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ANCHORAGE - Following a three-week trial in U.S. District Court, a federal jury convicted an Anchorage man on charges of murder in furtherance of a continuing criminal enterprise, using a firearm to commit murder in a drug trafficking crime, drug conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. James Dale Ritchie - Wikipedia (In addition to the 75 criminal attorneys, about 25 more work on appeals and childrens cases.) We still dont know who she is and we dont know much about her," said Thim. Police have not identified the victim, who is said to have been killed during the first week of September. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. (Loren Holmes / Alaska Dispatch News). ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) Alaska teens hoping to cash in on a $9 million offer from a Midwest millionaire brutally killed a developmentally disabled woman on a popular trail outside Anchorage, shooting her in the back of the head and dumping her body in a river, authorities allege. IE 11 is not supported. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. While the agencys inflation-adjusted spending has doubled in the past 30 years, its felony caseload has tripled, it says. He always committed his murders at night, often around midnight or a short time after. ' said APD communications director MJ Thim. Officers arrested Brian Steven Smith, 48, Tuesday afternoon, an Anchorage Police Department statement said. Doubek and Gardner shared a home in a Wasilla neighborhood off of Snowshoe Lane. MacDonald denied the request, saying his findings are not an indictment of the Alaska Public Defender Agency nor its attorneys. All rights reserved. According to online court records, no new trial date has been set in the killing of Gertrude Queenie. The FBI is investigating the death because it occurred in US waters. Witness memories fade, Skidmore said. The woman attempted to fight back, the affidavit said. According to the charges, his mother called to report the attack and Walters fired a shotgun when two Village Police Officers attempted to approach him. He also told them hehad shot another woman and revealed where he dumped her body. According to police, the arrest came. All rights reserved. In September, the death of a man in the middle of a busy intersectionshut down anelementary school and a middle schoolwhile police investigated the killing. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen). An Indiana man is accused of " catfishing " an Alaska teenager and convincing her to murder her supposed best friend for $9 million with the help of four others. (Image from East High School 1994 yearbook and APD handout). Smith has a truck matching the one in the images, and pings from his cellphone put him along Rainbow Valley Road off the Seward Highway, near where the womans body was found, within minutes of the last time-stamped photos of the body, the affidavit said. Man accused of killing woman, recording it is charged in 2nd Alaska murder Smith had registered a room at the TownePlace Suites by Marriott the night the video was taken, according to the affidavit. He moved back to Alaska in the spring of 2016. According to a press release from the Alaska Department of Law, Charlie was sentenced to 75 years . 2022 Anchorage Daily News. A woman in Alaska was walking her dog when a moose charged her from behind and kicked her in the head, according to shocking video captured by a bystander. Cynthia Hoffman. He stepped out of the car and said goodbye to his mom and Marcy. (Bill Roth / ADN). Anchorage Police Chief Justin Doll told reporters Abouchuk's family reported her missing in February, but he said she had last been seen by them in July 2018. In 2017, the year Queenie was killed, the rate of women killed by men in Alaska was three times the national average and the highest in the United States, according to the Violence Policy Center. An Alaska resident found a stray SD card lying on the street in late September and discovered gruesome content inside: images and video of a woman appearing to be assaulted and murdered. Detectives knew almost immediately that something was wrong, that someones loved one was killed when they found her remains, he said. Published: Jan. 27, 2022 at 4:27 PM PST. Ritchie, the 40-year-oldkilled in a downtown shootout with policeafter he wounded an officer in an encounter early Nov. 12, is the prime suspect in the deaths of five people in 2016, APD said. I'll stand behind him, beside him, while he's going through this," Bissland added. Time stamps on the images at the hotel showed they were taken in the early hours of Sept. 4, the affidavit said. Thats going to escalate things tremendously because when were talking about misuse of substances, that inhibition is gone. He was sentenced to 498 years in prison for the murder spree. For all the good the internet can do, it can be a very dark place, Bryan Schroder, the U.S. attorney in Alaska, said at a news conference Tuesday. Brian . Information from: Anchorage Daily News, http://www.adn.com, Timothy Hoffman, right, father of slain teenager Cynthia Hoffman receives support from Edie Grunwald, left, who's son David Grunwald was murdered in Nov. 2016, as they entered a Superior courtroom for the arraignment of Cynthia's murder suspects in the Nesbett Courthouse on Tuesday, June 18, 2019 in Anchorage, Alaska. The man in the video speaks with a distinct accent, which led detectives to recall a separate case involving Smith, a South African immigrant living in Anchorage. Around 2010, he left Alaska and spent time in Las Vegas before moving to Virginia, where his parents now live. The final images on the card show the womans body face down in the bed of a pickup, and were time-stamped Sept. 6. [4][7][n 1], Eklutna Annie's body was markedly decomposed, indicating her death had occurred months prior. Pilot Project sites will implement initial response plans for tribal communities' response to new missing and murdered persons cases Anchorage, Alaska - United States Attorney Bryan Schroder announced Alaska's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Pilot Project (Pilot Project) today. Human remains found along Seward Highway near Rainbow trailhead. Alaska woman pleads guilty to killing 'best friend' after man catfished Anchorage man sentenced to 55 years in prison for murder of Alaska Zoo He has since been released, now in the custody of authorities, and is charged with first- and second-degree murder. Incident happened aboard the Emerald Princess cruise ship (file picture), Harry: I always felt different to rest of family, Inside the enclave surrounded by pro-Russia forces, US-made cheese can be called 'gruyere' - court, Why Alex Murdaugh was spared the death penalty, Why Trudeau is facing calls for a public inquiry, Canadian grandma helps police snag phone scammer. Murder of Eklutna Annie - Wikipedia The SD card was labeled Homicide at midtown Marriott, according to the affidavit. I was the only one there, I did that, I killed her, he told investigators, according to the charges. She was aged between 16 and 25 at the time of her death, and her body was discovered several months after her murder. She said she was not a police officer in the village at the time of the killing. