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Imagine a small town where, between 1968 and 1983, the clergy sexually abused eighty percent of the children — a village where today, the city government is forced to hire police officers with extensive criminal records, including domestic violence, because there is no state law enforcement in this remote area of Alaska. Imagine this same community where the violent murder of a young woman remains unsolved six years after her body was found bruised and bloody on a lonely beach. Now, put this village on an island at the southeastern end of Norton Sound, where it is exposed to the Bering Sea and some of the most hazardous weather in the world. This is the village of St. Michael, Alaska.
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MASSACRE AT BEAR CREEK LODGE
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Robin Barefield is the author of five Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, The Fisherman’s Daughter, Karluk Bones, and Massacre at Bear Creek Lodge. She has also written two non-fiction books: Kodiak Island Wildlife and Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier. Sign up to subscribe to her free monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska.
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The scattered residents of the McCarthy area were not prepared for the horrors of mail day on February 29, 1983, when one of their neighbors attempted to murder them all.
On a cold February night in 1921, Jack Sturgus, Anchorage’s first police chief, patrolled downtown Anchorage. He strolled past local businessman Oscar Anderson at 9:00 P.M., and they exchanged pleasantries, but what happened over the next few minutes constitutes one of the biggest mysteries in Anchorage history. At 9:30 P.M., night watchman John McNutt discovered Sturgus lying in an alley behind the Anchorage Drug Store and the Liberty Café near Fourth Avenue and E Street. Sturgus was bleeding from a single gunshot wound to the chest. The watchman summoned help, and several men carried Sturgus to the hospital. Sturgus kept mumbling about being cold and needing to be turned over. In the hospital, he complained about the bright lights. He repeatedly called, ‘Oh, Bobby, Bobby, Bobby.” but when asked who shot him, he did not reply. Sturgus died at 10:50 P.M.
arrested anyone for his murder, and until now, no one has ever answered the question of who shot Jack Sturgus. Recent in-depth research by two Anchorage history buffs brings us as close as we will ever be to knowing what happened between 9:00 P.M. and 9:30 P.M. on February 20, 1921, in a back alley in the newly incorporated city of Anchorage, Alaska.
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Sources:
Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. Sign up to subscribe to her free, 
