Serial Killer Documentary - Inside the Hunt for an Alaskan Serial Killer

Serial Killer Documentary -  Inside the Hunt for an Alaskan Serial Killer

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Killing after killing, taking the victim, why my baby after
a victim?

Speaker 2 (00:10):
She trusted anybody. Everybody was her best friend.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
It would prove to be the deadliest year in Anchorage's history.
People were getting murdered and people were afraid. Some murders
linked by a common thread.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
I have heard that there might be a serial killer.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
I guess you could have been here in voices, like
what were the voices telling him?

Speaker 4 (00:29):
How do you a grieve about that?

Speaker 5 (00:30):
You know?

Speaker 4 (00:31):
I just want to go to his dead body. I'm
still strangling.

Speaker 6 (00:34):
Is there evidence that they're related to a serial killer?

Speaker 1 (00:37):
And a surprise in connection?

Speaker 7 (00:39):
I never thought that it would be a person that
I knew and grew up late.

Speaker 8 (00:44):
This was his home, that's not.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
You see how his hand is like his coat. I
think he had the gun in his hand.

Speaker 9 (00:52):
No, we don't want to broadcast that. That is the linkage.
You give the offender the advantage of changing weapons, changing pistols.

Speaker 10 (01:02):
And I saw him with that bike, riding that bire.
He just smiled.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Man and not one but three eyewitnesses to a cold
blooded execution.

Speaker 11 (01:15):
She saw the first part of the gunfire from back
in the other room.

Speaker 12 (01:19):
I saw the guy like fall to the ground and
then took the bike and bike off.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Off into the night, blending in a killer among us.

Speaker 7 (01:38):
One thing I like about Alaska is that there's really
nice people out here.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Ask anyone in Anchorage why they love living here.

Speaker 13 (01:45):
Hiking, go fishing, its last weather.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
There are many trails to choose from.

Speaker 13 (01:50):
A lot of good places you could take kids to
go play.

Speaker 14 (01:53):
I appreciate the the unity.

Speaker 15 (01:57):
Is safe here.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
People like to say the city of Anchorage is just
a short drive from the real Alaska, a land of
mammoth glaciers, crashing tides, and world class hunting. But there's
plenty of wildlife here along the city streets. The great
outdoors can still be found among the office towers, concrete

(02:20):
and corner stores, and for many it's the reason they
choose to live in Alaska's largest city, population three hundred thousand.
But what happens when the city's parks and trails turn deadly?

Speaker 16 (02:35):
Are we actually say if it doesn't feel safe.

Speaker 6 (02:37):
I use these trails. I'm a member of the community
as well, and like everyone else, I want to have answers,
so they have to believe that we are doing our
best to solve it.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
If you say don't go out, then then we've failed
the society. We've given up our public space.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Like so many Alaska stories, the mystery began in winter,
or so it seemed. An icy January.

Speaker 17 (03:04):
Morning, Anchorage police received a call about.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Eight thirty a popular trail overlooking the saltwater of cook Inlet.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
They had found a body at Point warrens Off.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
While investigating, police were shocked to find a second victim,
a young man left to die in the cold. The
victims nineteen year old mother Selina Mullenax and a charming
but dangerous young man who was supposed to be at
home on house arrest, one Abet morrissent with no witnesses.

Speaker 8 (03:39):
We just need closure, some type of.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Closure, and little to connect to victims.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
That was the first I'd ever heard of going out there.
I never heard of the kid she was.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
With that ninety The case went unsolved as winter turned
to spring to summer. Across Anchorage. The news of more
killings followed.

Speaker 18 (04:04):
At least three people were inside the South Anchorage home
where a man was shot and killed today and what
the ocumists described as an attempted home invasion. Good evening, everyone,
we have developing news at this hour, Anchorage police are
at the scene of a fatal shooting in South Anchor.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
In most cases, there were soon suspects arrests.

Speaker 19 (04:22):
Answers gets charged with murder and tampering with evidence.

Speaker 20 (04:25):
They were having words of some type, you know, back
and forth, back and forth.

Speaker 18 (04:29):
He called police to report that his girlfriend was not breathing. Today,
thirty seven year old Jeffrey McCracken is accused of killing her.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
And then another early morning discovery on another picturesque walking path.
Seven forty am on July third, a cyclist spot's two
bodies lying on a trail near the outskirts of downtown.

Speaker 20 (04:50):
We had gotten a tip from someone who was camping
and said that they were walking their dogs. They had
heard what they believed to be six shots.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
The dead included Brianna Foise, a sometimes homeless twenty year
old with a learning disability, but.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
When it came to music, she could remember anything.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Who loved to sing.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
It's so bad. I was cooking for Fourth of July
and I was getting ready to go to her friend's
Fourth of July barbecue, and the trooper showed up. The
trooper said, we need to come in. Can we sit down?
So I thought something's really wrong. So he he came

(05:36):
in and he said, I'm here to notify you that
your daughter's deceased.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Brianna had struggled with drugs for years. According to her friend.

