Some stories arrive all at once. Others come in pieces, a name here, a byline there, a court record that does not quite fit with the public biography beside it. This is one of those stories.
In southeast Wyoming, readers came to know Marie Hamilton as a reporter, editor and publisher. By late 2025, she was presenting herself as the owner, publisher and managing editor of the 307 Wyoming Sentinel, a Chugwater-based outlet that described itself as an independent watchdog publication. The site presented Hamilton as a seasoned journalist with advanced degrees, national media experience and a long career in the profession.
March 10, the journalist known as Marie Hamilton was arrested on a 10 count criminal warrant with charges of forgery, possession of forged materials and perjury.
But the public record surrounding that name Marie Hamilton tells a longer and more complicated story. The earliest official records reviewed by The Open Range Record appear in Arizona under the name April M. McClellan and April Marie McClellan. A 2005 Maricopa County civil case lists April M. McClellan as a defendant. Two later Maricopa County criminal cases, one in 2007 and another in 2008, also appear under the name April Marie McClellan.
In the 2008 case, the court docket shows one forgery count resolved with a disposition of “Pled Guilty As Charged.” The same docket later shows that in December 2020, the court granted an application to set aside the conviction and restore firearm rights.
The 2008 case initially had several charges of forgery attached to it which ultimately ended in a plea arrangement. Those two cases, 2007 and 2008, appear to have been combined into one which culminated with the plea bargain.
Years later, another name begins to surface: April Morganroth.
On an archived photography website, a biography page under that name describes an Arizona journalism student building a life in media. In that 2014 biography, April Morganroth wrote that she had earned an Associate of Applied Science in Digital Photography from Phoenix College in December 2013, and that she was then a Walter Cronkite journalism junior at Arizona State University. On that same page, she wrote that she and her high school sweetheart, Scott Morganroth, had been together for 14 years as of August 2014 and would celebrate their fourth wedding anniversary that November, placing that marriage around late 2010.
That part of the record is at least partly verifiable. An official spring 2014 dean’s list from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School includes April Morganroth in the Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communication program, strongly indicating she was enrolled at ASU in 2014. What has not yet been independently verified is graduation from ASU. This is relevant because later biographies under the name Marie Hamilton make much larger claims.
In April 2023, the Sidney Sun-Telegraph introduced A. Marie Hamilton as an “award-winning investigative journalist” and “former USA Today reporter.” The paper’s hiring announcement said Hamilton had worked 17 years for Gannett, part of the USA Today network, and had earned both a bachelor’s and master’s in journalism from Arizona State University.
Later, the SE Wyoming Sentinel biography expanded those claims even further, stating that Hamilton held a bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD in journalism from Arizona State University and was pursuing a law degree.6 So far, The Open Range Record has been able to verify the Phoenix College associate degree claim through her archived biography and to verify ASU enrollment in 2014 through the Cronkite dean’s list. One thing is clear, Marie Hamilton did not attend the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, April Marie Morganroth did.
But despite reviewing public graduation materials, The Open Range Record has not independently confirmed that she graduated from Arizona State University under the names April Morganroth, April McClellan, or Marie Hamilton. That does not prove no degree was awarded. It does mean the later public claims by Hamilton remain unverified.
According to Cowboy State Daily (CSD), Hamilton "asserted that she was enrolled at the University of Wyoming law school and was working on her law degree." But according to Converse County Sheriff Investigator Benjamin Peech, he contacted the University of Wyoming and the personnel there told him “no person with any of the names had ever been enrolled in the University of Wyoming or University of Wyoming Law School.”
The work history is similarly layered. In January 2019, The Wickenburg Sun publicly directed readers to “reporter, April Morganroth,” placing that name in Arizona local journalism. Then, in 2021, April Morganroth appeared in Colorado media records after the Boulder Daily Camera retracted a front-page Sept 11 story, and media reporting identified Morganroth as the reporter whose article had been withdrawn after editors concluded quotations had been fabricated.
After the paper withdrew Morganroth’s article from its website, they issued a 1,000 word retraction. That the Boulder Daily Camera issued a retraction is not remarkable. The best papers correct reporting that didn’t hit the mark. What’s significant is the size of the explanation. Most retractions are no more than a few lines; this one was gigantic.
