|
Black Sheep of Alaska
| Beatty (Bates), Nellie "Black Bear" |
A familiar face around Iditarod for her dealings in prostitution,
banking and mining claims, she was accused -- along with a co-conspirator
named Schermeyer -- of robbing William Duffy, a mail carrier who was
transporting a payroll of $31,000 for the wealthy Thomas Aitken in 1923.
Nellie Beatty’s reputation helped her in court, where she went to trial
twice -- leading to a hung jury and then a complete acquittal. To make
matters worse, she rubbed salt in the wounds of the justice system by
marrying the very same mail carrier who earlier claimed to have been
“robbed.” |
| Beaver, Constantine |
Constantine Beaver was an Alaska Native who spoke no English, was
convicted in 1929 of the shooting death of a friend during a drunken
brawl. His attorney, Thomas Drayton, was appointed only a week before
his trial. Drayton filed a motion to delay the trial by a month, but the
motion was denied. Because neither Beaver nor witnesses to the killing
spoke English, an interpreter was used. The jury was instructed that if
they found Beaver guilty, they could return a sentence either of life
imprisonment or they could return a ballot that was silent regarding the
sentence. The jury returned a guilty verdict which was "silent" as to
the penalty, and the judge sentenced Beaver to death. A week later,
three jurors filed sworn statements protesting the sentence and stating
they would have voted for life imprisonment had they known the "silent"
ballot would result in a death penalty, but the statements were rejected
because they were submitted three days past the deadline set for motions
in the case. Beaver sought to have his sentence commuted to life
imprisonment, but President Herbert Hoover denied his appeal for
clemency. Authorities in Fairbanks hanged Beaver on
December 15, 1929, but the executioner botched the hanging. Reportedly,
Beaver literally strangled to death since it took him nine minutes to
die (Lerman, 1994). |
| Birch, William T. "Slim" |
William “Slim” Birch and Hiram Schell, murderers of U.S. Deputy
Marshal William C. Watts who was shot and killed on Admiralty Island on
September 1, 1897 while serving a warrant also wounded three other
lawmen. They escaped but were apprehended soon after with the help of the U.S.
Marines and a bunch of outraged volunteers. A jury, however, found the men not guilty saying
the Marshals had not adequately identified themselves before the attempted
arrest. |
| Bird, Homer |
Homer Bird was tried on a charge of having murdered one J. H. Hurlin
on the 27th day of September, A. D. 1898. On December 6, 1899, the jury
found the defendant guilty as charged in the indictment, and on December
13, 1899, a motion for a new trial having been overruled, a sentence of
death by hanging on February 9, A. D. 1900, was pronounced. He was hanged in Sitka in 1903 (Lerman 1994). |
| Boyd, John |
The second recorded execution in Alaska. John Boyd, a miner
wintering in Wrangell in 1878, shot and killed another man in a drunken
fight over a woman. The collector in Wrangell claimed he had no
authority to hold Boyd in custody. The miners in Wrangell then held a
court, tried Boyd, and hanged him the next day, December 14, 1878. |
| Bunday, Richard |
Tech Sergeant, USAF, stationed at Eielson AFB;
Between 1979 and 1981, serial killer Thomas Richard Bunday murdered at
least five Fairbanks-area women. When police finally discovered who
their killer was, he was already on the run. Just one hour after his
arrest warrant was issued, he committed suicide by plowing his
motorcycle head-on into a truck. He died 15 March 1983. |
| Canton, Frank |
The most well-known secret outlaw in Alaska, Frank Canton began life as
Josiah Horner, a gritty bank robber and cattle thief in Texas who
escaped an arrest attempt in 1877, and changed his name and his side of
the law.
