I think I have that letter, by the way. The one Wasatch County Sheriff Jared Rigby ran over to Summit County authorities this winter concerning an election rival. And others like it. Anonymous accusations bloom like soiled dandelions before elections these days, just another strategy, a box to c heck. Plausible sounding but ultimately wacky claims short of making real sense, only too many people appear to buy them at face value. These typically leave no hint of who wrote the piece, a sly postmark, certainly no return address, usually typed, though not always. Just an envelope addressed to “The Park Record,” or “Editor,” sometimes “Don Rogers” or another specific name. If the one I have is the one at the heart of the latest investigation of Wasatch County Sheriff Jared Rigby, and I think it is, it contains a couple of pages of heinous workplace accusations against fellow sheriff candidate Eric Mainord. Reporters would have a hard time checking, given Utah’s open records laws. But a sheriff wouldn’t, not in the same town doing the same work, not working often enough on the same cases, not amid that grapevine, not calling a retired colleague who would know. The anonymous author claims to have worked with Mainord at the Heber City Police Department and observed or has direct knowledge of quite a litany of professional and personal misbehaviors over three years between 2017 and 2020. They’d have to have had one helluva lot of access to confidential files for things that would get officers fired and jailed if true, not hired and promoted by another department close by as a major crimes detective. More likely it’s gossip at best, made-up slime at worst. Myself, I’m leaning toward slime at the moment. Welcome to the Facebook/X age of “democracy.” This stuff plays out in all sorts of races, the national specter having sunk all the way to school board races, city council races, and most notably in this moment, the race for Wasatch County sheriff among three Republicans in the primary June 23. There’s mud enough now for each candidate this way and yet plenty of time for more. I also have an anonymous letter claiming workplace misdeeds by candidate Jeremy Hales, the county’s emergency services director. And there’s that other from last year, with some key differences from the others sent to us more recently. This one led to an investigation in 2025 of the current sheriff and the undersheriff that laid out issues throughout the department as viewed by a retired Third District judge. Rigby endured, I understand in part because the Wasatch County Council was loathe to interfere with an elected official’s oversight of his department. The voters soon enough will pass their own judgment through the election process. This seems prudent. The differences in the note we received before the investigation last year included the author identifying himself, providing his contact information, making himself accountable, and pretty much containing his complaints to first-hand observation with less obvious exaggeration. Even letters written this way usually don’t go far, mainly because they tend to be grudges made to sound the worst they possibly can, and most often no rules or laws or procedures were actually broken. But hey, sometimes yes, they lead to real stories with real sources and real documents to back it all up. This latest episode bears that ironic twist of backfiring on the person who would stand to gain from election mischief, if such were present with the timing. The story by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project, published through Utah News Dispatch, outlines a criminal investigation into Rigby for giving the anonymous letter about Mainord to Summit County authorities in the runup to the Kouri Richins murder trial the day after Mainord filed his candidacy for Wasatch County sheriff. There’s nothing in the accusations about Mainord while at the Heber City Police Department before COVID that has anything to do with the trial that ended in conviction for the Kamas woman accused of poisoning her husband. The trial judge ruled the anonymous slurs irrelevant to the case, an easy call.   Rigby dropping off the letter, apparently with no insight into whether it was more than some campaign mud, does look like a smear of its own against one of the lead detectives in the Richins case. If Rigby has any higher reasoning, he’s not sharing it. Meantime, Summit County authorities are investigating him for obstruction of justice. According to the Investigative Journalism Project, they are trying to find the person who wrote the anonymous letter, and the story indicates they have at least some suspicion that the accusations were fabricated to begin with. The investigators appear to view Rigby as trying to discredit a rival. The obstruction charge they are contemplating comes from the extra time consumed in challenging its admissibility when the defense team got a hold of the letter. Investigators have executed search warrants and conducted interviews in their pursuit of the case, an indication they are serious. They also have interviewed the Heber City police chief during Mainord’s time on the force. It does seem that if anyone knows, this guy would. Sheriff Rigby could have saved himself some time, and maybe this job, with just a little more investigating of his own before running over that letter. The letter strikes me as fishy enough for that much. But he’s the law enforcement expert. Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745. The post Journalism Matters: Anonymous letter backfires on a sheriff appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less