A small Colorado town police chief is embroiled in a growing scandal after his teenage stepson was accused of violently raping a girl in the family’s home and a local newspaper that reported the allegations was stolen from the shelves.
The Ouray County Plain Dealer was the first to report the arrest of Nate Dieffenderffer, the stepson of Ouray Police Chief Jeff Wood, along with co-defendants Gabriel Trujillo and Ashton Whittington.
The three teens were arrested last month on warrants for suspected sexual abuse, following allegations that they forcibly and repeatedly raped a 17-year-old girl at Wood’s home in May, while the police chief and other members of the family slept.
After the Plaindealer published a cover story on the indictment Thursday, nearly every copy was stolen from shelves in Ouray County, according to co-publisher Mike Wiggins.
“If you were hoping to silence or intimidate us, you have failed miserably. We’ll find out who did this. And another round of press is just around the corner,” Wiggins wrote on X.
The Ouray County Plaindealer was the first to report the arrests. After the report, nearly every copy of the issue was stolen from shelves in Ouray County
The Plaindealer Reportwritten by Wiggins’ wife and co-publisher Erin McIntyre, detailed allegations of sexual assault in the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s affidavit for arrests in the case.
The 17-year-old accuser told investigators she screamed and fought as she was raped at least three times by two different people in a bedroom and bathroom 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 still a few days away from his 18th birthday.
The prosecutor described joining the three Dieffenderffer men at their home and drinking some hard seltzer 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 male suspects laughed, but another sat in a chair and looked “shocked” but could not help her.
The accuser then said she was taken down the hall to a bathroom and raped by two different people.
Hours after Colorado 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 so that someone would hear me and screaming because it was so painful,” she told investigators.
She said she passed out and chipped a tooth on the bathroom floor while she held her head down.
The prosecutor 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 laundry.
The sweatshirt was later identified as belonging to Police Chief Wood, who has not been charged or accused of wrongdoing in the case.
After contacting a friend, the complainant went to the hospital the same day for a sexual assault examination, during which evidence was collected.
An investigator from the Ouray County Sheriff’s Office made 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 with investigators and said he and Dieffenderffer had a consensual sexual relationship beforehand, according to the affidavit.
He claimed he was merely a “witness” to the events of May 14, saying Dieffenderffer and the accuser went to the restroom and came out fully clothed 10 minutes later “and everything seemed fine.”
He further called the teenage girl a “pathological liar” and someone who seeks attention, the report said.
Trujillo, Dieffenderffer and Whittington are out 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.
In the meantime, the Plaindealer husband and wife have vowed to continue pursuing the case.
About X, Wiggins said those interested in supporting the local newspaper’s journalism can donate to a Report for the American campaign that helps finance its activities.
Founded in 1877, the Plaindealer claims to be the second-oldest continuously publishing newspaper on Colorado’s Western Slope.
The weekly newspaper delivers local news in rugged Ouray County, population 4,874, just north of the ski slopes of Telluride.
Wiggins and McIntyre, both former reporters for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, bought 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 the Plaindealer because we believe every community, even small ones, deserves good journalism,” the couple said in a Interview from 2021.
“At a time when headlines are full of stories about newspapers bought by hedge funds and gutted for profit, newsrooms gutted and presses no longer operating, we have invested in a weekly publication and doubled down on journalism.”