Speaker 12 (05:44):
All I know is she told me that she was
on a bad trail and she needed to get off
that path.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Her trust, I mean, she trusted anybody. Everybody was her
best friend. You know. She had a really hard time
seeing a dangerous situation for what it was.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
The other victim, forty one year old old Jason Netter,
who lived on the street too, sleeping hidden in a
junkyard only two blocks from the trail where he died.

Speaker 21 (06:08):
You guys lived in here.

Speaker 22 (06:10):
We live in here.

Speaker 23 (06:12):
It looks like soon all it took the barbecue grill
that we had.

Speaker 21 (06:16):
Was this kind of the living place for you and
Jason for many years.

Speaker 23 (06:20):
I been in this conduct for like three years with Jason.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Just like the January double murder that began the year
along a coastal trail, police had few, if any leads.

Speaker 24 (06:31):
We do not have any suspect information to release this time,
nor have we made.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Any arrests, stating once again, there is no apparent connection
between the victims of this July killing.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
We do know that they knew one another.

Speaker 17 (06:43):
As far as the exact extent of the relationship, we
don't have that information at this time.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
Though detectives found plenty of surveillance video from the area,
not a single frame showed the killer or killers.

Speaker 20 (06:55):
No one passed by on the video that would have
been in our suspect.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
As for a possible motive, well, Jason Netter had a
reputation for making enemies.

Speaker 23 (07:06):
I don't like to talk smart to any tom that
can hear, and he likes to run his mouth like that.

Speaker 21 (07:12):
What kind of drugs was he into at the time?

Speaker 23 (07:14):
Mess heroin, uh, spice, marijuana, alcohol. His mouth gets in
a lot of trouble.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
And Anchorage had its fair share of trouble. Gangs responsible
for so many killings in the nineteen nineties were once
again making their presence known in the city. Police use
social media accounts, including these, to document evidence in criminal
cases being prosecuted. Anchorage, like many cities in the country,

(07:48):
was also when the grip of a heroin and opioid crisis.
The unfolding tragedy of Alaska's heroin epidemic is ruining the
lives of too many Alaskans.

Speaker 4 (07:57):
Is breaking families apart, is driving up crime.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Was Netter's death a drug deal gone band? Brianna Boise
an unlucky bystander.

Speaker 23 (08:06):
He has a few handful of enemies for doing crappy.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Deal's friends thought so, like former roommate Gary Lows, who
said Netter sometimes walked the long way to the nearby
soup kitchen to avoid people he had crossed.

Speaker 23 (08:22):
Oh, I could think of, like I said, jerdy drugdale
man went down.

Speaker 22 (08:29):
That's what I might cut saying.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
Perhaps a motive. Yet the case remained unsolved.

Speaker 17 (08:35):
With that first incident on Post Road, with the double homicide,
we don't have a whole lot of evidence gathered, particularly
from that scene.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
And then just three weeks later, at three am on
July twenty ninth, another outdoor murder. Twenty one year old
trevy On Kendall Thompson is gone down on a lonely
street bordering the woods with.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
Housen my sister. He wasn't He was just gonna go down,
let her dog out, and come right back home.

Speaker 4 (09:05):
He was a stand here basically the baby sitting the dog.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
But trevi On Kendle or Trey was no gang member.
According to his family, he was.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
A good kid, like he was a smart kid, like
you know, just really caring, would give anything to anybody,
like my baby used to bring home like homeless people.
He'd bring home anybody and just feed up.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
No guns, no drugs. When he wasn't at work, he
filled his hours playing computer games. Who would want Trey dead?

Speaker 4 (09:38):
As big as he was, as tough as he wanted
to see him?

Speaker 6 (09:40):
He was a big jokester with a big heart.

Speaker 15 (09:42):
And yeah he was a giant nerd.

Speaker 4 (09:44):
That's one thing he was good at, you know, standing
out of trouble. You know, he'd rather ride his bike,
go catch some pokemons or something, you know, rather than
going club in.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Trey had seemingly chosen a different path than his father,
Bobby Thompson, who was serving time on drugs and weapons
charges three hundred and sixty miles away in Fairbanks. When
family called to tell Bobby his son had been killed,
it made no sense to.

Speaker 7 (10:10):
Him, More upset than anything because I didn't know who
did it than if I were found out.

Speaker 22 (10:14):
It was just like, well, I can't even became come
in jail.

Speaker 21 (10:16):
And was that something that you kind of wanted for
him was did you want him to kind of stay
out of trouble.

Speaker 7 (10:22):
Yeah, God wanted to be like his possible or his
other uncles or brothers or whatever, So I wanted something
different from him.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
But Trey's case was different from the other recent outdoor
murders that had gone unsolved.

Speaker 20 (10:34):
This is where the investigation starts to take a critical turn.

Speaker 15 (10:37):
The body.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
This time there were witnesses, maybe even.

Speaker 24 (10:41):
Six feet over right, and it was like, right where
the rain gutter is is where he was.

Speaker 6 (10:47):
Laying through this window.

Speaker 24 (10:48):
What did she actually witness She pretty much saw everything.

Speaker 5 (10:53):
He looked, but he didn't see us.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
And what they saw was shocking. Friday, July twenty ninth,
twenty sixteen, already seventeen murders and Anchorage in only eight months,

(11:16):
a record pace among the most unnerving two unsolved outdoor
double homicides. But tonight the street felt safe. In this
woodsy East Anchorage neighborhood, three thirteen year old girls were
having a sleepover up well past midnight.

