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E151: The Investor Murders
4.9k Plays3 years ago
On Tuesday, September 7th, 1982, crew aboard multiple fishing vessels in Craig, Alaska saw the smoke billowing in the distance. It was coming from another ship, The Investor, which had been anchored off of nearby Fish Egg Island for the past day. However, when other crew rushed to aid those on board the ship only to find that not a single person was visible on deck nor actively trying to extinguish the flames, they knew something more more sinister than a fire was at play.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Recommendations
00:00:00
Speaker
We know that some of you might be caught up on coffee and cases episodes after you listen to this one, of course. So we want to give you another podcast recommendation. This one comes from our friend and fellow podcaster Brandon Hall and his podcast Music City 911.
00:00:18
Speaker
If you love shows that include the audio of 911 calls, then his podcast is everything you've been looking for. He takes the calls, plays them, and then breaks them down for the listener, giving the backstory along the way. And his pod is definitely worth checking out. So if you decide to check it out, and you should, and then you decide to leave him a review, which you should, let him know that Maggie and Allison sent you. Now, here's a little about the show from Brandon himself.
00:00:48
Speaker
The world of 911 emergency dispatching is brutally diverse. One minute you can be talking with someone about parking violations. What's the process we are to take to have people told? Because it's actually delaying the mail. And then all hell can break loose, then the rest of the day is crazy. We could have murders. Hill County 911, what's your emergency? I just killed my children. Home invasions. He's in my house. He's in my house.
00:01:16
Speaker
I shot him. You shot him? He was coming up towards me and I shot him. Even bombings.
00:01:39
Speaker
My show Music City 9-1-1 will put you in the dispatcher's chair, but you ear to ear with the callers and responders and keep you on edge from start to finish. I hope to both educate and entertain as I'm a 9-1-1 dispatcher with over 20 years experience. And just like dispatching, every episode is different from the last. Music City 9-1-1. Real 9-1-1 calls, real 9-1-1 dispatchers. Available to listen to on any podcast app.
Collaborative Episode: Investor Murders Case
00:02:07
Speaker
This week you are in for a treat, Sleuth Hounds, as we have created a collaborative episode alongside fellow true crime podcaster Sandy, host of Twisted Travel and True Crime. So get relaxed, grab your coffee and sit back because Sandy is going to begin by setting the stage for our case this week, the investor murders.
00:03:10
Speaker
Welcome to Coffee and Cases where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Allison Williams. And my name is Maggie Dameron.
00:03:19
Speaker
We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning the cases will take those tips to law enforcement. So justice and closure can be brought to these families.
Alaska's Fishing Boom and the Investor Crew
00:03:29
Speaker
With each case, we encourage you to continue in the conversation on our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast, because as we all know, conversation helps to keep the missing person in the public consciousness, helping keep their memories alive. So sit back, sip your coffee, and listen to what's brewing this week.
00:03:47
Speaker
Alaska encompasses nearly 700,000 square miles of sprawling and rugged territory, and that's just the land. Outside the few metropolitan centers like Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, and Ketchikan, there are hundreds of small, isolated villages and towns like Craig, Alaska. These towns are small enough, 500 people or so, that they generally go without law enforcement and fall under the state trooper's jurisdiction.
00:04:14
Speaker
Most of law enforcement's time spent on Prince of Wales Island, where this story takes place, was spent responding to drunken fights and domestic disputes. Untimely deaths were caused by alcohol-related suicides or accidental drownings in the dangerous icy waters that surround the island. Law enforcement was certainly not prepared to deal with a mass murder.
00:04:40
Speaker
In 1982, the commercial fishing industry was booming. The three-month long salmon season was quite lucrative. In the 70s and 80s, when salmon prices were at the highest, three months of hard work could earn the captain and crew of a good fishing boat a half a million dollars or more. That would be about $1.75 million today.
00:05:04
Speaker
During the hectic summer months, it was expected that as many as 200 fishing boats could be in Craig on a given day. And this would triple the size of the cozy town of 500 to more than 1500. The very limited law enforcement would try to keep an eye on the outsiders who caused trouble. The flood of strangers coming and going was nothing new for the locals of Craig. They tended to learn who the visiting captains were, especially the successful ones, the ones who kept coming back.
