Were feelings on the boat low enough to be the breeding ground for murder? Miller couldn’t tell. But soon, Tussing revealed another side of the story. He revealed how emotional he felt after the confrontation with a man he’d worked with for seven years. Was there anything else he could add? Were things really as low as they seemed?
Tussing didn’t immediately address how low things were. Instead, he told troopers Mark Coulthurst was a social drinker. When he was drunk he wasn’t that much different from normal. And, Tussing added, “He was not a fighting type person, you know, he didn’t get drunk and cause fights.” At the same time, Tussing pointed out, Mark Coulthurst “was very opinionated. But I had been in bars with him and we never ever had any trouble with that, you know. Sometimes, they were probably glad when we left, though.”
What about drugs? Tussing said they went through a period when they used them, but that was over with. Work, he said, ”was first before anything else.” And Tussing felt sure that drugs weren’t involved in the Investor murders. “It got to be that pot wasn’t allowed on the boat, you know. Especially while working.”
”Would Mark allow weapons on board the boat?” Miller asked. Tussing said that Mark “wasn’t real big about it,” but added that Dean Moon had a rifle on board. Tussing added that he didn’t think Moon had shells for it, although, “he might have gotten them later, I don’t know.”
Miller was also interested in what Tussing could tell him about the Investor’s skiff. The former engineer said that he was training Dean Moon how to run it. Miller asked about the valves in the Investor’s engine room. Roy Tussing revealed that he was teaching Dean Moon how to operate them before he left.
Roy added that it was possible, under certain circumstances, to sink the Investor if the boat was improperly tanked down. He also revealed he came close to sinking Mark Coulthurst’s previous boat, the Kit, when he was tanking it down. Only fast action by Mark Coulthurst and the rest of the crew — including Dean Moon and former crewman John Peel — kept the Kit from sinking.
Excerpts from the unpublished original manuscript, “Sailor Take Warning,” by Leland E. Hale. That manuscript, started in 1992 and based on court records from the Alaska State Archive, served as the basis for “What Happened in Craig.”
Copyright Leland E. Hale (2019). All rights reserved.
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