Speaker 12 (11:34):
Every once in a while, I kind of flashbacks.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
Still and still playing outside. Not so unusual in the
land of the midnight sun.

Speaker 5 (11:42):
Where's like making music videos.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
And stuff When they noticed something or someone.

Speaker 5 (11:48):
We were looking down this one road and there's like
someone like standing over by the fire hydrant below a.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Lightpool, someone who didn't belong.

Speaker 12 (11:58):
It's kind of like a.

Speaker 5 (11:59):
Black shadow, creepy.

Speaker 24 (12:00):
We get a lot of homeless people who live out
in the woods back here, so I think he was
just kind of lingering and waiting for an opportunity.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Then a second man appeared, younger on a bicycle.

Speaker 12 (12:12):
We saw someone on the trail with a bike and
it kind of creeped us out. Solice went inside, went
straight to my room and then turned the TV on
watched TV.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Moments later, we.

Speaker 12 (12:24):
Heard like gunshots, so we went to the window see
what was going on.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Shot after shot.

Speaker 12 (12:30):
He heard like four gun shots. So then we went
out to the living room and looked through the window
and saw the guy like fall to the ground and
then the other one took the bike and biked off
with like a gun in his pocket.

Speaker 22 (12:49):
You could see the gun in the pocket.

Speaker 5 (12:51):
Yeah, he was on the sand in the pocket with
the gun.

Speaker 12 (12:54):
Then we opened the door to go see if there
was a dead body or not, and there was.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
The body of Trey Thompson. The video game Loving twenty
one year old, who, according to family, was only in
the neighborhood to check on his aunt's dog. He died
just yards from her door.

Speaker 11 (13:13):
After it initially happened before the cops got here. You know,
we were all able. We saw him in the road.

Speaker 8 (13:20):
Is very sad.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
I don't get any because my kid apparently he didn't
look at him, like, he didn't even plants his way.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Police say the girls are heroes because while it was
getting dark, the teens noticed things details that could help detectives,
like the killer's clothing.

Speaker 12 (13:38):
He was word camouflage jack and I think he had
a backpack.

Speaker 5 (13:42):
His hair wavy, shoulder like a little bit shorter than
shoulder length hair, and was like dirty blond.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
His face.

Speaker 12 (13:50):
He was taking things kind of slow. He just kept
on looking straight for hours.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
The teens worked with an FBI sketch artist.

Speaker 21 (13:57):
How close did the sketch look to you?

Speaker 13 (14:00):
The person that you saw.

Speaker 12 (14:01):
Was really close.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
But police weren't quite ready to release that drawing to
the public, and they couldn't find any reason someone would
murder the good natured young man.

Speaker 20 (14:12):
We started to see where mister Thompson had been. We
know that he had been with family members and had
not provoked or done anything that would lead to have
him in this confrontation.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
There was also surveillance video that captured an image of
the shooter enough to provide another clue.

Speaker 20 (14:32):
The Alaska State Troopers were able to do some calculations
and some experiments to determine that this individual was a particular.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
Height, tall maybe six foot three, and he had calmly
ridden away on Trey's distinctive yellow mountain bike.

Speaker 24 (14:50):
It was like bright yellow, had certain stickers. It wasn't
you know, something that would blend in easily.

Speaker 20 (14:56):
Or we thought that people would see yellow. We thought
that they would maybe Q clue in on it, We
would see it. Maybe collected his.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Evidence and he kept the gun. All clues that could
help solve the case, but police decided to keep them secret,
at least for now. At the suggestion of the FBI.

Speaker 14 (15:15):
The Behavioral Analysis Unit made several specific recommendations to us.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
In a rare interview, FBI criminal profilers set down with
us to discuss their involvement in the case.

Speaker 9 (15:28):
In this particular instance, as we do is with many
serial cases that we get involved with, our advice was
to not broadcast this as a serious specifically that it
was attributed to a single offender.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
Despite the clues and a sketch, weeks passed without an
arrest in Trey's murder. Families mourned, while Anchorage residents grew
more and more uneasy.

Speaker 25 (15:57):
This is really hard.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
I missed my kid.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
And then just one month later, on August twenty ninth,
two more bodies found outdoors, this time in the middle
of a beloved public park in the heart of Anchorage
named Valley of the Moon. Thirty four year old Kevin
Turner had recently become homeless.

Speaker 20 (16:19):
Mister Turner was sitting in the in the pavilion area
and was attacked.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
He was shot.

Speaker 20 (16:27):
I think he was just sitting there working on his
you know, with his socks and shoes and stuff, and
he was probably minding his own business and he was shot.

Speaker 4 (16:36):
One time.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Kevin's brother, Billy Ray Turner.

Speaker 13 (16:39):
We're so devastated that somebody had taken his life, you know,
and it hits us all so deep, you know, that
somebody could do such a terrible thing in the city.
My brother was my hero.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
The other victim, twenty five year old breed A. Houston,
was a local activist.

