“What Happened in Craig” Another witness known to troopers was Charles “Fat Charlie” Clark. Clark drove a forklift at Phillips Cold Storage and loaded ice into the hundreds of fishing boats moored in Craig. It was the kind of job that put him in regular contact with virtually every fishing boat in the fleet.
On the day of the fire, it was Clark and a truck driver who grabbed fire extinguishers, jumped in the cold storage skiff and raced toward the black plume on the horizon. As they steered out to Craig harbor, they saw another skiff approaching rapidly, passing them from 30 to 40 feet away and sending a large wake surging in their direction. Clark remembered that they had to aim their skiff into the wake of the incoming skiff to avoid overturning their small craft.
It didn’t work as planned. Water from the wake flooded their engine and thwarted their rescue effort. They returned to the cold storage facility.
Finger docks, Phillips Cold Storage, Craig, Alaska (courtesy Alaska State Troopers)
After their failed encounter at the Hill Bar, Trooper Anderson remembered that Charlie Clark had encountered the skiff man. Maybe, he reasoned, this guy could positively identify John Peel as the man seen fleeing the Investor. With precious time already lost to the killer, Kolivosky sent Anderson off to round up the forklift guy. They would meet, they decided, at the old cannery dock, on the other side of town.
While Kolivosky and company waited near the cannery, they saw John Peel heading their way. He walked along Craig’s main street, headed down the cannery dock, stopped at a worn-down seine boat named the Libby No. 8 and started talking to her crew. From what they could tell, he knew them well.
When Anderson brought their witness a short time later, Kolivosky directed him to walk down the dock. As they passed John Peel, Kolivosky pointed him out and asked Clark if he resembled the man driving the skiff.
“No, that’s John Peel, I know him,” Clark responded. John Peel worked on the Libby 8, Clark said. And, the forklift operator continued, he had loaded ice onto the Libby 8 probably 30 times that summer.
Libby 8, Ketchikan, Alaska, 1994 (copyright Leland E. Hale)
Copyright Leland E. Hale (2018). All rights reserved.
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