After stints in Wyoming and Oklahoma as a U.S. Marshal, Frank Canton
arrived in Alaska in 1897 during Gold Rush fever, receiving another
marshal badge and single-handedly bringing order to nearby towns. After
experiencing snow blindness during a particularly brutal winter, Frank
Canton went south and eventually confessed his criminal past to the
Texas governor. For his many good deeds, he was given a pardon. |
| Charles, Nelson |
A 37-year-old Native fisherman and
World War I veteran, married with a daughter. Newspaper accounts
indicate that Charles was probably not an Alaska Native, but a Native
American from the Puget Sound area. He was arrested and convicted for
the September 4, 1938 murder of his mother-in-law, Cecilia Johnson, in
Ketchikan. Both Charles and Johnson had been drinking heavily at the
time of the murder. The Alaska Native Brotherhood petitioned President
Franklin Roosevelt for a commutation of Charles' sentence to life
imprisonment, but Roosevelt did not respond. Charles was hanged in
Juneau on November 10, 1939 (Lerman 1994, 1998. For a full account of Charles' trial and
hanging, see Lerman
1996; see also Gaffney 1995, which provides
an eyewitness account of Charles' execution.) |
| Dempsey, William |
Murdered a woman in 1919 and evaded arrest for
that crime by murdering a U.S. marshal. He was convicted and sentenced
to hang for both murders, but his family could afford an attorney who
succeeded in petitioning President Woodrow Wilson for clemency.
President Wilson commuted Dempsey's sentence to life imprisonment (Lerman 1994). |
| Fletcher, Winona |
Tom and Ann Faccio and Ann’s sister Emilia Elliot had been eating a
quiet dinner and watching the evening news at the couple’s East
Anchorage home on April 22, 1985 when 14-year-old Fletcher and
19-year-old Cordell Boyd shot the two sisters and then the man.
Fletcher pled guilty and was tried in adult court, making her the then
youngest convicted murder in Alaska’s history. She received 3-99
year sentences and will be eligible for parole at age 60. |
| Hamilton, "John Doe" |
A Native from the village of Shageluk who spoke no English. He was convicted
of the 1920 shooting death of his cousin. According to newspaper reports,
Hamilton told authorities his cousin's wife complained of being beaten
by her husband. Hamilton shot his cousin and hid his body, and the murdered
man's wife moved in with Hamilton. At Hamilton's sentencing, his court-appointed
attorney told the court, "The man is guilty, and there is absolutely
no reason which his counsel knows why sentence should not be pronounced."
Hamilton expressed shame for his crime and requested that he be hanged
in Alaska. He was hanged in Fairbanks in 1921. His body dropped too far
during the execution, and the force of his fall caused him to be decapitated
(Lerman 1994). |
| Hansen, Robert |
During the 1980s, Robert C. Hansen kidnapped prostitutes from Anchorage,
Alaska, flew them in his private plane to his cabin in Knik River
Valley, where he raped then hunted and killed them. After his arrest he
entered into a plea bargain in exchange for a life sentence and admitted
to four murders, then provided authorities with the whereabouts of 17
gravesites which contained the remains of 21 victims. |
| Hanson, Edward |
During the biting Alaskan winter of 1897 and 1898, it was commonplace
for travelers on Alaska’s Chilkoot Trail to leave some of their
belongings along the path to claim later. In early 1898, two
opportunity-seizing thieves named William Wellington and Edward Hanson
helped themselves to some scattered belongings only to be given a taste
of painful frontier justice. Immediately sought after and ultimately
captured by residents of a nearby sheep camp (and faced with almost
certain death,)
William Wellington took matters into his own hands by shooting himself
while Edward Hanson suffered a bare-chested whipping in subfreezing
temperatures -- an action that scared future criminals from attempting
the same thievery. |
| Hardy, Fred |
During the Gold Rush, gold became a wealthy possession for those who had
it and an object of obsession for those who did not. As a result,
robbery -- and sometimes murder -- were regular occurrences. Fred Hardy
holds the dubious distinction of being the first man executed under the
jury system in Alaska. Arrested in 1901 for allegedly stealing gold from
three men and murdering them. He was convicted
in 1901 of murdering and robbing three men on Unimak Island. He was hanged
in the gold rush town of Nome in 1902 (Lerman 1994). |
| Hastings, Louis |
In an attempt to disrupt the Alaska pipeline, 39-year-old failed