Speaker 15 (17:00):
At midnight when the law goes new effect.

Speaker 13 (17:02):
We have as many people as we can sitting outside
of City Hall.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
Seen here in twenty eleven while protesting a city law
banning the homeless from sitting on city sidewalks.

Speaker 16 (17:11):
He was just a really gracious, near perfect human and
it's going to be really hard for me to fathom
how something evil could have been bestowed upon him.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Police believe he was simply passing through the.

Speaker 20 (17:25):
Park, traveling down the trail, and not associated with mister
Turner at all.

Speaker 16 (17:32):
He'd done that route one hundred times.

Speaker 20 (17:33):
And was likely disshot from a distance.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Two days later, after the latest double homicide, police finally
issued a public alert using an online platform known as Nixo,
telling Anchorage residents to be extra aware of their surroundings
and to avoid traveling alone at night in parks, on
bike trails, or unoccupied streets. What were allowed as to

(18:00):
think she.

Speaker 26 (18:01):
Recently there's a Nixel sent out there, kind of a
cryptic nixl.

Speaker 22 (18:04):
There's nothing unusual about this.

Speaker 15 (18:05):
We advise and try to keep the community informed as
best we can.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Should the average person in Anchorage be worried, are these
tied together in any way?

Speaker 1 (18:15):
The community help so much, but there was a strategy
at play. Police later revealed.

Speaker 20 (18:21):
We wanted to provide that warning for folks, and we
wanted to make sure that we kept the integrity of
the investigations so that the gun was not disposed of.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Police Sergeant slav Markiwicks is the longest serving homicide detective
in Anchorage. He says, loose lips sink murder investigations.

Speaker 21 (18:41):
Is there evidence that there's a that they're related to
a serial killer?

Speaker 6 (18:49):
We are investigating, and you know, again, any talk about
the serial killer speculation, I don't want to use their wordsils,
but they have to believe that we are doing our
best to solve it.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Anchorage Police had already reached out to the FBI's Behavioral
Analysis Unit in Quantico, Virginia. There, profilers recommended sending out
the warning but keeping important details of the case secret.

Speaker 9 (19:13):
And that was early in an investigation in which we
weren't quite sure if it was a series, and in
this situation, we felt that it was probably a better
avenue to not link them and not create that additional
stir in the media.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
But on social media and in conversations with local news reporters,
people who claim to have friends or acquaintances, and law
enforcement told a different story.

Speaker 26 (19:40):
My doctor just told me there's a confirmed serial killer
right now. He's friends with a detective on the case.
All the recent killings since the beginning of the year
of two people at parks, coastal trails, and secluded areas
have been done the same exact way, by the same
nine millimeter gun. I feel as if it's important for
all my friends to be aware.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
What's meant boiled over at a neighborhood meeting with police
at the very same park where two bodies had recently
been discovered, people were getting.

Speaker 22 (20:07):
Murdered and people were afraid.

Speaker 13 (20:08):
Are we actually safe?

Speaker 16 (20:10):
It doesn't feel safe.

Speaker 26 (20:11):
We really feel for you, and we're here tonight for you.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
If you say don't go out, then then we failed
a society. We've given up our public space.

Speaker 10 (20:20):
It's tough out there, it really is.

Speaker 22 (20:22):
And you got to look out for yourself and we
got to look out for each other.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
I have heard that there might be a serial killer.

Speaker 15 (20:28):
Wort we can do is speculate and cause rumors to
go about.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Impatience grew and Trey Thompson's mother took to the streets
to find answers and justice.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
We went through all the homeless camps, and we went
straight to people's camps. Open them up, look hello. I
was determined to find him.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
She and her sisters were out at all hours.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
I would confront random people, every guy that kind of
matched the description that they said. I would follow them.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
With a little concern for their own safety.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
I didn't care. Yeah, and I seen listen name James.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
Mandy Primo says she spotted the man she believed to
be her son's killer walking near the neighborhood of Airport Hines.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
I seen him walking down du Bar and went into
that bank. I sat across the street by the last
original hospital I crossed over. I sat in the bank
parking lot and he kept staring at me. I called
the lieutenant and I told him. I says, dude, I
know this is the guy.

Speaker 11 (21:31):
I know this is the guy.

Speaker 3 (21:32):
And I had my son in the car and I
was tempted to go up to him and say something.
And he is like, have your baby in a car,
don't say nothing to him. He's he's dangerous. Don't say
an' tim. I'm like, dude, I feel it in my
heart this is the guy. And I got my son's
picture on the back of my truck, so I know
he knew who I was. And he started walking back.

Speaker 8 (21:49):
Up the hill.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
I got pictures on my phone and it looked like
he had the gut in his head.

Speaker 21 (21:53):
How did you know it was him?

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Was it just purely I scattured alta. Something came over
me and I felt it walking up the street. When
you see how his hand is like his coat, like
his like his famer, and I think he had the
gun in his hand. And I didn't care. I did
not care. I already told the cops I was going

(22:15):
to plead in sanity.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Trey's aunt, Randy, lived in a nearby neighborhood. One day,
a man who had recently started living across the street
walked up to her.

