A Biker Swung His Harley Across the Road in Front of a Colorado Prison Bus and Refused to Move—Guards Rushed Him, Until a Dead Man’s Dog Lay Down Flat in the Road
Part 2 — Inmate 183442
The bus pulled away while I was face-down on the hot asphalt. I lifted my head in time to see the shaved-headed man in the window press his palm against the glass one more time.
Then the bus was gone, heading east on Highway 14.
Lieutenant Gil Romero of the Colorado Department of Corrections stood over me, red-faced.
“You just blocked a state prison transport on a restricted road,” he said. “You understand that’s a felony in Colorado?”
“The dog was going under the tires.”
“The dog,” Romero said, “is going to county animal control.”
Scout didn’t fight either. He let a young officer slip a rope leash over his head. He kept looking east down Highway 14, where the bus had disappeared, and whining.
They charged me with obstructing a peace officer and trespass on state correctional property. I sat in the Logan County Jail in Sterling that afternoon.
By night, a visitor’s video had eight hundred thousand views. Biker Blocks Colorado Prison Bus, Tackled by Guards. My club brothers were in it, standing in the visitor lot in their vests. The comments wrote themselves.
Trying to break out his buddy.
Guess where these guys belong.
I sat on the steel bunk and made myself think straight.
Two years ago, I stood in the Laramie Plains Funeral Home beside a closed casket and told two hundred people that Danny Royce was the best man I ever knew. Danny’s little brother, Brett, had identified the body. The Larimer County Coroner signed the death certificate.
The man on that bus was thin and gray-faced, with a shaved head and a long white scar from his left ear down his jaw. Danny had a full red beard and a laugh you could hear across a county fair.
Maybe I’d seen what I wanted to see.
And a border collie knows a hand signal. Scout was trained on cattle at the Royce ranch as a pup. Half the ranch hands in Albany County use some version of down. A dog that’s been grieving for two years runs at a bus, a stranger raises his hand, and the dog drops.
Maybe I’d just blocked a prison bus, gotten myself a felony, and gotten Danny’s dog impounded for a ghost.
And there was Brett’s phone call. What the hell are you doing at Sterling? Maybe one of my brothers posted something. Maybe somebody saw the video early.
Maybe.
At eleven p.m., Lieutenant Romero came to my cell himself. He looked uncomfortable.
“Mr. Lawson,” he said. “The inmate on that bus. Raymond Lee Tibbs, number 183442. He’s back at Sterling tonight. The transfer was canceled.” He hesitated. “He’s requested a visit tomorrow. With you.”
“Why?”
Romero looked at the floor.
“He said to tell you he still owes you forty dollars from the Sturgis bet in ’19.”
My chest went cold.
Nobody alive knew about that forty dollars but Danny Royce and me.
Part 3 — Down
Six summers ago, the Royce ranch outside Laramie smelled like sagebrush, cut hay and the wintergreen gum Danny chewed nonstop.
Danny was thirty-five, with a red beard, a big laugh and the biggest hands in Albany County. He ran Royce Brothers Motorcycle on Third Street with his little brother, Brett. Their father built it in 1974 and left it to both of them in his will.
But on Sundays, Danny worked sheep with Scout.
Scout was a year old, all legs and black-and-white fur. Danny trained him with hand signals instead of whistles, because he said whistles were for show-offs.
There was a flat hand, palm down. Down. Scout dropped instantly, every time.
There was a fist to the chest, then an open palm out. Come to me. Scout ran like he’d been shot from a cannon.
“Nobody else uses these,” Danny told me, grinning, while Scout lay flat in the grass, quivering, waiting. “I made ’em up. He only answers to me.”
That same summer, Danny got a tattoo on the inside of his left wrist. It was a single paw print, Scout’s actual paw print, inked from a stamp pad.
“So when I’m old and senile,” he said, “I’ll remember who my best friend is.”
“Thought I was your best friend,” I said.
“You don’t answer to hand signals, Deke.”
Brett watched from the porch, sipping a Coors, not laughing. Brett handled the shop’s books. Danny handled everything people actually liked. Brett had been jealous of his big brother since they were kids.
Two years later, Danny gave a ride to a hitchhiker on US-287, south of the Wyoming line, in a sleet storm.