computer programmer Louis D. Hastings, armed with a .223-caliber Ruger
Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle, murdered six of the 22 citizens of
McCarthy on March 1, 1983. He received a 634-year prison term. |
| Hendrickson, Charles (Blue Parka Bandit) |
Charles Hendrickson represented the Alaskan answer to Robin Hood. Known
as “The Blue Parka Bandit” or “The Blue Parka Man” for his costume of
choice, the trained mining engineer-turned-robber made his crooked
living over a two-month period in 1905 by stealing fresh gold from
prospectors in Fairbanks, Alaska. While robbing a group of men, Charles
Hendrickson discovered that one of them was Bishop Peter Trimble Rowe,
which prompted the bandit to give some money back as a “church
donation.” Already a fugitive before he was captured for the robberies,
Charles Hendrickson made a number of escape attempts before his release
from behind bars in 1920. |
| Homer, Joe, aka Frank Canton |
See Frank Canton |
| Johnson, Thomas (Blueberry Kid) |
Gold prospector John Holmberg made his first questionable decision when
he married the shady Marie Schmidt, a wealthy Fairbanks woman with a rap
sheet. However, their shared decision to board the Sea Pup, a private
boat owned by Tommy Johnson, proved to be their final undoing. The
couple’s remains were found later in the year after Tommy Johnson
(nicknamed "The Blueberry Kid") had completed a solo voyage to Seattle
and San Francisco, with a large amount of money on his person. Like many
clever outlaws,
he disappeared before he could be apprehended and brought to justice. |
|
Johnson, Norman Leroy |
At the age of 20, murdered a hunting party of 3
Eskimos in Kiana. He was convicted of three counts of second
degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. |
| Klutuk |
According to the Cordova Daily Times, Klutuk, a fur trapper
of Yupik Eskimo heritage and a famous black dog, killed as many as
twenty people with an ax and a gun during a murderous career on the
early twentieth-century Alaskan frontier. Territorial authorities
looked for Klutuk for years. Beginning in 1919, he haunted white
and Native trapper alike in the region between Cook Inlet and the
Kuskowing River. In that year he reportedly killed two Natives and
then boasted he would kill more people if he wanted.
In 1927, rumors of Klutuk's murderous deeds had spread widely through
the camps and villages along the rivers and on the coast. Trappers
reported sightings and told stories of feeling hunted like an animal
while working their winter traplines. At five foot four and 140
pounds, Klutuk, a man in his mid-thirties during the height of his
baneful reign, was not physically intimidating in the usual sense.
But as the legend grew, so too did exaggerations of his cunning,
wilderness prowess, and skill in the deadly sport of hunting man.
He had, after all, dispatched Andrew Kallenvik in 1928 near the little
fishing village of Dillingham earlier that year. This murder was
no small accomplishment, for Kallenvik was no tenderfoot, but a seasoned
outdoorsman with a keen eye for trouble. He was also a large and
powerful man, given to legendary bouts of bad temper and fits of
violence when he drank.
Also in the spring of 1928, Jack Aho was missing -- another white
trapper who had failed to show up to meet his friends at breakup.
Then there were the stories of a lone Eskimo trapper with a black dog
who had recently killed trappers Charles Anderson and Arvid Sackarson
for getting too close to his territory. (Heaton, 2010) |
| Krause, Ed |
Known in Alaska as the state’s first suspected serial
killer,
Edward Krause was an ex-Army man who served in China before returning
home to the North. After a stint in politics, he turned to a life of
crime that saw him allegedly murder nine men (possibly more) over a
three-year period. In the wake of the 1915 disappearance of James
Plunkett -- the captain of a charter boat in Juneau -- Edward Krause was
convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Sentenced to death but was not executed. Krause
escaped from the federal jail in Juneau two days before his scheduled
hanging in 1917 and was killed by a homesteader several days later
(Williams 1991, p. 10).
A homesteader gave him a taste of his own medicine and took his life. |
| LaMoore, Eugene |
Convicted with Austin Nelson and executed in
1950 for the same crime, the December 1946 murder of a 52-year-old
(white) Juneau storekeeper named Jim Ellen. Ellen's store had also been
robbed. Ellen had immigrated to the U.S. from Greece as a boy in 1909.