Speaker 4 (22:25):
He came up to her and was like, sorry for
your loss, and she had no clue.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
Randy had no clue that the man in front of
her that day, trying to console her was in fact
a serial killer. By the end of the year, his
surprising identity finally revealed.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
Looking at the sketch, doesn't look nothing like the guy
that Bobby Millers were kids nothing.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
A city on edge, a string of outdoor murders. A
sketch from three young witnesses who saw the unthinkable. But
they weren't the only ones who felt uneasy about what
they had seen.

Speaker 10 (23:15):
You know what, you can get a feeling of somebody
that's not friendly.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Richard Reyos lives in Airport Hins.

Speaker 10 (23:23):
When I saw him with that bike riding that buyer,
he just smiled and I called the police depart thea potline.
Some police offa suicide a room and I told her
about it.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
But so many tips, more than one hundred and seventy
five in all, so many potential leads. Were police looking
for multiple suspects or was it the work of a
serial killer? And if so? FBI profilers gave police insight
into who they might be dealing with. They noted, for example,

(24:03):
two of the killings occurred in places frequented by the homeless.

Speaker 14 (24:06):
One of the things that we had from the behavioral
analysis unit is that it was probably somebody who was
at least on the fringes of either the homeless or
the social service kind of mental health profession field.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
After all, it wouldn't be the first time a serial killer.
Proud Anchorage Bakery owner Robert Hanson hunted Anchorage women in
the nineteen seventies and eighties, killing at least seventeen, raping
many more. Joshua Wade admitted to killing five people beginning
in nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 4 (24:41):
Oh I was there just a years ago.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Handyman Israel keys Is believed to have used Alaska as
his home base to plot murders here and in other states.

Speaker 6 (24:51):
Israel Keis was an exception where he actually planned. It
wasn't spurred a moment, and he did that over the
year seeing the parts of the country.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Was it possible another serial killer was on the loose
taking aim on anchorages, parks and trails. The most compelling
evidence detectives had.

Speaker 14 (25:13):
Really through this whole investigation.

Speaker 22 (25:15):
That is absolutely the only clue.

Speaker 10 (25:16):
That we had.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
Ballistic reports had so far been kept confidential.

Speaker 22 (25:21):
The only thing that we had at this point was
the gun.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
We don't want to.

Speaker 9 (25:25):
Broadcast that, that is the leakage and give the offender
the advantage of changing weapons, changing pistols.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
But police knew by now what the public feared. Five
outdoor murders, three different locations, all of them committed using
the same three point fifty seven cold python revolver.

Speaker 14 (25:47):
You're relatively rare kind of a gun, so it was
it was unique.

Speaker 20 (25:51):
We had to hold that close to our vest because
if it's disposed of, then if we did capture someone
on another case, we would never be able to link
the cases together.

Speaker 27 (26:02):
Not to mention, the same gun was used in all
of the homicides. That was pretty smart.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
The killer, after all, was probably listening.

Speaker 14 (26:10):
People who commit these serial crimes keep an eye, and
in fact, we've been able to verify that our suspect
was watching the news and monitoring things that were going
on in the investigation.

Speaker 20 (26:20):
What we do know from our experience with the behavioral analysis, folks,
is that we don't want to provoke these people.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
As for the double homicide that began the year on
that gold January morning at Point warren zof police eventually
cracked that case unrelated, but that still left two double
homicides and the murder of Prevon Kendall Thompson unsolved, all
taking place within two months and a six mile radius,

(26:49):
all now tied to the same weapon wilded by a
man witnesses had seen in East Anchorage. The man in
the sketch is.

Speaker 13 (26:58):
This person out there waiting to strike again, you know,
or did they have him narrow down? Did they even
have suspects?

Speaker 1 (27:07):
It would prove to be a chance encounter that eventually
broke the case. Four thirty am, November twelve, Downtown Anchorage,
two months after the double homicide at Valley of the

(27:28):
Moon Park, a nine to one one call to police a.

Speaker 14 (27:31):
Report of a cab defraud. In other words, somebody took
a cab ride, didn't pay for the cab, and split
and left the area.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
A thirty eight year old patrol officer Arn Solow checked
it out. Driving downtown, he spotted a man in the
early morning darkness.

Speaker 14 (27:47):
Walking down the sidewalk that was in the area kind
of the general area of where our suspect would be.
Commanded him to stop, Sarahgage, police, can I get you
to stop?

Speaker 1 (28:00):
But the man kept walking.

Speaker 14 (28:02):
Officer Salao eventually turned on his overhead lights and I
think the suspect probably thought he was cornered at.

Speaker 28 (28:09):
That point eleven there, he doesn't want to stop. Try
to come off here at cope de boat. This is
the Anchorage Police. You need to stop.

Speaker 20 (28:25):
This is the Ancreach police.

Speaker 4 (28:27):
You need to stop.

Speaker 14 (28:28):
And it realized he wasn't he wasn't going to be
allowed to leave, and that's when when the shooting started
taking place.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
Bull and police dashboard cameras caught it all.

Speaker 17 (28:39):
What we see is mister Ritchie approaching Salaw's car, firing
a gun at him. Silo literally flies out of his car.
I don't know a better word to describe it, flies
out of his car, returning fire.