The bike went off the road near Virginia Dale and burned.
Brett went to Fort Collins to identify the body.
He came back four hours later with Danny’s leather jacket and his wedding ring.
Part 4 — Raymond Lee Tibbs
Brett Royce drove down to Sterling the next morning before I could even get my visit. He met me in the Logan County Jail visiting room with a lawyer and a folder.
He was thirty-six, clean-shaven, in a pressed Royce Brothers Motorcycle polo. He’d been elected to the Laramie City Council last year. He looked tired and grieving and patient.
“Deke,” he said. “I’m not angry. I know you loved Danny. I’m going to show you something, and then I need you to let this go.”
He opened the folder.
The first page was the Colorado State Patrol crash report from two years ago. Single motorcycle crash, US-287 MM 381, near Virginia Dale. Fatality: one adult male, identified as Daniel J. Royce, Laramie, WY, via Wyoming driver’s license recovered from leather jacket on decedent. Positive identification by next of kin, Brett Royce. Surviving passenger: adult male, transported to Poudre Valley Hospital, identified via wallet as Raymond Lee Tibbs.
The second was Raymond Lee Tibbs’s criminal history. He had felony warrants in Nebraska and Colorado for theft and identity fraud. Known to target vulnerable families. Multiple prior schemes impersonating deceased individuals.
“Ray Tibbs was the hitchhiker Danny picked up,” Brett said quietly. “Tibbs survived. He pleaded guilty to the Nebraska and Colorado warrants from his hospital bed. He’s doing six years.” He tapped the page. “Deke, this man studies families. It’s what he does. He was on the back of Danny’s bike for forty miles. Danny told him everything. Stories. Names. Probably the dog. Probably the Sturgis bet.”
He slid over one more page. It was a printout of a Facebook post from my own club’s page.
Riding to Sterling CF Saturday for the K-9 charity run! Who’s in?
“That’s how I knew where you were,” Brett said. “It’s public, Deke.”
I sat there feeling like a fool.
“He’s a con man,” Brett said gently. “He saw the video. He saw his chance. A grieving best friend, a family business, a life insurance policy. You’re exactly the mark he’s looking for.” His voice cracked. “And honestly, Deke? I can’t do this again. I buried my brother. Don’t make me dig him up.”
He stood up and put a hand on my shoulder.
“I’ll ask them to drop the felony,” he said. “And I’ll pick up Scout from county. I’ll take him home.”
He left.
Everything he’d shown me made sense. A con man with an identity fraud record, a crash report, a positive identification by family, and a public Facebook post.
But Brett had said he’d take Scout home.
Two years ago, two months after the funeral, Brett gave Scout to a stranger off Craigslist. Scout ran away the first week. He’d been living behind the Albany County fairgrounds ever since, chasing motorcycles.
Why would Brett want him back now?
Part 5 — The Paw Print
Lieutenant Romero gave me my visit that afternoon, against his own judgment.
Inmate 183442 sat down across the glass in Sterling’s visiting room. He was thin, with a shaved head, a long white surgical scar down his jaw, and a gray prison jumpsuit.
He didn’t say anything at first.
Then he slowly rolled back his left sleeve and laid his wrist flat against the glass.
On the inside of his wrist was a single black paw print.
It wasn’t a generic paw print. It was Scout’s, inked from a stamp pad six summers ago, with the little smudge on the third toe where Scout wiggled.
I put my hand on the glass over it.
“Danny,” I said.
“Hey, Deke.” His voice was rough. “Took you long enough.”
He told me in pieces. He didn’t remember the crash. He woke up in Poudre Valley Hospital eleven days later with a fractured skull and no memory of his own name. Nurses called him Raymond. Detectives called him Raymond. A public defender read him charges for warrants in Nebraska and Colorado, and he didn’t know enough to argue.
“I gave the hitchhiker my jacket,” he said. “He was freezing. My wallet was in it. I had his wallet in my saddlebag. He’d asked me to hold it.” He shook his head. “When I woke up, everybody had already decided who I was.”
“When did you remember?”
He looked away.
“Eight months ago.”
I sat back.
We needed proof, more than a tattoo and a forty-dollar bet.
