Law enforcement recently reopened a nearly two-decade-old sexual assault case after a man was reported making inappropriate comments about children, according to court records.

Casper police investigated and arrested Bruce Sloyer, who was charged earlier this week with six counts related to the sexual abuse of a minor, according to the charging documents filed in Natrona County Circuit Court.

Sloyer, 61, made his initial appearance Monday before Judge Michael Patchen, who set his bond at $50,000 and set his preliminary hearing for Oct. 4.

The case from 2000 was reopened Sept. 13 when a police officer took a report from a resident who said his neighbor, Sloyer, was "'making weird comments about children.'"

The officer also spoke with Sloyer's wife, who said she doesn't trust her husband around children because he sometimes would make "inappropriate comments'" about them, and that she referred to him as a "sex offender."

Sloyer then called the officer, met with her at the Police Station, and told her his wife made the "sex offender" comment because of events 20 years ago that should have gotten him in trouble in the spring of 1999.

The officer contacted a Natrona County Sheriff's investigator who found a report from February 2000 about that girl. She was approximately 11 or 12 at the time and told a school official about the abuse.

The girl recounted incidents of Sloyer allegedly molesting her in her bedroom. Investigators used a Luma Light to search for seminal fluid in her bedroom. Because none was found, the criminal case went inactive.

The day after the police officer took the report last week, the sheriff's investigator interviewed the alleged victim, and she recounted incidents of Sloyer sexually touching her in the summer of 1999, in December 1999, and then in mid-February 2000 in the basement of her house in Evansville, according to the affidavit.

She told the sheriff's investigator she lied about where the incidents occurred, and there were other times when she was a child when Sloyer touched her in ways that made her feel uncomfortable.

She said her mother often called her names and degraded her, and Sloyer would give her special things such as cookies to be kind and build his relationship with her. However, she believed that his niceness was a ploy to sexually abuse her.

After that interview, Sloyer was arrested and interviewed at the Sheriff's Office. Sloyer said he confessed everything to the police officer the day before.

Sloyer said the criminal case against him in 2000 never progressed because officers searched the wrong room, that he lied then when he denied ever ever abusing the girl, and lied because he was scared.

Sloyer was then taken to the county jail.

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