By 2021, the public identity appears to shift again. In Wyoming and later, Nebraska, the bylines and biographies begin appearing under the name Marie Hamilton. By 2023, that was the name used in the Sidney Sun-Telegraph hiring announcement. By 2025, it appeared at the Platte County Record-Times and then later on the Wyoming Sentinel site.
At least one set of family memorial materials reviewed by The Open Range Record suggests there may be an ordinary explanation for part of the name trail: Hamilton and McClellan may both be family names tied to her parents and early life. That possibility does not resolve the entire sequence, but it does suggest the public record may reflect a complicated family and marital history rather than a purely invented identity.9 However, what is clear from public records and from "Hamilton's" husband, Scott Morganroth's social media posts, her current legal and married name is April Marie Morganroth.
Then came the Chugwater fight.
In December 2025, Cowboy State Daily reported that the Wyoming Industrial Siting Division said Marie Hamilton had offered three fraudulent documents in opposition to the Chugwater Energy Project: one bearing a Colorado doctor’s signature, two bearing Laramie County School District No. 1 insignia, and a school employee’s digital signature. According to that report, the purported authors denied creating the documents. Hamilton disputed the allegation and said the agency had mishandled confidential information relating to her child.
Then the 2026 Budget Session
The Open Range Record reported that during this year’s legislative session Marie Hamilton wrote a story for Oil City News in which a Wyoming Representative was misquoted to such a degree that it changed the meaning of what he said.
Klark Byrd, the managing editor of Oil City News told Cowboy State Daily in a March 13 post that Hamilton “wrote many stories about the state legislative session, which ended last week.” “All her stories were double-checked by me before we published, and verified with legislative videos as they went live on YouTube. And that was her only work for us."
However, Hamilton’s published article in Oil City News read,
“Rep. Ken Pendergraft, R-Sheridan, who argued that distributing severance taxes as grants amounts to the state ‘picking winners and losers.' “’The other side says you’re picking winners and losers – it’s welfare for the well-connected," Pendergraft told colleagues, emphasizing that once mineral taxes are collected, they belong to the people of Wyoming, not the corporations that extracted them.”
What Pendergraft actually said during the House session was very different. Hamilton only used part of a larger statement:
Back to the Documents
By March 2026, the matter had moved from administrative dispute to criminal process. A Platte County warrant identified the defendant as “APRIL MARIE MORGANROTH AKA MARIE HAMILTON” and alleged multiple counts of possession of forged writing, forgery and perjury tied to testimony about documents submitted in that proceeding. That warrant is an allegation, not a conviction. It should be read that way. Still, it settles one question that had become the subject of local speculation.
In an official Wyoming court document, the names April Marie Morganroth and Marie Hamilton are expressly linked. What remains unresolved is the full sequence of names across the public trail. McClellan appears in Arizona court records. Morganroth appears in Arizona journalism material and Colorado reporting. Hamilton appears in Wyoming and Nebraska newsroom biographies and later in the Chugwater controversy.
Some of that may reflect ordinary life changes, family names, married names, perhaps the choice to use a different surname professionally. Many authors use a different name publicly. But in this case, Morganroth used the name “Marie Hamilton” interchangeably in professional and personal capacities; specifically, the name Hamilton was used in legal submissions to the State of Wyoming.
But names are only part of this story; the other part is trust. When a reporter builds a public reputation under one name, makes educational and professional claims under another, and later becomes the subject of forgery and perjury allegations under a third, the public has a right to understand what the record does and does not show. That is not a call for a social-media mob. It is simply an argument for clarity.
So far, the record shows this much: April Marie McClellan appears in older Arizona court files. April Morganroth appears in Arizona journalism and Colorado media records. Marie Hamilton appears in Wyoming and Nebraska newsrooms. And in March 2026, a Platte County warrant connected two of those identities in a single official line: April Marie Morganroth aka Marie Hamilton.
There are still unanswered questions, especially about the degrees later claimed and the complete legal path between the names in the record. But even without every missing piece, the outline is no longer just a rumor. It is there in the bylines, the biographies, and the court files waiting to be read in order.
The Open Range Record will update this story as more information becomes available.