He was a World War I veteran who held memberships in the American Legion
and the Juneau Elks Lodge (Lerman
1998). Black; a 42-year-old fisherman with
a Tlingit wife and two children, was originally an alibi witness at
Nelson's trial. He testified that he had spent much of the evening with
Nelson on the night of the murder, including along the avenue where the
victim's store was located. LaMoore's credibility with the jury was
apparently eroded when he initially denied a felony robbery conviction
of twenty years before. Although LaMoore returned to the stand the following
day to correct his testimony, he was arrested by U.S. Marshal William
Mahoney on a charge of perjury and held on a bond of $10,000 — a high
bond in 1947 — which LaMoore could not pay. He was held in a cell in
the federal jail, shackled in leg irons and, later, in a ball and chain.
He was repeatedly questioned by the local FBI agent and other local law
enforcement authorities about the murder of Jim Ellen. Shortly before
Nelson's scheduled 1948- execution, Nelson was brought to visit LaMoore in his
cell. According to later testimony by LaMoore, Nelson pled with LaMoore
to help save his life (Lerman 1998).
On July 1, 1947, the date of Nelson's scheduled
execution, LaMoore signed a typed confession stating that he had participated
in a robbery of Jim Ellen's store with Austin Nelson and that Nelson had
killed Ellen during the robbery. LaMoore was charged with first degree
murder. Nelson's execution was delayed because he was now considered a
material witness against LaMoore (Lerman 1998).
LaMoore was represented at trial by Henry
Roden and Joseph A. McLean, the same court-appointed attorneys who had
represented Nelson. The only significant evidence offered at trial to
suggest LaMoore's involvement in the murder was the typed confession he
had signed while in jail. At trial, LaMoore retracted the confession,
stating it had been made on the advice of a prominent Juneau attorney,
Herbert W. Faulkner, who had been persuaded by Deputy Marshal Walter Hellan
to come and talk with him (LaMoore had had no lawyer at the time). LaMoore
testified that Faulkner agreed to advise him, though Faulkner denied having
done anything except typing up what LaMoore wanted to say in the confession.
LaMoore also stated that the confession had been prompted by a desire
— especially after Nelson's visit to his cell — to delay Nelson's execution.
Despite his retraction and the lack of other significant evidence, LaMoore
was convicted by the jury and sentenced to death (Lerman 1998).
LaMoore was executed on April 14,
1950 after an unsuccessful appeal (Lerman 1998). He reportedly took 13
minutes to die (Lerman 1994). His was the last execution to be held in
Alaska. |
| Meach, Charles L. III |
On November 11, 1957, the day his parents took him out of reform school,
Charlie went out and beat to death a 22-month-old girl. He later told
the police he "wanted to know how it would feel." After serving 17 years
in prison he got out on parole and, two months later, killed his
parents. |
| Nelson, Austin |
Convicted with Eugene LaMoore and executed in
1948 for the same crime, the December 1946 murder of a 52-year-old
(white) Juneau storekeeper named Jim Ellen. Ellen's store had also been
robbed. Ellen had immigrated to the U.S. from Greece as a boy in 1909.
He was a World War I veteran who held memberships in the American Legion
and the Juneau Elks Lodge (Lerman
1998). Black; a 24-year-old who did odd
jobs around Juneau, was arrested for the murder after a check written by
him to Jim Ellen was found on the store counter following the
robbery/murder. He was represented at trial by Henry Roden and Joseph A. McLean. Nelson
was convicted on circumstantial evidence, including that of a witness
who reported seeing him in the victim's store on the night of the murder.
No one witnessed the actual murder, nor was a murder weapon found, not
even the straight-edged razor witnesses testified that Nelson had once
owned. Nelson lacked money to pay for an appeal and there was no provision
for a public attorney in post-conviction proceedings, His execution was
set for July 1, 1947 (Lerman 1998).
