Investigators say Jose A. Gonzalez lured Rex Allen Lofts to a Wind River property where others were waiting.

RIVERTON, Wyo. — A Wyoming man has been charged with first-degree murder after investigators said he helped lure 72-year-old Rex Allen Lofts to a property on the Wind River Reservation, where a group of men was waiting and Lofts was shot to death in what authorities describe as a retaliation attack.

The charge against Jose A. Gonzalez, 55, came months after Lofts was found dead in his truck on April 21, 2025, and after investigators built the case through informant accounts, a coroner’s report and DNA evidence cited in an affidavit. The case matters now because Gonzalez is the first person charged in a killing that authorities say involved several other men, yet no other arrests had been announced in the published reports.

According to the affidavit described in court reporting, investigators believe the attack happened on or about Dec. 2, 2024, at a property known locally as “The Farm” on the reservation. Authorities said Gonzalez rode with Lofts in the truck after telling him that a woman Lofts knew wanted to see him there. Once they arrived, five men were allegedly waiting. Gonzalez told investigators the men came up to the vehicle, that one tapped on the window with a gun and fired into the ground, and that the shooting then started. He said he did not know who fired first and that he “kind of rolled out the side of the door” as shots were fired. Lofts’ remains were not found until more than four months later, inside the truck.

Investigators tied Gonzalez to the case in part through physical evidence, according to the affidavit summarized in published accounts. His DNA was reported on the steering wheel of Lofts’ truck and on Lofts’ turned-out pants pockets, which prosecutors say supported the theory that the victim was robbed after the shooting. Informants also told agents that one man identified only as E.E. said he had “done it” or “took him out” after Lofts allegedly assaulted a woman who was both Lofts’ girlfriend and E.E.’s aunt. A separate account said the group’s stated goal was to “scare” Lofts because he “kept putting his hands on my auntie.” What remains unclear in the public record is exactly who fired the fatal shots, how many guns were used and why only one suspect has been charged so far.

The broader timeline has unfolded in pieces. Lofts was later listed in the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation’s missing persons database in January 2025. That entry said he had last been seen on Dec. 14, 2024, traveling in a red Ford flatbed truck. Months later, on April 21, 2025, authorities found his body in a vehicle on the reservation. By late July, Fremont County Coroner Erin Ivie ruled the death a homicide caused by gunshot wounds to the trunk and shoulder, and said the body showed moderate decomposition when recovered. Those public records left some date questions unresolved because the affidavit places the ambush around Dec. 2, while the missing-person filing used Dec. 14 as the last-seen date. The published reports do not explain that gap.

Investigators say the killing did not end at the shooting scene. One informant told agents that three men moved Lofts’ body from the driver’s seat, then took $90, rings, a necklace, a gun and about 3 grams of meth from him. Another account said one suspect drove Lofts’ pickup away while two others followed in a second vehicle, leading to the location where the truck and remains were eventually found. Gonzalez was also reported charged as an accessory before the fact to aggravated assault and battery and aggravated robbery. Public reports said he was being held in the Fremont County jail after being bound over to district court in late February 2026. No next court date was listed in those reports, and no public arrest announcements for the other men described in the affidavit were cited.

The case has drawn attention in Fremont County because it mixes a delayed body recovery, overlapping jurisdictions and a revenge claim tied to alleged domestic abuse. Lofts, whose obituary said he was a Riverton resident and a Marine veteran who later worked as a farrier, had been missing for months before his death was publicly identified. The reservation setting also placed the death scene in an area where federal, tribal and state agencies can have different roles, though the published stories focused on the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation, the coroner and Fremont County court proceedings. The accounts released so far leave major pieces untold, including whether prosecutors expect more arrests, whether E.E. will be named publicly in court, and whether any forensic evidence beyond Gonzalez’s DNA has linked other people to the truck or the killing.

For now, the public picture of the case is built mostly from one affidavit and the statements investigators said they gathered over months. Gonzalez’s own account places him inside the truck when the confrontation began. Informants described a motive rooted in anger over injuries to a relative. And the physical evidence, as laid out in the published summaries, gave prosecutors a direct basis to charge him first. The next major public milestone will be further district court proceedings in Fremont County, where the question is likely to shift from probable cause to who prosecutors say pulled the trigger and whether more defendants will join the case.

Author note: Last updated March 25, 2026.