Speaker 19 (28:50):
I heard the gunshots, six or eight gun shots, and
that's when the police officer was emptying his chamber. I
got to the window and I just saw the police
officer run after the guy, but he was already on
the ground.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
Officer Sellow was shot four times.

Speaker 15 (29:06):
The bullets traveled and went up into the middle of
his body, fracturing bones, ripping apart muscle.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
But police say he never stopped fighting.

Speaker 15 (29:17):
He immediately returned gunfire and physically fought off to sail it.

Speaker 19 (29:22):
Then two more cop cars popped in, blazing with their
lights on.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Another officer, Sergeant Mark Patsky, joined the gunfight.

Speaker 17 (29:30):
He was able to charge forward and return fire as well.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
The suspect was killed. The officer rushed to the hospital
to undergo life saving surgery. Police have not released surveillance
video of the gun battle that night, calling it disturbing.

Speaker 22 (29:47):
It's very horrific.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
It's shocking, and when the gunfire ended, a revelation equally
is shocking, one that would help put an end to
the city's summer of fear.

Speaker 20 (29:59):
I can tell immediately like that he was a very
tall individual. I saw the col python had been retrieved.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
The man now lying dead on a downtown Anchorage street
matched the description of the shooter who killed Trey Thompson.
He even wore the same camouflage jacket. Ballistics would seal
the case.

Speaker 14 (30:19):
It was completely happenstance that the officer ran across mister Ritchie.

Speaker 22 (30:23):
It was just blind luck.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
Trey Thompson's dad agrees.

Speaker 7 (30:27):
All the cops are supposed to be out there on
the duties and whatnot, you know what I mean. I believe,
honestly Dada never found out who did it, you know
what I mean. If they never, that's what's never happened.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Five months would pass before police formally accused James Dale Ritchie,
aged forty of all five murders, saying he acted alone
in each of the killings.

Speaker 15 (30:48):
One thing I can tell you this murderer, it's the
worst possible thing.

Speaker 25 (30:56):
They had looked at other potential suspects, and mister Richie
wasn't really on our radar up until Saturday morning.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
James Ritchie was known on the street as Tiny.

Speaker 27 (31:06):
I don't know where that came from. To tell you
the truth, I can't. I mean, Bobby could probably tell you,
but he wasn't Tiny.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
And the final surprise, Tiny was no stranger to the Thompsons.

Speaker 7 (31:18):
We was watching the news at ten o'clock news and
it came on, I've seen a picture that I didn't buckle, like,
what the you know.

Speaker 21 (31:28):
What?

Speaker 22 (31:30):
The next morning I came went you on the phone.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
He was no outsider to Anchorage either.

Speaker 27 (31:35):
I couldn't wrap my head around it. And I kind
of told Bobby I can't wrap my head around him
doing this.

Speaker 8 (31:42):
I can't. We've known him for a long, long, long time.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
He had grown up here, A son of the city.
He stalked.

Speaker 8 (31:51):
This was his home.

Speaker 27 (31:52):
Tiny was part of the crew.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Once a young man, full of promise, an a student,
according to his a champion athlete at East High School
in the nineteen nineties. This is the voice of Richie's mother.

Speaker 5 (32:07):
He was a good student, he played sports.

Speaker 12 (32:09):
He was constantly busy, and activities, and had planned to
even go to college.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
Richie even played high school football alongside future NFL player
Mal Tosi, also winning a state basketball title with future
NBA player Trajan Langdon and the police officer that Richie shot,
Officer arn Sollow, also attended the same high school. He
was a freshman the year Richie graduated.

Speaker 8 (32:37):
He came home and something happened. I don't know what.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Old friends struggled to make sense of it all.

Speaker 8 (32:44):
Just because he had that gun doesn't mean that all
those murders it happened with it were from him.

Speaker 27 (32:49):
They have a substantial amount of evidence that said that
this was this individual.

Speaker 6 (32:54):
They're not going to do that.

Speaker 8 (32:55):
Do I believe that it was Tiny?

Speaker 10 (32:56):
Yes?

Speaker 27 (32:57):
Bottom line, I think the unresolved anger and disbelief comes
from he's already dead and there's nothing we can do
about it.

Speaker 22 (33:04):
Got a good supported family out there.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
Bobby Thompson, Trey's father couldn't believe the man he once
knew was tiny killed his son.

Speaker 22 (33:12):
He was cool man. He was my brother, Quinty's best.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
Friend, childhood friends, more like family.

Speaker 21 (33:19):
Did he ever live with your family?

Speaker 22 (33:21):
He ever say he did live with you?

Speaker 25 (33:23):
Guys?

Speaker 22 (33:24):
The leaf whatever. Whenever you want to come over the house,
he come over my mom's.

Speaker 27 (33:28):
She loved the one Tiny held his son. There's pictures
of Tiny holding Bobby's kids.

Speaker 22 (33:33):
Tiny left and went to wherever he went for college.
So for him to come back to Anchors and you know,
go through all that, this does make sense to me.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
No one could have guessed how James Ritchie's life would unfold.
Despite his smarts twelve hundred on the SAT and his
athletic abilities, Richie had a dark side, which his mother
addressed in a nineteen ninety eight court case against him.

