When it comes to squatters’ rights, a lot of people don’t understand why laws like this exist in the first place. After all, it does little to protect property owners who actually pay the bills for the home, and it often makes them jump through time-consuming and often very expensive legal hoops in order to regain access to their property.
However, when you hear horror stories from renters who claim to have been evicted from their property without reason or proper notification, some of these laws seem to make a bit more sense. Take, for example, a case that is currently making headlines in Wyoming.
The Gillette News Record reports that a landlord stands accused of stealing more than $100,000 worth of stuff from his tenants while they were out of town. Joseph Kraemer was allegedly busted when the renters’ son-in-law stopped by to care for his parents’ cat while they were away and noticed something wasn’t right. Upon a second visit to the home, he found a woman cleaning the place out, claiming that Kraemer had hired her to clean the house after the pair were evicted.
The only problem? The couple says that they are up to date on their rent and have never had a single issue with their landlord before going on vacation.
Kraemer Failed to Follow Formal Eviction Processes
While it’s too early in the investigation to know who is really at fault here, the Gillette News Record says Kraemer has been charged with multiple felonies after a 2025 dispute with his tenants. According to the outlet, a man called the police in July 2025 while he was housesitting for his in-laws. When he and his wife popped in to make sure everything was okay, they initially didn’t notice anything was amiss.
However, the following day they found the house in “a complete state of disarray,” and found a woman moving everything that had been stored in the bedroom into the living room. After police arrived, they called the couple who were vacationing in Florida to find out what was going on.
The couple had no more information than the police did because they were unaware of any issues. When police confronted Kraemer, he claimed that the couple never “formally” lived there and said he had been unable to get in touch with them, so he planned to evict them.
The Landlord Was Accused of Stealing From the Couple
As if it wasn’t bad enough that the pair were about to lose their home, their son-in-law did a quick look around the place to see if anything was missing, which is when he called police to let them know that approximately $100,000 in Snap-On tools was missing from the shed. After officers reached out to Kraemer, he admitted to taking items from the house as a form of collateral.
Police informed the landlord that he would need to return the missing items to avoid being charged with a serious crime, according to Cowboy State Daily. “Joe assured me that the property would be returned and that he would handle the issue in a civil manner between him and (the couple),” Gillette Police Department Officer Chad Trebby wrote in an affidavit.
Except that’s not what the couple says happened. Instead, they claim that Kraemer had actually made off with more of their stuff than they realized. He later told them that he was unable to return the missing items because they had since been mixed in with his own belongings. Unfortunately for Kraemer, one of those missing items was a gun, which seems to have pushed his charges into more serious territory since the Gillette News Record says this resulted in aggravated burglary charges.
“It should be noted that at no point had he mentioned they owed him money for back rent,” Trebby’s affidavit about the case continued. “He stated the items had been taken because they were abandoned and he wanted collateral against damages to the property before evicting them.”
So who’s in the wrong? Well, under the squatters’ rights rules in Wyoming, the rules tend to favor the landlords a bit more thanks to SF0006, according to Buckrail, which allows a property owner to get law enforcement involved in the expedited removal of people who are not authorized to occupy a property. If the couple truly was living in the property, Kraemer may have had better luck with getting the law involved. However, the couple maintains that they weren’t squatters at all and had been up-to-date on their rental payments, with no formal eviction process in the works.