“What Happened in Craig” The four o’clock float plane from Ketchikan brought two investigators from the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) in Anchorage. The CIB was the central investigative arm of the Alaska State Troopers, and its investigators were the most experienced in the state. One of them was Sergeant Chuck Miller, lead homicide investigator with the CIB. The second was Sergeant Jim Stogsdill, an arson investigator [1]. They were accompanied by Ketchikan prosecuting attorney Mary Anne Henry, there to help the troopers with search warrants, legal opinions and whatever else they needed to move the investigation forward.
Their arrival was an acknowledgment that this was a serious crime, and that they were taking it seriously. The floatplane slowly glided over the fire scene before it landed, so all of them could get a better look at what awaited them. The Investor was still smoldering, the fire not completely extinguished.
Craig, Alaska (Fish Egg Island upper left; the fire scene was near the northern tip of the island)
(Map data courtesy of OpenSeaMap (ODbl); illustration by Leland Hale)
Of the three, Miller had been the most skeptical. When he first got the call, he’d told his wife that it was, “probably just those flakes in southeast Alaska,” overreacting to a routine boat fire. By the time he got to Ketchikan and had been debriefed by Sgt. John Glass, he’d changed his opinion considerably.
Sgt. Chuck Miller, AST Criminal Investigation Bureau
Although Glass still didn’t know a great deal, the little he did know was significant. Troopers now knew that the skipper, Mark Coulthurst, had been on board the Investor with his wife and two children. That four additional people had been part of the Investor crew: Dean Moon, 19; Michael Stewart, 19; Chris Heyman, 18; and Jerome Keown, 19. Glass also told them that the four bodies they’d recovered had been x-rayed in Ketchikan. The examination, he said, revealed the presence of some as-yet-unidentified metal objects, possibly molten metal, possibly bullets.
[1] Implying that Sgt. Stogsdill was an experienced arson investigator is perhaps too generous. At the time he had one week of arson training at Northwestern University and two weeks on assignment with the King County Arson Squad in Seattle.
Excerpts from the unpublished original manuscript, “Sailor Take Warning,” by Leland E. Hale.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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