00:05:34
Speaker
The business owners, including the bar owners, grocery store, and laundromat owners, would come to know many of the fishermen, even if briefly as they passed through. And this was no different for the crew of the investor. They had just finished several hard days fishing an opener, which is a term used to refer to a designated time where the fishermen were allowed to fish. These proud fishermen returned to port with a broom displayed from their mast.
00:06:02
Speaker
The common sweeping broom, one tied to the mast, was a clever way to brag of catching 100,000 pounds of salmon or more. The investors crew apparently swept the competition and came into port with the broom tied to their mast, but they weren't quite finished. After a few days of closure where fishing wasn't permitted, they would have one last chance to fish in the Alaskan waters before they headed home to Washington.
00:06:28
Speaker
Their visit to Craig would give the captain and crew the opportunity to drop off their catch, repair their nets, catch up on some rest, and replenish their supplies.
00:06:39
Speaker
The fishing vessel itself, the Investor, was one of the flashiest boats in a fleet of boats that came in that year. It was equipped with state-of-the-art fishing gear, but it also had many of the comforts of home, ones that most fishermen had to leave behind during their weeks or months at sea. This boat had a fully equipped galley or a kitchen, and enviably a washer and dryer. And I'm sure this made Captain Mark Holthurst's family and crew very happy.
00:07:07
Speaker
The 58 foot boat was just a year old when Mark Colter's bought it. And despite superstitions against renaming the boat, it's always.
00:07:17
Speaker
a bad idea to rename a boat's bad luck. But he rechristened his boat, the investor, to symbolize his ambitions. The investor, shiny and new, stood out in a crowd of boats and it made many men jealous. So Sandy, Maggie and I don't do nature because Maggie is- No, I'm allergic to that.
00:07:38
Speaker
She breaks out in hives if she goes outside but You have lived on a boat. So how enviable is it to have a washer and dryer on board? It's incredibly enviable my family and I there are six of us on our or there were when we were living aboard There were six of us on a tiny little 36 foot boat. So it was tight in there. It was stinky and
00:08:04
Speaker
And when we had to do our laundry, we would take, you know, it was sometimes as long as like three weeks worth of laundry. And we'd have to put it into our dinghy, which is kind of like a skiff, a small boat that would transport the laundry from our boat
00:08:20
Speaker
into the dinghy, to the shore, and then carry our stinky bags of laundry to the laundry mat, which would sometimes, you know, a half a mile walk away. And then we'd do the laundry to haul it all back to our boat. So it would take, you know, a whole day sometimes just to get laundry done. So a washer and dryer would have been a godsend for us.
00:08:40
Speaker
Right. I'm just not cut out for that life. It's not for everybody. It's like camping all the time, right? As Sandy mentioned, the owner of the boat was Mark Colthurst. Mark was young. He was around 16 when he began his career as a commercial fisherman.
00:08:58
Speaker
And according to a little anecdote that came from Leland Hale's book, What Happened in Craig, and that book, together with an interview that Sandy and I conducted with Hale himself, Sandy can attest to this, it kind of served as the central source of information for this episode. Absolutely.
Docking in Craig and Celebrating Mark's Birthday
00:09:16
Speaker
But in his book, he mentions this little anecdote that Mark and one of his sisters, Laurie, and this is in true brotherly, sisterly, barbed, comment fashion that they had the following conversation. So Laurie was teasing Mark and said something like, those fish stink, which was really her saying, you stink.
00:09:38
Speaker
Mark, to which he responded, that's the smell of money. Yeah, I was getting ready to say he makes a ton of money, so I wouldn't care what he smells like. Yeah, he wasn't lying. Mark was extremely successful in the fishing industry, and he worked his way up quickly.
00:09:57
Speaker
So that same sister, Laurie Hart, told People Magazine Investigates, quote, he was just an incredibly hard worker who always said he was going to retire by the time he was 50. And I never doubted it. He always had irons in the fire. He was making money, end quote. And I'm jealous. Hashtag life goals. We've all got the irons in the fire, but we're not all making the money.
00:10:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's too bad, isn't it? I know, it is a shame. It is a crying shame. But this hard working, driven nature wasn't just something that his family alone recognized either. His successes, like one week in 1979, when he caught in one week, $105,000 worth of fish.
00:10:48
Speaker
That's like three times as much as I make in a year. Yes, five times a teacher's salary in one week. But those successes were widely known not only in his hometown of Blaine, Washington, but among other commercial fishermen since Mark had been featured in several popular fishing magazines with stories boasting of his rise to the top.