Speaker 22 (34:00):
I didn't even want.

Speaker 20 (34:01):
To be around him.

Speaker 14 (34:02):
I didn't want him in my house.

Speaker 18 (34:06):
I just felt like he was just the time bomb,
waiting to think either be killed or.

Speaker 21 (34:13):
To be in jail for the rest of his life.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
But what pushed James Dale Ritchie to kill not once,
but five times? Anchorage could now sleep a bit easier.
The man accused of shooting and killing five people at

(34:38):
local parks, trails and empty streets was now dead. But
who was James Dale Ritchie. How did the life of
this once star athlete go so wrong? Police say his
motive died with him, leaving only memories and hints behind.

Speaker 8 (34:58):
This is where I first met him. This is what
he looked like.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
Relics of a dream, derailed state championships, good friends, respect,
but there were also stories of violence.

Speaker 8 (35:10):
You know, these kids put their pit bulls together for
fights and stuff, you know. Or I remember you told
me one time that one of his dogs or somebody's
dog got a hold of a rabbit and killed it.
And when you told me about it, it was like
it was just like he was crazy looking when he
said it.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
A lawyer who represented James Ritchie in a late nineties
drug case is heard telling the judge that Richie tried
but failed to join the football team at a West
Virginia university.

Speaker 14 (35:42):
He was a young man who, even though his grades
were an excellent, scored twelve hundreds of SATs.

Speaker 9 (35:51):
And even though junior colleges.

Speaker 16 (35:53):
Of small colleges were recruiting him to playball and tell
that he wanted to play.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
Vision one ball, Richie declared chemical engineering as his major.
He didn't set easy goals, his lawyer said.

Speaker 4 (36:06):
He followed himself in the east coach.

Speaker 14 (36:10):
At a school in which he was playing ball, and
sir struggling and basically PATRONI class.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
And when he fell short, he returned to Alaska, tumbling
headfirst into a life of drugs and crime. In nineteen
ninety six, Richie was charged, but not convicted, of promoting
animal fighting. Ongoing accusations followed of dealing crack, cocaine and theft.

Speaker 8 (36:40):
The kids sold drugs off and on. That's something that
you know is knowledgeable. They all did it, and they
they robbed people that sold drugs, did rob them for
their drugs and.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
Their money, even kidnapping.

Speaker 16 (36:54):
He was involved in a drug invasion or rugulated apparently
home invasion and robbery, kid of which he was involved
with taking up.

Speaker 14 (37:03):
A completely innocent person.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
When that robbery went astray. In a nineteen ninety eight
letter asking for leniency while facing fellony drug charges, Richie
told a judge he wished he had gone to a
small school and played sports. I lay in bed every
night thinking about how I've ruined my life, Richie wrote.
Then I set up crying, wishing I could go back

(37:27):
to when I was in high school. Despite his rap
sheet and the fact he sometimes carried a handgun, friends
never thought Richie capable of murder.

Speaker 8 (37:36):
He was a good arted person that he loved people.

Speaker 22 (37:40):
Who do to hang out with. That's not him, that's
not that's not his good dam, that's not his mom.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Most of them.

Speaker 27 (37:47):
To have a weapon or strap, as you would be
only for show. Most of them weren't clappers. Placed in
a situation, they'd probably fight versus shoe somewhat to.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
Old friends, he was only dangerous to himself, his own mother,
admitting she was relieved when Richie spent months behind bars
in his early twenties. It meant he was off drugs
and off the streets, she told the court, I.

Speaker 18 (38:16):
Thought he was safer in jail than he was in
the street.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
But after years spent in and out of prison and
half way houses, Richie moved back in with his parents,
who now lived in Virginia, and for a while he
seemed to flourish Broadway, Virginia, a small town of farms
and churches.

Speaker 29 (38:37):
This is just just a quaint little place people to
live in. Nice, nice neighborhoods, nice people.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
Next door neighbor.

Speaker 29 (38:43):
Alan Hottinger, we never call him time, We always call
him James, super nice guy.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
Hottinger was impressed with a confident, capable Richie, so eager
to help from.

Speaker 29 (38:52):
My daughters when they went to school, had an issue
with computers. They'd rely on James, and James would just
jumping their help out.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
Even if Richie he wasn't always the first to speak, not.

Speaker 29 (39:02):
Very outgoing, but I mean when you would speak to him,
he would speak and he could carry on the conversation
and stuff with him.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Ritchie took classes at nearby Blue Ridge Community College, earning
an associate degree when he was thirty seven years old.

Speaker 29 (39:17):
He wanted to chemic quntionery job and like I said,
he was super intelligent.

Speaker 8 (39:21):
He went to college. He straightened his life really good.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
There was even a relationship, had.

Speaker 8 (39:27):
A girlfriend, I guess, and they split up and that
kind of showered him on wanting to stay down there,
I think.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
But by early twenty sixteen, Richie had returned to Alaska.

Speaker 8 (39:37):
He always missed Alaska. This was his home and he
missed his friends and stuff and wanted to come.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Back for a time. Neighbors say Richie appeared to be
staying at a home in Airport Heights. A man who
lives there now said he was old friends with Richie,
but didn't want to talk on camera. Others say they
noticed Richie in the neighborhood, but thought little of it.