Nelson, who had been kept alive during LaMoore's
trial but was never called to testify, was executed on March 1, 1948,
a month after LaMoore's trial ended (Lerman 1994). |
| Nicholai, Knik |
Murdered a Native Alaskan couple and fatally shot the Anchorage
Chief of Police. |
| O'Brien, George |
Convicted for the murders of three men by a Dawson, Yukon jury and
he was hanged on August 31, 1901. |
| Perovich, Vuco |
Murdered
a fisherman near Fairbanks in 1904 by splitting his head and chest with
an axe, then attempted to cover his crime by setting his victim's body
and cabin on fire. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang, but
with the financial backing of his friends he was able to afford legal
appeals. President William Taft commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment;
President Calvin Coolidge granted him a pardon. Perovich left prison to
become successful as a Rochester, New York, businessman (Lerman 1994). |
| Schell, Hiram |
Hiram Schell and William “Slim” Birch, murderers of U.S. Deputy
Marshal William C. Watts who was shot and killed on Admiralty Island on
September 1, 1897 whiled serving a warrant, also wounded three other
lawmen. They escaped but were apprehended soon after with the help of the U.S.
Marines and a bunch of outraged volunteers. A jury, however, found the men not guilty saying
the Marshals had not adequately identified themselves before the attempted
arrest. |
| Schermeyer, William |
Participated with Nellie "Black Bear" Beatty/Bates in the robbery of
$30,000 from a mail sled. She went free; he got a year. |
| Scutdor |
The first recorded execution in Alaska was a Native
Indian man named Scutdor.
The shelling of Wrangell in 1869 by the Army at
Fort Wrangel was ordered to enforce the surrender of an Indian named Scutdoo or
Scutdor who had killed a white trader in retaliation for the wanton and
unjustifiable killing of an Indian name Si-Wau by Lt. Loucks the second in
command of the post. Si Wau was drunk at the time and had bitten off part of a
finger of (another soldier's) wife. Scutdoo was a cousin of Si Wau and
felt duty bound to kill a white to avenge the death. The Army shelled a large
portion of the Indian village and then took Scutdoo's mother and another Native
hostage. Scutdoo gave himself up and was tried, convicted and hanged for the
murder. Before
the execution Scutdoo expressed sorrow over the killing and said he had nothing
personal against the dead trader and he hoped to meet up with him in the
afterlife. On December 29, 1869 he was hanged
(Emmons, 1991).
|
| Segura, Mailo |
An immigrant from the Balkan nation of
Montenegro, was convicted in 1918 of shooting and killing his employer
in Flat, a gold rush town on the Iditarod trail. Segura claimed that his
employer had refused to pay him for two years' work he had already done
as a wood chopper. Segura was represented by a court-appointed lawyer
who moved for a change of venue for his client's trial because of racial
prejudice against Segura — who though of European heritage was referred
to in trial documents as a "bohunk" and a "black fellow"
— as well as the prominence of the victim. The change of venue motion
was denied and Segura was convicted. He was executed by hanging in Fairbanks
in 1921. Authorities constructed a makeshift scaffold by constructing
a wooden platform between windows on the second floor of the courthouse
and the second floor of a bank building across the street. According to
published accounts of his execution, Segura was so terrified that he had
to be tied to a board to restrain him until the trapdoor could be opened
for him to be dropped to his death (Lerman 1994). |
| Severts, Martin |
Murdered a fellow member of a small party of gold placer miners and
attempted to murder the others. The miners collective hanged
Severts after an informal trial on October 26, 1899, in Lituya Bay off
the Gulf of Alaska. |
| Smith, Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" |
Jefferson Smith, the most well-known outlaw in Alaskan history, found a niche as a con man
and made an easy fortune through a number of schemes -- especially a
soap con that earned him the nickname of “Soapy.” Having perfected his
sneaky ways in Texas and Colorado, “Soapy” Smith arrived in Alaska in
1897 where he opened a phony telegraph center and a saloon, all while
paying off Skagway’s deputy U.S. Marshal regularly. After ripping off
miner John Douglas Stewart , “Soapy” Smith met his end during the famous
Shootout on Juneau Wharf on July 8, 1898, in a confrontation with Frank
Reid and his vigilantes. |
| Silka, Michael |
On May 20, 1984, Michael Silka went on a deadly 3-hour shooting
rampage in Manley Hot Springs, Alaska, killing eight people and dumping
their bodies into the Tanana River. The bearded, 25-year old
drifter was wanted by authorities for questioning in a murder in
Fairbanks. Silka was shot to death by state police while trying to
escape upriver, but not before killing a state trooper who was pursuing
him in a helicopter, making his total victims count nine. |
|
Stavenjord, Paul |
A Chulitna man who faced two murder charges, Stavenjord, 46, turned
himself in to troopers in Anchorage after being on the run for a month.