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. An affidavit filed with the criminal complaint against him details a strange chain of events that led police to a trove of gruesome videos and photos. In some villages, city and tribal leaders say they have no choice but to hire convicted criminals as cops. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. Together, the homicides pose a question for Anchorage: What made 2016 so deadly? Smiths wife of five years, Stephanie Bissland, told KTUU on Oct. 10 that Smith was a good husband, and she did not believe the allegations against him. 2019, on charges of murder in Anchorage, Alaska. In the Lower 48, gangs are more organized and act as outside-the-law businesses, pushing drugs and weapons in defined territories. MacDonald wrote that in addition to the Mountain Village case, hes overseeing two other homicide trials and a sexual assault case that have all been significantly delayed due to a public defender withdrawing late into the case.. In at least two cases, a person believed to be breaking into a home was killed in what prosecutors determinedto be self-defense, and no charges were filed.The deaths ofLoren Douglas, 30, andAllen Raymond, 19, are still considered homicides by APD. Slawomir Markiewicz, the Anchorage Police Department's top detective. In May, 19-year-old Brandon Merritt went to a Holiday gas station and exchanged words with another man, according to police. (Loren Holmes / ADN). This page was last edited on 18 February 2023, at 21:52. Alaska murder mystery twist: Memory card found along road shows man All rights reserved. On Thursday, a grand jury indicted Smith onmurder and evidence tampering charges in Abouchuk's death. Smith, 48, appeared in Anchorage Superior Court on Wednesday afternoon. The . Warming water may be to blame. Marcytook every votive candle she could find in her house, plus a piece of Christmas pie in plasticwrap, to leave as an offering at a makeshift altar another corner of Anchorage turned into an impromptu memorial for a person killed in 2016. Corrections:This article originally incorrectly stated that a homicide had taken place in the Kempton Hills subdivision in 2016. Smith was taken into custody on an arrest warrant for first-degree murder Tuesday afternoon at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, police said in an online release announcing the arrest Wednesday. The Newman Family Murders. Who brutally assaulted and killed Nancy But a bail memorandum filed in the case . Brehmer ultimately admitted to being solicited by Schilmiller to commit the murder and that the murder was planned once she realized she had been catfished by Schilmiller, the documents say. "They are engaging in this behavior where maybe a mature person would say, 'I'd never do that,' but to the people involved this is real stuff to them disrespect. Her fiance was killed. He said Eklutna Annie was either an exotic dancer from a local bar or a prostitute and that she was his first murder victim,[15] adding that she had been murdered in the fall or early winter of 1979. Zaz Hollander is a veteran journalist based in the Mat-Su and is currently an ADN local news editor and reporter. Or are people just angrier?" According to the Violence Policy Center, Alaska ranked number one in murder of women by men in incidents where there were one victim and one offender from 2014 through 2018. The victim has. The memory card, which was labeled homicide at midtown Marriott, was given to police by the woman who found it, charging documents obtained by NBC affiliate KTUU in Anchorage showed. A separate 1998 audit done for the Alaska Legislature said the states public defenders can ethically handle no more than 59 cases in a 60-hour work week; by that standard, Steiner said at the March hearing, his agency needed 66 more lawyers to fulfill its constitutional obligations. A 48-year-old Anchorage man was charged with murder after someone found a digital card containing dozens of videos and photos that authorities say show him beating and killing a woman in a Midtown hotel room. Hansen specifically stated she was his first murder victim. But they are working to build a case meeting the evidence threshold that would allow for prosecution, Markiewicz said. she said. Jorge Rea-Villa, a handsome tattoo artist who went to a Fourth of July barbecue and ended up dead. ThatFriday, she dropped him off for an evening out downtown. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. According to court papers, the group went off trail and followed a path to the bank of the Eklutna River, where Hoffman was bound, shot and thrown into the river. Witnesses say she was travelling with her children. But at one of the many stops along the way, a grizzly discovery is made when crew membersfind the widower's body crammed into her own suitcase. AnAlaska man accused of brutally assaulting and murdering a woman who was seen strangled in videos found ona digital memory cardhasbeen charged with another death, authorities said Thursday. Gardner slept upstairs. Rodgers went on to kill another man in Anchorage and shoot two others who survived before his 26-hour rampage ended. Hoffman was allegedly best friends with Brehmer, and she was chosen by the group as the victim, the documents say. Its just really incredibly disheartening, Pearson said. Nancy Furlow . His wife is not implicated in the slaying. Another factor no one could have predicted: James Dale Ritchie, who could prove to bethe most prolific killer in AnchoragesinceJoshua Wade, though APD is not ready to call him that. Judges appoint public defenders for defendants who cant afford to hire their own lawyers. According to the affidavit, Doubek, who had reportedly struggled with substance abuse, had been growing increasingly paranoid that his wife was having an affair, and because of his behavior, Gardner had considered divorcing him. Doubek slept downstairs. "I'd say a great number of our citizens don't engage in any activity that's considered dangerous.". Advocate for missing and murdered women, reflecting on the ongoing efforts to identify Eklutna Annie[18], Eklutna Annie remains unidentified. Two days later, both Brehmer and McIntosh were interviewed. The remarks by the veteran judge came in a 37-page order to delay the murder trial of Alexie Walters, a man accused of beating his girlfriend, Gertrude Queenie, to death in 2017 in Mountain Village, on the Yukon River in Southwest Alaska.