Why was nearly every newspaper stolen from this Colorado town after an assault in a police chief’s home?

Only delivery trucks were barreling down the icy main street of Ouray before dawn on Thursday, but the newspaper kiosks were fully stocked – a welcome turnaround from exactly one week earlier.

That’s when the roughly 5,000 residents of this mountainous Colorado county awoke to find that almost every copy of the local paper had been swiped from red-branded newspaper boxes dotted around its two main towns. The front page story of the Ouray County Plaindealer detailed sexual assault allegations against three local young men, including the stepson of Ouray Police Chief Jeff Wood, but no one could read it.

The Plaindealer cried foul, and the theft launched the story into the stratosphere. It seemed, at first glance, to feature all the gripping elements of a noir small-town scandal: A young girl raped. A local paper censored. A police department blamed. A hunt for the paper thief among a tiny population in a seasonal community.

Anyone with information regarding the theft was urged to contact the Montrose County Sheriff’s Office, not the local authorities, casting even further suspicion. The Plaindealer leaned into that narrative – fast.

“I’m sorry that most of you locals who like to get your papers from the racks were not able to put your quarters in and receive your weekly news today,”