So I called Mira Castellanos, a lawyer with the Korey Wise Innocence Project at the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder. She’d seen the video. She drove to Sterling that night.
Within a week, she had everything.
Poudre Valley Hospital’s intake photos of “Raymond Lee Tibbs” showed a man with a full red beard, a fractured skull, and a paw-print tattoo on his left wrist.
The Larimer County Coroner’s report on “Daniel Royce” noted severe thermal injury to torso and face; extremities partially preserved; no tattoos noted on either wrist or forearm.
There was more in the coroner’s file. Next of kin (brother) declined dental comparison and DNA confirmation. Requested expedited release for cremation. Identification based on personal effects.
Brett had cremated the body four days after the crash.
Then Mira pulled the money.
When their father died, he left Royce Brothers Motorcycle to his sons equally. But there was a clause: if either son died without children, his half went to the surviving brother.
Danny had no children.
The shop, building and land on Third Street were appraised at $1.3 million. Danny’s life insurance policy through the Wyoming Motorcycle Dealers Association paid $500,000 to his named beneficiary, his brother, Brett.
And fourteen months after the funeral, Brett married Danny’s fiancée, Carly Dawes.
Mira pulled one more thing, by subpoena, from the hospital in Fort Collins. It was a visitor log from the neurology ward at Poudre Valley Hospital, three days after the crash.
Visitor: B. Royce. Patient: Tibbs, Raymond L. Room 4112. Duration: 22 minutes.
Brett had visited “Raymond Tibbs” in the hospital the day before he identified a burned body as his brother.
He’d stood beside Danny’s bed, looked at his face and the paw print on his wrist, and walked out.
I put my head in my hands in Mira’s car.
That’s when my phone buzzed.
It was a text from an unknown Laramie number.
Leave it alone, Deke. Or the dog goes first.
Part 6 — Five Days
On Monday, Brett filed for a protective order in Albany County, Wyoming. It said I was “harassing a grieving family with an inmate’s fraudulent claims.”
The Laramie Boomerang ran it on the front page. City Councilman Says Biker Friend Is Being Conned by Prison Inmate Claiming to Be Dead Brother. They used the video of me on the asphalt outside Sterling.
The Colorado Department of Corrections suspended my visiting privileges at every facility in the state, pending review of “the Sterling incident.”
Then Brett filed a complaint with the Colorado District Attorney’s office in Logan County. He accused inmate Raymond Lee Tibbs of attempted identity fraud and attempted theft against the Royce estate.
Danny was moved to administrative segregation, solitary confinement, “pending investigation.”
On Wednesday, Logan County Animal Control called me.
“Mr. Lawson, the border collie from the Sterling incident. The registered owner’s next of kin, Mr. Brett Royce, has declined to claim him.” The officer hesitated. “He’s listed the dog as having ‘a history of aggression toward motorcyclists.’ Under county policy, an unclaimed dog with an aggression flag has five days.”
“Five days until what?”
The officer didn’t answer.
Scout had never bitten anyone in his life. He’d chased every motorcycle through Laramie for two years, looking for one man.
I drove back to Sterling and stood outside the Logan County animal shelter on Highway 6. They wouldn’t let me in. I wasn’t the owner. I wasn’t anybody.
Through the chain-link fence of the outdoor run, I could see him. Scout was lying flat on the concrete with his chin on his paws, staring east.
My club brothers came down from Laramie that night. Fourteen bikes sat in the shelter parking lot. The Sterling Journal-Advocate ran it. Bikers Gather Outside Animal Shelter After Prison Bus Incident.
Brett’s lawyer added it to the protective order petition by morning.
On Thursday night, Mira Castellanos called me.
“Deke, I got Danny on the phone through his public defender,” she said. “From segregation. He wants you to hear something before we go any further.” She paused. “He says if you don’t hear it now, you’ll find out in court, and it’ll be worse.”
Part 7 — The Forty Dollars
Danny’s voice came through Mira’s speakerphone, crackling over the prison line.
“Deke. The night of the crash.” He took a long breath. “I’d been drinking.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Three beers at the Virginia Dale saloon. Maybe four. The sleet was coming down. That hitchhiker was standing on the shoulder in a T-shirt. I gave him my jacket and told him to climb on.” His voice broke. “I took the curve at milepost 381 too fast. I knew better. I’ve ridden that road a thousand times.”
