Wedding Cake

After his visit with Joe Weiss, Sgt. Stogsdill flew north to Bellingham. As was his custom, he met with John and Sally Coulthurst. They seemed distracted. Lisa, their youngest daughter, was getting married. There was so much to do. Get the wedding gown. Send the wedding invitations. Get the wedding cake. Marilyn Peel, John Peel’s mother, was baking the cake, Sally Coulthurst told him. What a coincidence. Because Stogsdill had some questions to ask them about Marilyn’s son, John. The Coulthurst’s had answers.

In his booming baritone, John Peel told Stogsdill that Mark had met John Peel through his daughter Lisa, who was dating him at the time. He pointed to the couch in the living room. “He was sitting right there,” John said, “when Mark offered him a job. John was going to go into the service. Mark asked him if he’d like to go fishing instead.”

John Peel, Bellingham High yearbook

Peel worked for Mark for two years on the Kit, John Coulthurst said, referring to the purse seiner his son owned before purchasing the Investor. But at the end of the 1981 season, Mark fired John Peel. According to the senior Coulthurst, Peel was a less than satisfactory employee. Once Mark made the decision to buy the Investor, he had to make a decision about John Peel. Before firing him, Mark told his dad, “I can’t afford to have a screw-up when I have a million dollar boat.”

When it was Sally Coulthurst’s turn to talk, she could barely restrain herself. She remembered telling Sergeant Miller about the composites way back in September of 1982. She had pointed to the same one Joe Weiss pointed at and said, ”That looks like John Peel.” Indeed, if one squinted really hard, one could see some resemblance.

wedding
AST Skiffman composite #2

But Miller had ignored her. Now, with Jim Stogsdill in the lead, it looked like that had changed. And with that change, Sally Coulthurst had one more thing to tell Stogsdill.

She had learned, she said, that John Peel sold marijuana to Dean Moon and Jerome Keown on Sunday, September 5th, the night before they died. And, she said, the last time she saw John Peel — at the Cocoanut Grove tavern in Bellingham — she confronted him with that information.

wedding
Cocoanut Grove Tavern, Marine Drive, Bellingham

“You know something that you haven’t told the troopers,” she told John Peel, referring to the marijuana sale. “Next time they’re in town,” she admonished him, “you better tell them.”

That exchange — and the background information that led to it — revealed the depth of their complex relationship. John Peel was a family friend, one who’d spent many a time at the Coulthurst home. On one of those stays, they changed the direction of his life. It went farther. John’s family and the Coulthurst family were inextricably intertwined. Beyond that, this was a Blaine-Bellingham commercial fishermen story. It was a small community, where people had, at most, only two degrees of separation. Weddings and funerals brought everyone together. The Coulthurst’s and Peel’s had seen both.


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.


Craig

Order “What Happened In Craig,” HERE and HERE. True crime from Epicenter Press about Alaska’s Worst Unsolved Mass Murder.

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