John Peel had not come to the police station empty-handed. He brought in an audio tape that, he said, had been made aboard the Kit. After repeated listenings, conducted while Peel was being polygraphed, the troopers managed to make out a few words.
Someone was heard saying, “Mark.” And then ”passed out.” And ”needle in his arm.” They also heard a drug word. “Coke.”
(courtesy Doug McNair)
Roy Tussing recalled the time, near the end of the season, when they’d decided to play a joke on Mark Coulthurst. Mark had either been tired, or had a few beers, but it was the end of the season anyway. And while Mark was sleeping, the crew got out a tape recorder. They made a party tape.
They said some fairly outrageous things. They said, for example, that Mark had passed out. That he’d just shot up some cocaine. That the needle was still in his arm. And then they laughed. Years later, when that tape turned up again, no one was laughing.
Roy Tussing, longtime Mark Coulthurst crew member, “Life of a Fisherman“
Galyan had no idea that this was the joke tape made by Roy Tussing and the Kit crew, but he confronted John Peel nonetheless.
“Remember that tape you gave me?” Galyan asked. “I’ve listened to that tape a dozen times. I can — I, in my own mind, I think the reason you gave us that tape is you’re trying to tell us something. And I’m not sure what, but from listening to that very tape — I listened to it a dozen times — I can form a mental picture of those guys partying aboard that boat.”
“Yeah,” Peel replied in the same monotone he had used during much of his Bellingham interrogation.
“I can just take that tape and say, ‘Now, this is the crew of the Investor making it into port, end of the season. Irene and the kids are leaving the next day, and they’re whooping it up and having a good time. Mark’s out to dinner, but Mark comes back and something goes wrong…”‘
Daryl Galyan’s guesses were wildly offbase. The tape wasn’t about the Investor. It was from the previous season, on the Kit. Irene and the kids were never on the Kit during that fishing season. It was too small. Only with the Investor did that become a possibility. As for drug use on the Kit, Roy Tussing maintained it never got beyond booze and marijuana.
That John Peel thought it useful to bring in the so-called “Dope Tape” — unbidden and without precedent — certainly raises the question: “Why?” During his interrogation, John Peel consistently expressed surprise at the trooper’s allegations. But was he? Stogsdill hadn’t exactly been subtle. Furthermore, in subsequent interactions with the police Peel claimed he knew they suspected him. And then there’s that troubling detail: bringing in the tape required forethought.
In that context, voluntarily surrendering the “Dope Tape” seemed to serve as a deflection, a way for John Peel to point a finger away from himself. A way of pointing a finger toward the drug mafia theory of the Investor murders. “Here,” he seemed to be saying, “let me help you solve this case.”
It was a strange way to assist the Investor murder investigation. The audio tape was a bad joke.
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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