Speaker 4 (40:02):
Next to it, next door is whatever.

Speaker 22 (40:04):
I don't know if it's true.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
The FBI says certain behaviors were once thought to be
common traits among young men who would become violent predators,
but now consider that science outdated. Today's FBI profilers, including
those who worked on this case, have moved away from
looking for suspects who share those traits. There are too

(40:28):
many different kinds of serial killers. They say, there's no
common precursors.

Speaker 9 (40:35):
For example, there's nothing that says that somebody is going
to commit the serial killing, because that begs the question, well,
why could we come up with a way to prevent it.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
It's unclear if Ritchie exhibited warning signs, but that hasn't
stopped neighbors from second guessing anything that later seemed out
of place.

Speaker 25 (40:54):
When I went in here one day, my wife my wife,
but had foot trucks going to her bedroom window. Of course,
it's good to heck art of her.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
While court records indicate Richie had at one time taken antidepressants,
police have not yet divulged whether doctors ever diagnosed him
with a mental illness. Acquaintances in Alaska say Richie's family
had described his odd behavior in the time leading up
to the killings, but those family members declined to be

(41:29):
interviewed by the media.

Speaker 21 (41:30):
I knocked on the door and the man answered, said no,
thank you, and closed the door and locked in. So
it's cleared me that they don't want to talk today.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
In April twenty seventeen, five months after Richie was killed
in the gun battle with officers, Anchorage police tied up
loose ends.

Speaker 18 (41:57):
Today police confirmed that the same man the trigger in
all five cases.

Speaker 13 (42:02):
We know one thing's for sure, that this serial killer
that killed my brother is caught and he can't do
no more harm. And it feels like our parks are
saved once again.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yet questions still remain.

Speaker 8 (42:18):
I can't wrap my head around.

Speaker 27 (42:21):
Him doing this.

Speaker 8 (42:22):
He came home and something happened.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
I don't know what why, my baby.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Police could not or would not offer a motive.

Speaker 8 (42:31):
They just think he was a highly disturbed individual.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
That's kind of one of the things I've had there
come to terms with is that you know, you know
him being gone, we will never know.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Others say motive doesn't matter.

Speaker 30 (42:42):
This man had no heart, He had no feelings for
people around him. And he killed for fun, just for fun,
like a sport.

Speaker 24 (42:58):
I think it was more so, you know, serial killer's mind,
being a predator, he saw the opportunity and he took.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
It fear now subsiding. No matter the reason, there was
now a chance foreclosure.

Speaker 5 (43:12):
I didn't have to worry about someone going around shooting
people anymore.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
People like that are better off, you know, not.

Speaker 8 (43:23):
Not in the world anymore.

Speaker 24 (43:24):
So I think it's in a way almost a blessing
that the cop was able to, you know, getto because
he caused a lot of harm and a lot of
heartbreaking stuff for a lot of people.

Speaker 12 (43:35):
You know, it's like a relief feeling that I don't
have to worry about it.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
But for the victims' families the pain remains and the
memorials as much as you. Marcella Boise started a project
that helps homeless youth in honor of her daughter Brianna
oh and the police officer who was shot by Richie

(44:04):
yet heroically fought back. Its officers love miraculous recovery.

Speaker 28 (44:09):
I'm going to thank everybody for everything that they've done
for myself and my family, my APD family, my law
enforcement family.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
And there were also thank yous to the three young
eyewitnesses who stepped forward.

Speaker 11 (44:21):
It's a letter that pretty much states she helped solve
the murder by providing such an accurate sketch of the perpetrator,
because yeah, they wound up being able to catch him
after he got into the gunfight.

Speaker 12 (44:36):
With that pop encouraged to come forward and provide information,
sparked nearly two hundred tips about the suspect.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
Thus closing the book on the most dangerous year in
Anchorage history. The snow has since thawed on another winter
and life is once again returning to Anchorage's trails.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Okay, so we're here at value of the Moon Park.

Speaker 21 (45:03):
Did the killings last year make you feel unsafe at all?

Speaker 8 (45:06):
Definitely?

Speaker 3 (45:06):
Glad there was a connection made because then.

Speaker 22 (45:09):
It was non Do I feel safe in angerae?

Speaker 8 (45:11):
Yes, dedicated.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
You know people who are here to serve the public
and protect and they follow through with it is safe here.

Speaker 8 (45:22):
It's beautiful.

Speaker 16 (45:22):
I appreciate the.

Speaker 22 (45:26):
Unity.

Speaker 21 (45:55):
What we're trying to do here today at value the
Moon Park is just remember the lives of five people
whose lives were cut short last year in Anchorage. Five
of the many homicides last year in Anchorage and so
this is kind of a moment of remembrance, in a
moment of silence for these particular five victims. And so
what I'm gonna do is, I'm just going to show
each of these victims for about a minute or so,

(46:17):
and you'll see that one of the families has joined us.
And so I hope you'll like or share a hard
and just remember some of the many, many homicide victims
of twenty sixteen.