Whoever murdered Mark Coulthurst — and his wife and his crew — had time on his side. There were missed opportunities, sure, but the killer had taken one thing that the troopers could never get back. Clocking backwards, the troopers calculated that the murders occurred either late Sunday, September 5th, or early morning Monday, September 6th. The Investor fire began Tuesday afternoon, September 7th. Already, they were more than a few steps behind the killer.
It got worse.
Bow fire, F/V Investor
The investigation didn’t start in earnest until Wednesday, September 8th, when Capt. Kolivosky arrived to take over the land-based investigation. The debrisment of the Investor — where presumably valuable evidence lay waiting to be discovered — didn’t start until the next day. By then, four days had passed since the murders.
While it borders on cliche to obsess about the gravity of the first 48 hours in an investigation, time was wasting with each tick of the clock.
And then there were the missed opportunities, the “unforced” errors, as it were. There were almost too many missed opportunities to count. Here are the top six.
- Boats (witnesses) leaving Craig — the Investor was taken out to Ben’s Cove early Monday morning. Fishing boats were already leaving Craig that Monday, on their way to the fishing grounds for the Tuesday opening. That the Tuesday opening was the last of the season was also a problem: witnesses would soon scatter to the four winds.
- No Investor skiff fingerprints — Trooper Anderson saw the skiff on Tuesday and didn’t fingerprint it. Lt. Roger McCoy saw the skiff the next day and didn’t fingerprint it. Sgt. Chuck Miller also declined to fingerprint the Investor skiff, reasoning that between the rain and the fact that many hands had already touched it, fingerprints would not be dispositive.
- Boat fire persists — quite simply, the troopers missed an opportunity to put out the fire early Wednesday. It continued to smolder until late Wednesday, when Sgt. Stogsdill finally gave the go ahead to use firefighting foam.
- Egress routes remain open — the ferry terminal in Hollis, a vital link between Craig and Ketchikan, continued to run throughout the investigation. The float plane dock in Craig was still functioning until late Wednesday afternoon, with planes leaving the island on regularly scheduled flights.
- Photo lineups limited — the troopers depended on the Investor families for line-up photos; by default, those photos concentrated on photos of the crew. Given the persistent notion that a crewmember might be responsible, the universe of possibilities was artificially fixed at that data set.
- Witness composites missing — even with multiple witnesses who’d seen and/or talked to the skiff operator, troopers still didn’t have any composite drawings of the suspect by the end of that first week.
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 (2018). All rights reserved.
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