00:11:11
Speaker
And while there are some sources, like Mary Bofson of the New York Daily News, who spoke of Mark's quick success getting to his head and of a reputation of arrogance and quick temperedness, most of the sources spoke only of his stringent work ethic. Well, I'm going to be honest, if he's in his 20s and he's making $105,000 in a week, he has every right to be arrogant because I would be too. Yeah, he could be a little cocky.
00:11:39
Speaker
Because of the level of work that Mark required from his crew, and perhaps that was part of the reason that many of them were young, though there were a lot of young crew at the time in commercial fishing because it's hard work. I mean, it's a good way to make money, but it's hard on the body.
00:12:01
Speaker
And, but a lot of young people kind of were drawn to it because of the money and, you know, potentially this is the beginning of a lucrative career. And here's their captain, Mark, who's the prime example of that. On board the investor during this 1982 fishing season, we're supposed to be Roy Tussing, who was a trusted veteran fisherman and skilled skiff driver. And being the skiff driver was a position of trust
00:12:31
Speaker
in the industry. Can Sandy explain to us what a skiff driver is?
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah, a skiff driver is kind of like a second captain on the boat. It's someone that the captain entrusts enough to drive the skiff, which is another, it's an essential piece to a fishing boat. So a fishing boat will drop a net back, and then the end of the net that's off the back is attached to the skiff. And the skiff circles around to the side of the boat and kind of closes the net.
00:13:09
Speaker
So whoever drives the skiff has to be able to power, yeah, they power the net around and pull it up close to the main boat, right? And so whoever drives the skiff has to know what they're doing to keep the net in the right position, but also not to damage the skiff itself or the main boat. Right, so now you know why this veteran fisherman is the skiff driver, right? This Roy Tussing.
00:13:37
Speaker
Along with testing on the boat were Dean Moon, who was a 19-year-old high school football star who had just recently graduated, Mike Stewart, a 19-year-old college student who also happened to be Mark's cousin and who was about to begin his sophomore year at Washington State University, and Chris Heyman, who at the beginning of the season was 17 and would turn 18 while on the trip. Yeah, so young crew.
00:14:05
Speaker
I don't know if you caught this, but I said the crew at the beginning of the season were supposed to be. And I said supposed to be because about a week before the tragedy at the center of our case this week, Roy Tussing actually left the crew. So he had already been skeptical when Mark told him of his plan to come to Fish
Murder and Investigation Begin
00:14:28
Speaker
and Craig because of that reputation of rowdy drunkenness. And that really didn't sit well with Tussing.
00:14:34
Speaker
But according to Leland Hale, the real reason that Tussing quit was because he felt that Mark was working the crew too hard.
00:14:43
Speaker
So it was... Yeah, but they're making a lot of money for it. Yes, they are. They're making the buckaroos, but it was late in the season. They had already been successful in their halls just the week before. They had a hall of around 77,000 pounds of salmon for which they would get paid around $30,000 at the close of books when the season ended. And that was just in one week.
00:15:06
Speaker
But after the couple of days of closure that Sandy mentioned, Mark wanted to go out fishing again for one more haul. And Tussing commented that all the crew did was work with no downtime. So he says, I'm out of here. I'm too tired, too old for this. We don't need to go out again. So he actually trained Dean Moon to drive the skiff before leaving the crew.
00:15:36
Speaker
And taking his place was another 19-year-old college student, Jeremy Keown, who was an honor student from Blaine, Washington, who attended Seattle University.
00:15:48
Speaker
And despite the way that Tussing made a sound, and I don't doubt that work and making money were central in Mark Coulter's thoughts, but he also had his family on board with him. His wife Irene, who was three months pregnant, his five-year-old daughter Kimberly, and his four-year-old son John.
00:16:08
Speaker
And with Mark focused on the business, Irene was always the one who held the family together in other ways. She was, according to Mark's two sisters, Laurie and Lisa, quote, loving, caring, thoughtful, and quote, the perfect sister-in-law, end quote.
00:16:26
Speaker
I know, it's super sweet. And Hale notes in his book that Irene had all of the traditional homemaker skills. She could bake, cook, sew, plan large-scale events, and she was artistic. So all of those traditional skills, check, check, check, check, check, check, check. But more than that, she also backed her husband on the boat. You see, while Mark and Irene had met and begun dating in high school, before they married, she was actually part of his crew.
