murders in two separate events, in each of which the State's case was that others carried out the killing at his direction. A jury in Uinta County found in September 1979 that he had procured the deaths of three members of one family in Evanston on August 7, 1977, and the death of a man who was about to testify against him, Jeffrey Lynn Green, on May 18, 1979. He was sentenced to life imprisonment three times over for the Vehar deaths and to death for Green's. On January 22, 1992, he was executed at the Wyoming State Penitentiary at Rawlins, the first execution in Wyoming in 26 years. No one had been arrested for carrying out Green's killing as of 1992.
The case turned on what a jury was entitled to infer about a man who was not present. Hopkinson said to the end that he had not ordered Green's death, and his lawyers argued that the evidence of his part in it was thin. Courts at every level, from the Wyoming Supreme Court to the full Tenth Circuit, left the convictions in place.
Hopkinson lived in the Bridger Valley of southwest Wyoming, where he was developing a trailer park. He was a party to several quarrels at once. One was a feud over water rights and a trailer court with a neighboring family named Roitz, which included a fight on May 6, 1976. Another was a dispute over a connection fee with the Fort Bridger sewer and water board, which sued him in January 1977 for the unpaid fee and for damages over threats made against its members. Vincent Vehar of Evanston was drawn into that dispute.
The State's case was that these disputes ran alongside a series of arrangements with men Hopkinson knew. Late in 1976, according to the State's evidence, one of them, Harold James Taylor, was paid to kill Vincent Vehar, and nothing came of it. In the spring and summer of 1977 another, Michael Hickey, was asked to kill either Vehar or William Roitz. Jeffrey Green, an associate of both Hopkinson and Hickey, was arrested in Utah in April 1977. The charges against him were later dropped in exchange for his testimony, and he went on to testify against Hopkinson and Hickey in 1978 and 1979.
Vincent Vehar was 67. His wife, Beverly, was 51, and their son John was 18. The three lived in Evanston, in Uinta County. They are the people the jury later counted as the first three of Hopkinson's victims, and little else about them as individuals is on record. Their deaths on August 7, 1977, were charged as three first-degree murders.
The State's account at trial was that Hickey carried out the killings on Hopkinson's orders. It was not Hickey who was first brought to account. In 1979 he confessed to the grand jury, and under a plea agreement he undertook to give evidence against Hopkinson in the Vehar case in exchange for a twenty-year sentence in a separate case.
In March 1979 Hopkinson was convicted in federal court at Cheyenne of charges arising from a matter in Arizona and was sent to a federal prison at Lompoc, California. He had moved to Salt Lake City in 1978.
Green was due to appear before a grand jury investigating the Vehar deaths. He was killed on May 18, 1979, two days before he was to testify. Hopkinson was then in custody in California, and the State's position was that he had arranged the killing from there. A Salt Lake City associate of his was the State's link. He visited Hopkinson at the prison and said they had talked about buying false testimony, while the State argued that they had been planning Green's death. Money moved through a bank account in the Salt Lake City area and was sent to Hopkinson's brother.
In June 1990 that associate was himself convicted of conspiring with Hopkinson in Green's killing. Witnesses at that trial testified that Hopkinson had telephoned his home from prison 47 times and had offered him $20,000. He was appealing at the time of the execution. Those who carried out Green's killing had not been arrested as of 1992.
After Hickey's testimony to the grand jury in late May 1979, an Uinta County grand jury returned a fourteen-count indictment against Hopkinson. Six counts went to trial, which opened on September 3, 1979. The prosecutor was Gerry Spence, a Jackson lawyer who had been named special prosecutor and who was a friend of the Vehar family. Hopkinson presented no evidence and moved for a judgment of acquittal, which the court refused.
The counts were these. Counts 1, 2 and 3 charged that on August 7, 1977 he "did wilfully, unlawfully, purposely, feloniously and with premeditated malice kill a human being", naming Vincent Vehar, Beverly Vehar and John Vehar in turn, and charged that he acted "by aiding, abetting, counseling, encouraging, hiring, commanding and otherwise procuring such murder to be committed". Count 4 used the same words for Jeffrey Lynn Green on May 18, 1979. Count 5 charged conspiracy, between November 1976 and March 1977, with Harold James Taylor, to commit the first-degree murder of Vincent Vehar. Count 6 charged conspiracy, in March and April 1977, with Michael J. Hickey, to commit the first-degree murder of William Roitz.
The jury found him guilty on all six counts. At the sentencing hearing that followed it recommended life imprisonment for each of the Vehar counts and death for the Green count. The court was bound by those recommendations. He received three consecutive life terms, a death sentence, and two consecutive terms of seven and one-half to ten years for the conspiracies.
Hopkinson turned down an offer. He would have been spared the death penalty, and the Green case would not have been prosecuted, had he agreed to a life sentence for the Vehar killings. He declined, saying he could not admit to crimes he had not committed.
Hopkinson appealed to the Supreme Court of Wyoming. On July 2, 1981 the court affirmed all of the convictions and reversed the death sentence, sending the Green count back for a new trial on the penalty only. Rehearing was denied on August 21, 1981. The conviction for Green's killing was the one most open to challenge, because the State had no direct evidence of the arrangement. The court held that a jury could reasonably find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt from circumstantial evidence, among it threats, telephone calls and the transfers of money, and from evidence that Hopkinson had a motive to silence Green. It also held that the Green count was properly tried alongside the others, because evidence on each set of counts would have been admissible in a separate trial. A question whether Wyoming could try him as a principal for acts of procuring committed in California was decided against him and was later treated as settled. The United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 1982.
