On January 17, Ouray County Plaindealer published a story detailing claims of sexual assault that allegedly took place at the Ouray police chief’s home last May, allegedly involving the chief’s stepson and two other suspects. Published on the front page of the newspaper’s January 18 to 24 print edition, nearly all of those copies have reportedly disappeared from newsstands, with claims being made that they were stolen by an unknown party.

“I’ll leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions on which story they didn’t want you to read,” reads a newsletter sent out by the paper following the alleged theft. “Whoever did this took the time to steal hundreds of newspapers around the county, to prevent you from reading the news.”

Other content on the front page included a story about a developer and Ouray reaching a housing pact, as well as an image of a skier “catching some air” in a skijouring competition. The full digital edition of the paper can be found here.

Co-publisher of the Ouray County Plaindealer Mike Wiggins wrote on X.com, “someone didn’t like this edition of Ouray County Plaindealer (Guess which article) so they stole nearly every newspaper out of our racks in Ouray County. If you hoped to silence or intimidate us, you failed miserably. We’ll find out who did this. And another press run is imminent.”

Wiggin’s post was accompanied by an image of the empty newspaper rack and has since reached more than 148,000 people on the social media platform.

The newspaper racks operate by allowing someone to put four quarters into the machine to access the stack of papers. Presumably, someone would be able to simply grab the entire stack at that time instead of the sole copy that was legitimately purchased.

A newsletter published by the Ouray County Plaindealer notes that all of their newspaper racks in Ouray and all but one in Ridgway were emptied, also detailing that it appeared as if four quarters were used in each machine to empty them out.

Additional details regarding the alleged theft will likely come out in days to follow.

Anyone with information about this alleged crime has been asked to call 970-249-9110 by the newspaper, which is the number for the Montrose County Sheriff’s Office.

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