True Crime in Alaska | Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier

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Alaska’s slogan is “The Last Frontier,” and to some people, this means Alaska is the wild west, a place with less law and order, and someplace they can live as they choose. The man who called himself Papa Pilgrim believed moving his family to the wilderness of Alaska offered him the opportunity to do anything he wanted. Papa Pilgrim was the worst kind of a hypocrite because he hid his crimes behind his religious zeal. Like a charismatic cult leader, Pilgrim could appear charming and persuasive in public, but there was another side of Papa Pilgrim, and this was the side his family saw all too often.

No one knew of the horrors the Pilgrim family endured at the hands of their father, high on the mountain above McCarthy Alaska.

Sources

Pilgrim’s Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier. Kizzia, Tom. 6-16-2013. Crown Publisher
https://www.amazon.com/Tom-Kizzia-Pilgrims-Wilderness-Frontier/dp/B00HTJZ38E/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Papa+Pilgrim&qid=1589405614&s=books&sr=1-1

Papa Pilgrim’s Progress: The Dark Tale of an Alaskan Frontiersman. Kirby, Mark. 11/19/2008. Outside Magazine.
https://www.outsideonline.com/1928141/papa-pilgrims-progress-dark-tale-alaskan-frontiersman#close
Hale clan details abuse at the hand of their father, ‘Papa Pilgrim’. Kizzia, Tom. 7-1-2016. Anchorage Daily News.
https://www.adn.com/projects/article/hale-clan-details-abuse-hand-their-father-papa-pilgrim/2013/07/12/
Robert Allen Hale. Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Allen_Hale

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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, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska.

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In my last episode, I profiled Israel Keyes, a serial killer who moved to Anchorage in 2007. Many serial-killer experts consider Keyes to be one of the most intelligent, organized serial killers of all time. He randomly chose victims who lived thousands of miles from his home, and he stashed murder kits around the country, planning to access them at some future date. It is easy to understand why Israel Keyes wasn’t captured sooner than he was. He methodically planned his crimes and always had an exit strategy. He only began making mistakes when his murderous impulses grew too strong for him to control, and these mistakes led to his apprehension.

Around the same time Israel Keyes was active, another serial killer stalked the residents of Anchorage, but the story of Joshua Wade and his crimes is far different than that of Israel Keyes. Investigators consider Wade intelligent, but he did not stalk his victims or plan his crimes. His crimes were sloppy, happened on the spur of the moment, and usually were the result of him losing his temper. The legal system should have stopped Joshua Wade long before it did.