A second jury heard the penalty question alone, and on May 17, 1982 it again returned a sentence of death. The Supreme Court of Wyoming affirmed it on May 27, 1983, over a dissent by Justice Rose. The court rejected arguments on the prosecutor's closing remarks, on the aggravating circumstances, on proportionality and on double jeopardy. The jury had found five aggravating circumstances, among them that the killing was committed to avoid or prevent a lawful arrest and that it was committed for pecuniary gain. The United States Supreme Court again declined review.
Further petitions followed in the state courts. A habeas corpus petition was decided against him on October 25, 1985: the court held that the question of trying him in Wyoming as a principal had been decided in 1981, found that a rule from Caldwell v. Mississippi did not apply to the prosecutor's rebuttal, and held that his post-conviction claims had already been addressed.
The federal district court in Wyoming dismissed his habeas petition in 1986. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals heard the appeal and, on January 23, 1989, a panel affirmed the refusal to set aside the murder convictions. It found that the evidentiary rulings, the joinder of the counts and the use of hearsay statements did not make the trial unfair, and it rejected a claim that new counsel at the second sentencing trial had too little time to prepare.
The remaining question was the prosecutor's closing argument at the 1982 sentencing, which Hopkinson said had lessened the jurors' sense of their own responsibility. The full Tenth Circuit decided it on October 24, 1989, with rehearing denied December 1, 1989. The judges were equally divided on whether the remarks breached Caldwell v. Mississippi, which left the district court's ruling in place on that point. Applying a test of whether there was a substantial possibility that the remarks affected the sentence, the majority found none and affirmed the denial of the writ. Judge Logan, joined by Chief Judge Holloway and Judges McKay and Seymour, dissented. The dissent agreed that the remarks were improper and would have vacated the death sentence. The Supreme Court of the United States denied review in 1990.
An execution was set for September 25, 1990, which would have been the first in Wyoming since 1965. Hopkinson's brother and mother spoke publicly before it. The brother, speaking for the family, said the trial had been a performance and that the real killers were still free; the mother asked the governor, Mike Sullivan, to halt the execution because those who carried out the killing had not been arrested. A Salt Lake City defense lawyer said Hopkinson had received a fair trial by Wyoming's standards, though one that had seemed shaded in favor of the prosecution, and that the Green case had no direct evidence.
On September 20, 1990 the Supreme Court of Wyoming denied another habeas corpus petition, holding that the claims had been decided earlier and that res judicata applied. Justice Cardine dissented on a point about the instructions on mitigating circumstances at the second penalty trial, and Justice Macy would have granted a stay. Less than 48 hours before the scheduled time, the federal district judge, Richard P. Matsch, granted a stay of execution, which the Tenth Circuit upheld. In December 1991 Judge Matsch dismissed Hopkinson's five claims of constitutional error, some of which had been rejected earlier and others of which he called legally insufficient, found substantial evidence for the death sentence, and lifted the stay.
On January 3, 1992 an appeal went to Governor Sullivan asking him to commute the sentence. Hopkinson's lawyers argued that there was insufficient proof of his involvement and that the death penalty was wholly inappropriate in a case such as this. The governor had the power to commute the sentence and did not. He later said that his main reason was that imprisonment had not stopped Hopkinson from arranging a murder, and that it was not a simple choice.
Hopkinson was executed on January 22, 1992, at the Wyoming State Penitentiary at Rawlins. He was the first person executed in Wyoming since Andrew Pixley on December 10, 1965. He maintained his innocence to the end. The governor expressed sorrow over it.
Proven in court and final: the four first-degree murder convictions, each charged as procuring the killing, and the two conspiracy convictions.
Not established in court: who carried out Green's killing. No one had been arrested for it by 1992.
Contested by Hopkinson: his part in Green's death. He maintained that he had not ordered it and that he was innocent, and his lawyers said there was no direct evidence. The courts held that the circumstantial evidence was sufficient.
Hopkinson's was the last execution carried out in Wyoming; as of May 2025 the state had not executed anyone since.
1976: Dispute over water rights and a trailer court; a fight on May 6; Taylor allegedly paid late in the year to kill Vincent Vehar, without result.
January 1977: The Fort Bridger sewer and water board sues Hopkinson over a connection fee.
November 1976 to March 1977: period of the conspiracy count naming Harold James Taylor.
March and April 1977: period of the conspiracy count naming Michael J. Hickey.
April 1977: Jeffrey Green arrested in Utah.
August 7, 1977: Vincent, Beverly and John Vehar killed in Evanston.
1978: Hopkinson moves to Salt Lake City; Green testifies in other proceedings.
March 1979: Hopkinson convicted in federal court at Cheyenne and held in California.
May 18, 1979: Jeffrey Green killed, two days before he was to testify.
Late May 1979: Hickey gives evidence to the grand jury; Hopkinson is indicted.
September 3, 1979: Trial opens; the jury finds him guilty on all six counts and recommends death on the Green count.
July 2, 1981: Wyoming Supreme Court affirms the convictions and reverses the death sentence.
1982: United States Supreme Court denies review; May 17, a second jury returns a death sentence.
May 27, 1983: Wyoming Supreme Court affirms the death sentence.
October 25, 1985: Wyoming Supreme Court denies a habeas corpus petition.
1986: Federal district court dismisses his habeas petition.
January 23, 1989: Tenth Circuit panel affirms on the convictions.
October 24, 1989: Full Tenth Circuit affirms denial of the writ.
June 1990: A Salt Lake City associate convicted of conspiring with Hopkinson in Green's killing.
September 20, 1990: Wyoming Supreme Court denies habeas corpus petition; days later a federal judge stays the execution set for September 25.
December 1991: Federal judge dismisses his claims and lifts the stay.
January 22, 1992: Executed at Rawlins.