In addition, he pleaded innocent to two theft charges and one charge of
raping Deborah Rehor, one of two victims killed during the Memorial Day
weekend. Rehor, 40, and her husband Carl ``Rick'' Beery, 48, were found
near their vacation cabin in the Chulitna area. Stavenjord had two
previous felony convictions - for armed robbery in 1968 and for bank
robbery in 1971. He was sentenced to life without parole. |
| Stroud, Robert (Birdman of Alcatraz) |
By the time he was 18, Stroud had made his way to Cordova,
Alaska, where he met 36-year-old Kitty O’Brien, a prostitute and
dance-hall entertainer, for whom he pimped. According to Stroud,
on January 18, 1909, while he was away at work, an acquaintance of
theirs, barman F. K. "Charlie" Von Dahmer, had allegedly failed to pay
O'Brien for her services. After finding out about the incident that
night, Stroud confronted Von Dahmer and a struggle ensued, resulting in
the latter's death from a gunshot wound. Stroud went to the police
station and turned himself and the gun in. However, according to police
reports, Stroud had knocked Von Dahmer unconscious, he then shot h im at
point-blank range. Stroud's mother Elizabeth retained a lawyer for
her son, but he was found guilty of manslaughter on
August 23, 1909 and sentenced to 12 years in the federal penitentiary on Puget
Sound'sMcNeil Island. Stroud's crime was handled in the Federal system,
as Alaska at
that time was still a Federal territory, and not a state with its own
judiciary. (Wikipedia) |
| Tanner, Millard Fillmore "Doc" |
Residents in Valdez informally tried and hanged Tanner on January 2,
1898, the day after he shot to death two companions. He was from
Lexington, KY. |
| Wellington, William |
During the biting Alaskan winter of 1897 and 1898, it was commonplace
for travelers on Alaska’s Chilkoot Trail to leave some of their
belongings along the path to claim later. In early 1898, two
opportunity-seizing thieves named William Wellington and Edward Hanson
helped themselves to some scattered belongings only to be given a taste
of painful frontier justice. Immediately sought after and ultimately
captured by residents of a nearby sheep camp (and faced with almost
certain death,)
William Wellington took matters into his own hands by shooting himself. |
| Yatschneoff, George |
A Unimak Indian
who murdered his three wives in 1901. The crime took place 35
miles from Unalaska. The three women were found lying at the foot
of a cliff on the seashore, Yatschneoff claiming the women fell over the
cliff and met death in that way. No other information. |
Sources:
Anderson, Thayne (1999). "Alaska Hooch."
Emmons,
George Thornton (1991).
"The Tlinget Indians."
Gaffney,
John L. (1995).
"My Last Hanging — Thoughts
on an Execution (Juneau, Nov. 10, 1939)", We Alaskans
[Sunday magazine of the Anchorage Daily News], April 23, 1995.
Harris,
Marwood D. (1993). "History of Death Penalty in Alaska." Memorandum
to Senator Johnny Ellis. Alaska Legislative Research Agency, February
25, 1993.
Heaton, John W. (2010). "Outlaw Tales of
Alaska."
Kynell,
K.S. (1991). A Different Frontier: Alaska Criminal Justice, 1935-1965.
Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991, p. 36.
Lerman,
Averil. (1994). "Death's double standard: Territorial Alaska's experience
with capital punishment showed race and money mattered." We Alaskans
[Sunday magazine of the Anchorage Daily News], May 1, 1994.
—————.
(1996).
"The Trial
and Hanging of Nelson Charles. Alaska Justice Forum 13(1),
Spring 1996.
—————.
(1998).
"Capital Punishment in Territorial Alaska: The Last Three
Executions." Frame of Reference [Alaska Humanities Forum]
9(1): 6-9, 16-19, April 1998.
Williams,
Gerald O. (1991). Alaska State Troopers: 50 Years of History. Anchorage:
Alaska State Troopers Golden Anniversary Committee.
|