“Danny—”
“He died, Deke. Ray Tibbs had warrants and a bad record, and he died because I’d had four beers and wanted to get home.” Danny’s voice was raw. “When my memory came back eight months ago, I lay in my bunk and thought about it. I figured six years in Sterling under a dead man’s name was about what I owed him.”
“You could’ve told someone.”
“I almost did.” He went quiet. “Then I saw Carly on Brett’s Facebook. Their wedding pictures. And I thought, she’s happy. The shop’s running. Everybody’s moved on. Maybe I’m worth more to them dead.” He laughed bitterly. “I didn’t know about the insurance. Or the hospital visit. I didn’t know Brett looked me right in the face and walked out.”
I sat in Mira’s car in the dark outside the animal shelter.
For two years, I’d believed Danny Royce was a saint who died a hero’s death on a mountain highway. He wasn’t a saint. He was a man who’d had four beers and taken a curve too fast with a stranger on the back. Then he decided prison under someone else’s name was the price.
And his own brother had let him pay it, for a motorcycle shop and a woman.
“You don’t get to decide that alone, Danny,” I said. “Not anymore. That dog didn’t stop looking for you for two years. You don’t get to stop either.”
There was a long silence on the line.
“Is Scout okay?” Danny finally asked.
“He’s got two days.”
Mira cleared her throat.
“Saturday,” she said. “Royce Brothers Motorcycle is holding its fiftieth anniversary rally on Third Street in Laramie. Brett’s dedicating a memorial bench to Danny in front of the shop. It’s being livestreamed by the Wyoming Motorcycle Dealers Association, and Wyoming PBS is covering it.” She paused. “And the Logan County DA agreed to a rapid DNA comparison. Danny’s cheek swab against Brett’s, for a sibling match. It’s being run this week.”
“Can we get Scout out?”
“Only if someone with a legal claim takes him,” Mira said. “His registered owner is Daniel Royce. Who is legally dead.”
I looked at the shelter through the windshield.
“Then we’d better bring him back to life by Saturday,” I said.
Part 8 — The Memorial Bench
Third Street in Laramie was closed off on Saturday afternoon. Two hundred motorcycles were parked along both sides. A stage sat in front of the old brick building with ROYCE BROTHERS MOTORCYCLE · EST. 1974 painted on the side. A small crowd drank coffee from the café across the street.
In front of the shop sat a new wooden bench with a brass plaque, under a black cloth.
A Wyoming PBS camera crew filmed. The dealers’ association livestreamed on Facebook.
Brett Royce stood at the microphone in a black vest he’d never worn in his life, with Carly beside him.
I stood at the back of the crowd with Mira Castellanos. My protective order said a thousand feet from Brett’s home and office. Mira had checked. A public street at a public event didn’t count.
Beside me, on a leash Mira had gotten released to “the Korey Wise Innocence Project as temporary custodian pending legal identification of owner,” sat Scout.
He was shaking.
“Fifty years ago,” Brett said into the microphone, “my father opened this shop. Two years ago, my brother Danny died on a mountain road near Virginia Dale.” His voice cracked perfectly. “Some of you have seen the videos. A prison inmate claiming to be him. A biker who believed him.” He shook his head. “I want to be very clear. I identified my brother myself. I drove to Fort Collins. I looked at his left wrist. That paw print was right there, the one he got for his dog. I knew it was Danny.”
Mira Castellanos stepped forward with a folder.
“Mr. Royce,” she said clearly. “Could you repeat that? You identified your brother by the tattoo on his left wrist?”
“Yes, ma’am. Scout’s paw print. Clear as day.”
Mira held up a page toward the PBS camera.
“This is the Larimer County Coroner’s report on the body you identified,” she said. “Extremities partially preserved. No tattoos noted on either wrist or forearm.” She lowered it. “There was no paw print on that body, Mr. Royce.”
The crowd went silent.
“There was a paw print,” Mira said, “on the man in Room 4112 at Poudre Valley Hospital. The man you visited for twenty-two minutes the day before you identified a burned stranger as your brother.”
She held up a second page.
