Marler guilty on 14 counts, taken into custody without bond

CASPER, Wyo. — Steven Randall Marler, noted Casper business owner and former foster father, has been found guilty of eight counts of sexual abuse of a minor. He was also convicted of five counts of misdemeanor battery and a count of child endangerment. 

The jury heard closing arguments Tuesday morning and went into deliberations just before noon, delivering a verdict after about seven hours.

After the verdict was read, Marler was taken into custody to be held without bond, District Attorney Dan Itzen told Oil City News. The combined felony charges carry a penalty of up to 175 years in prison.

Marler was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse of now 21-year-old K.A.M., who was 14 or 15 years old at the time, and four other counts related to her. Marler was also convicted of three counts of second- or third-degree abuse against K.P.M., born 2006, who was under 16 at the time.

Marler was found not guilty on three counts concerning A.W. (born 2004) and D.W. (born 2008).

He was convicted on all counts of battery and the single count of child endangerment.

Assistant District Attorney Brandon Rosty argued the case for the state, while Itzen took second chair. The case was brought by the Natrona County Sheriff’s Office, with an affidavit of probable cause written by lead investigator Lisa Lauderdale.

“These are team cases,” Itzen said. “What the public sees is the result of hard work and respect.”

Details on the case and the allegations heard in closing arguments are included below.

CASPER, Wyo. — After nearly two weeks of testimony, 12 Natrona County jurors went into deliberations shortly before noon on Tuesday in the trial of Steven Randall Marler, a noted Casper business owner accused of sexually abusing four former children and striking several others.

The jury was asked to consider 11 counts of sexual abuse of a minor. Each count represents a separate alleged act, though some are alleged to have occurred over years.  Two of the counts are for first-degree sexual abuse of a minor, which carries a penalty of 25–50 years in prison. He is also accused of five counts of misdemeanor battery and one count of child endangerment. 

Marler, 51, is presumed innocent unless proven guilty. 

A decade ago, Marler and his wife Kristen were commended by the governor and the federal Administration for Children and Families for opening up their Casper Mountain home to foster children and promoting work ethic, faith and family values.

Defense filings indicated the Marlers fostered about 75 children since 2008, nearly a dozen of which were formally adopted.

“What was hidden behind these walls and these smiles was a culture of silence, obedience, and fear,” state prosecutor Brandon Rosty told the jury during closing arguments on Tuesday.

“What he wasn’t counting on was that they would find their voice, and that there would be camera footage to corroborate their accounts,” Rosty said.

Judge Kerri Johnson told the jury at the beginning of the trial almost two weeks ago that the jury could consider the video evidence in the overall context of the case, though it was not direct evidence of any specific allegation of sexual abuse.

Defense attorney Devon Peterson told the jury that the Marlers had been in the midst of a power struggle with their foster children, and that the girls had fabricated the sexual abuse allegations to get away from the Marlers.

“There was all the motivation [to lie] in the world, and it worked,” Peterson said. During opening arguments, Peterson told the jury to pay attention to the timing of some of the victims’ disclosures to law enforcement, saying they arose when matters of custody were at stake.

“It was a flawed investigation from the start,” Peterson said, saying that Natrona County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Lisa Lauderdale had told one girl she would have a stronger case if other children came forward with allegations.

“This was more advocacy and piling on charges,” Peterson said.

He reminded the jury no charges had resulted from an NCSO investigation in 2016, when the oldest adopted girl told her mom that Marler would come into her room at night, lay with her and touch her bare genitals.

She said she was about 10 years old when it started and that it happened almost every night for six months until she left. She said Marler also struck her in the head with a broomstick.

A recorded interview of Marler speaking to NCSO investigator Taylor Courtney from 2016 was played during closing. Marler flatly denied touching her or any other girl. Lauderdale’s affidavit in the current case said that the claims in 2016 could not be substantiated.

“One by one, the longer they are away the more they are willing to talk,” Rosty told the jury during opening arguments.

More allegations surfaced in 2021, when one of the girls, then 17, was sent from the Marler home to the Cowboy Challenge Academy. Nurses there noted her “skeletal” appearance, swollen feet and the fact that, at the age of 17, she had yet to begin menstruating. She told the authorities that Kristin Marler had forced her to stand with her shoulder against the wall for 12–14 hours a day. She said she was also denied food and forced to run in the snow. Kristen pleaded no contest in 2022 to a charge of misdemeanor child abuse.

During the previous year, all the girls were made to sleep on one mattress while all the boys slept on another mattress in the home school room. Rosty said during this time, the children were made to shower and go to the bathroom with the doors open. He said that food was rationed and locks were installed on the refrigerator. 

Peterson acknowledged that the Marlers were “in over their heads” at the time, describing it as a power struggle with adolescents. 

Rosty said the girl who went to the Cowboy Challenge Academy and was adopted in 2011 had quickly become favored by Marler.

“He sexually desired these girls,” he said during closing arguments.

Rosty said that while she was at the Academy, she heard her peers discussing sexual topics, prompting her to state that those were activities she associated with her father. Her peers encouraged her to report further.

Rosty said the girl told authorities she would wake up with Marler on top of her, grinding and minimally clothed. She said she was made to touch Marler’s genitals, and reported an instance of penile penetration. That allegation resulted in one of two first-degree counts of sexual abuse of a minor in the first degree, which concerns acts of penetration, “however slight.”

The girl, now 21, also said that Marler punched her in the face after she told Kristen about the abuse.

She added that whenever the family was being investigated they were told what to say during family “pep talks.” Rosty said Tuesday that the children were made to write down anything they told investigating authorities. 

While investigating the new disclosures in 2021, NCSO investigators noticed that cameras had been installed in the Marler home. That led to the discovery of a 1-terabyte hard drive. It was blank, but in January 2025, a computer forensics team was able to extract about 1,500 playable files, only because they had once been deleted, Rosty said.

Rosty said one video was from a time in 2020 when Kristen was confirmed to be out of town. It shows Marler crawling over a mattress where all the girls slept and sitting on one girl’s face, Rosty said. Then the girls, without any visible reaction, begin massaging Marler under the covers for a 45-minute period. 

“Absolutely brazen,” Rosty said. He noted that Peterson did not address the footage in closing “because there is no answer for it.”

Rosty said another video shows one of the boys standing naked while Marler holds a rubber strap and other children are made to stand and watch. The boy and Marler move out of frame and the boy returns into camera view with obvious injuries to his buttocks.

One boy testified that in the winter of 2020–21, he and other children were shoveling snow off the roof when Marler kicked him and caused him to slide off, gashing his leg. Two other witnesses testified to the event. 

Marler is also accused of punching one child in the nose, shoving one child’s face into the snow and battering another girl with a broom handle.

According to the affidavit, one child told investigators, “Nobody wanted to be there.”

In May 2023, another girl who had run away and been arrested told authorities that she didn’t want to go back home because Marler had abused her. She recalled specific incidents when she was about 13 years old of Marler laying in bed with her, touching her genitals above and below clothing and rubbing his “private part” against her, according to statements in the affidavit. 

In June 2023, the foster children were removed from the home, according to court filings. 

Marler himself did not testify. Judge Johnson reminded the jurors that this is a Constitutionally protected right, and that they were to draw no inferences from it.