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In September 2000, Shelia Toomey, a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, wrote a front-page story about six unsolved homicides in Anchorage. The article displayed the photos of the six victims. All were women; five were Native Alaskan, and one was African American. Nothing connected the victims, and the police did not know if they were looking for one, two, or six murderers.
Serial Killer Joshua Wade eventually admitted that he murdered Della Brown, the last murder victim profiled in Toomey’s article. Investigators believed Wade might have also killed some of the other victims. The police also found the murderer of Cynthia Henry, but the murders of the other four women listed in the article remained unsolved. One of these women was Genevieve Tetpon.
Police initially thought they were on the right path to solving Genevieve’s murder, but they hit a dead end and had nowhere else to turn. Finally, in 2009, a new cold-case detective looked at Genevieve’s file, and what he found turned the case on its head.
Sources:
Fatal Frontier: Evil in Alaska. Season 1. Episode 6. Murder in Winter.
Hopkins, Kyle. 2-4-2011. Suspect arrested in 2000 stabbing death. Available at: https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/article/suspect-arrested-2000-stabbing-death/2011/02/05/
Edge, Josh. 2-4-2011. Alaska Public Media. Man Charged with Nearly 11-Year-Old Murder. Available at: https://www.alaskapublic.org/2011/02/04/man-charged-with-nearly-11-year-old-murder/
Dziemianowicz, Joe. 11-28-2021. Strange Emails Lead To Arrest In Cold Case Murder Of Alaskan Native Woman. Oxygen True Crime. Crime News. Available at: https://www.oxygen.com/fatal-frontier-evil-in-alaska/crime-nesws/how-genevieve-tetpon-cold-case-was-solved
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Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, The Fisherman’s Daughter, Karluk Bones, and Massacre at Bear Creek Lodge. Sign up to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska.
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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.
An electrician found the badly beaten and defiled body of 48-year-old Martha Hansen behind the Elks Club on 3rd Avenue in downtown Anchorage. She was naked except for a white sock on her left foot. When police detectives arrived at the scene, they were determined to do everything they could to find the animal who had perpetrated this horrible crime. They put in hours of dogged perseverance and executed a forensic technique few investigators thought was possible.
Ice Cold Rage. Fatal Frontier-Evil in Alaska. E03. 11-21-2021.
On September 6, 1992, two young hikers from Anchorage arrived at the old Fairbanks city bus #142, a makeshift shelter located on the Stampede Trail, twenty-five miles west of Healy. They immediately noted a stench emanating from the bus. A red leg warmer swung from an alder branch near the vehicle’s rear door. A note taped to the door terrified the hikers. It read:
Holland, Eva. 6-28-2020. Alaska Airlifts ‘Into the Wild’ Bus Out of the Wild. Outside Magazine. 
Stokes, Elisabeth Fairfield. 2017. Letters to Prison. Pacific Standard. 
Capps, Kris. 7-1-1988. Jury indicts man in death of Koonz. Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