Visitor: B. Royce. Patient: Tibbs, Raymond L. Room 4112.
Brett’s face went white.
“And this morning,” Mira said, “the Colorado Bureau of Investigation completed a rapid DNA comparison between Brett Royce and inmate 183442.” She lifted a third page. “Full sibling match. Ninety-nine point nine percent.”
Two hundred bikers turned to look at the man at the microphone.
Carly Dawes took one step away from her husband.
“You saw him,” she whispered. “You saw Danny in that hospital, and you came home and told me he was dead.”
Brett opened his mouth.
Then Scout started to pull on his leash.
He wasn’t looking at Brett. He was looking past the stage, down Third Street, at the corner.
A Colorado Department of Corrections van had just pulled up to the curb.
The back door opened. A thin man in a plain gray shirt and jeans stepped down, flanked by two officers. He had a shaved head and a long scar down his jaw.
He looked across a hundred yards of street and two hundred motorcycles at the black-and-white dog on the end of my leash.
And he raised his hand to his chest.
Part 9 — Come to Me
A fist to the chest. Then an open palm out.
Come to me.
I let go of the leash.
Scout went down Third Street like he’d been shot out of a cannon. He ran past two hundred motorcycles and the stage and the memorial bench under its black cloth, and launched himself into the arms of a man who’d been dead for two years.
Danny Royce went down on his knees on the asphalt. He held that dog and sobbed while Scout licked his face and cried.
Nobody on Third Street said a word.
The Albany County Sheriff’s Office arrested Brett Royce on the stage of his own anniversary rally. He was indicted in Colorado for false reporting, perjury and insurance fraud, and in Wyoming for theft by deception and fraud against an estate. The insurance company sued to recover the $500,000. The shop was returned to its rightful co-owner. Brett pleaded guilty and was sentenced to seven years.
The real Raymond Lee Tibbs was finally identified through his mother in Omaha, Nebraska. She’d been looking for him for two years. Danny drove to Omaha himself, sat in her kitchen, and told her everything about that night, the sleet, the jacket, and the four beers.
She listened to all of it. Then she said, “He was cold, and you gave him your jacket. That’s the last thing anyone ever did for him.” And she held Danny’s hand.
The Larimer County District Attorney reviewed the crash. Danny had been injured, without memory, and identified by others. Then he’d served twenty-two months for another man’s warrants. The DA decided that was enough.
Danny’s conviction under Tibbs’s name was vacated. His death certificate was rescinded. He walked out of Sterling Correctional Facility a free man on a bright October morning.
Carly divorced Brett. She and Danny don’t talk much yet. Some things take longer than a court order.
I didn’t get a felony. Lieutenant Gil Romero testified at my hearing that blocking that bus probably saved a dog’s life. The charge was dismissed. He shook my hand afterward and asked if Scout was available for the prison K-9 program. I told him Scout already had a job.
On the morning Danny got out, I was waiting outside the gates of Sterling Correctional Facility with Scout in the sidecar of my Harley.
A transport bus was pulling in through the gate behind Danny as he walked out. It was the same white bus, on the same access road.
Scout saw Danny and started to scramble out of the sidecar.
So I swung my Harley across the road one more time, slow and easy, right in front of that bus.
The driver hit the brakes and leaned out his window.
I raised my hand. “Just a minute, brother,” I said.
The guard in the tower must have recognized me, because he raised his hand back and didn’t say a word.
Scout jumped out of the sidecar and ran across the empty road.
Danny stopped in the middle of the access road and dropped to one knee in the dust. He didn’t hold up a flat hand to make him lie down. He didn’t need to.
He held his arms wide open.
Scout ran right into them.
Danny pressed his face into that black-and-white fur and held on, his whole body shaking.
Then he looked up at me over the dog’s head, with the scar on his jaw and his red beard already starting to grow back.
“He never stopped looking, did he?” Danny said.
“Not one day,” I said. “Every bike that ever rolled through Laramie.”
Danny scratched Scout behind the ears and pressed his wrist, the one with the paw print, against the dog’s chest.
“Neither did you,” he said.
If Danny, Deke and Scout’s story stayed with you, follow our page. We’ve got a lot more biker stories coming, and some of them hit even harder than this one.