00:16:57
Speaker
So she knew how to successfully be a part of the working team on a boat. And having been at home with their children while their children were babies, Irene was longing to be on board a ship again. So now with Mark's new bigger boat, the Investor, there was actually room for the family. And since the kids were now old enough to come along, this, she decided, was the trip.
00:17:25
Speaker
And when tragedy struck in this case, she and the children were only planning to be there a few more days, just enough time to celebrate Mark's 28th birthday with him before flying back to Washington to get everything in order for Kimberly to start kindergarten.
00:17:45
Speaker
But before they would get that chance, tragedy would befall not only Irene and the children, but also every other member of that crew. Two days before his body was found inside his fishing boat, Captain Mark Colterst motored his vessel into Craig and rafted up to another fishing boat. He told his four teenage deckhands that they could have the evening off. He had chosen to dock up at North Cove, which was the quieter of the two docks in town.
00:18:15
Speaker
That evening, dozens of fishermen would still have been milling about on the docks. The ship's cooks would have been preparing meals in the galleys. The deckhands would straighten the decks and unwind with alcohol and ice cream. Colters knew his crew needed a break. He'd worked him hard after several days out at sea, and he himself would have been relieved to have some time to relax, smoke some pot, and clean the boat.
00:18:38
Speaker
It was also, as Allison mentioned, Colter's 28th birthday. He had plans to celebrate at a local waterfront restaurant, Ruth Ann's. He planned to celebrate with his pregnant wife and their two kids. So Sandy, I did not know if you know this about me and Allison, but we are like super naive. I don't know if you've listened to the episode that Allison was talking about. I don't even remember now who it was.
00:19:05
Speaker
And the girl was saying that she didn't want to eat the devil's lettuce. And Allison literally thought she was talking about a salad. And I was like, no, Allison, I'm pretty positive she's talking about marijuana. Well, I thought I would say pot because most likely people would know that's marijuana, I think, right?
00:19:27
Speaker
Well, I guess probably he and the crew smoked some pot. And if I remember correctly, there were rumors, not necessarily that his crew did it, but that many of the fishermen in the area used cocaine too. So it seems like drugs were fairly
00:19:42
Speaker
plentiful and available. All right, so not long after the deckhands departed, Colt Hurst's family climbed over the railings of the investor and they climbed onto the deckade. It was one of two boats that they had rafted up next to. So they climb onto one, they climb onto the other, and so
00:20:01
Speaker
Two boats they had to climb over. They were tied to the dock there and then they went out to dinner. So this docking arrangement is typical, especially for this time of year in Craig because the fishing vessels outnumber the available spots at the dock.
00:20:15
Speaker
It also meant that whoever would ultimately murder the family and the crew not only had to walk past dozens of fishing boats down the long dock, but also had to cross the decks of both the defiant and the decade just to reach the investor.
00:20:33
Speaker
When they returned later that night, the Colter's young son would be seen as the family crossed the first of the two boats before entering their own. So the dock is the place to be. It was loud and there were parties and music. And to add to the mayhem, Mother Nature decided to release a storm that night on the small town.
00:20:56
Speaker
Okay. So I'm picturing like when Anthony and I, before we moved, we lived on like in a town that was right on the Kentucky river. And so I'm picturing like those types of boat docks, but these are like, the boats are so close that from to get from one place to another, you're just walking across somebody else's boat deck. Yeah. So maybe there's like one long dock.
00:21:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that there was probably one long dock and then the boats would tie up. The first boats there would tie up right to the dock, right? Then as soon as all those spots are taken, the next boats that come in tie to those boats. So there wasn't a... Oh, to a boat. Okay. So they're tied up boat to boat to boat. And then the first boat that came in is tied to the dock. So it's a big mash of... Got it. It's a traffic jam of boats.
00:21:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So with all those boats there, you can tell that Craig might have been a small, remote little town, but the docks were the center of activity, especially during fishing season. And that night was no different. As the people partied and the storm raged, the six adults on the boat were shot to death. The two children and an unborn baby were killed as well. And this all happened within listening range of dozens of fishermen.
00:22:21
Speaker
And this fact is one of the most misunderstood parts of the tragedy that night. Why wouldn't they have heard anything? On September 6th, 1982, it was a Monday morning.
Investigation Challenges and Witness Accounts
00:22:32
Speaker
Things were quiet and would continue to be so throughout the day. But as the sun began rising that morning, there were a few witnesses who could recall seeing something odd aboard the investor.
00:22:43
Speaker
The boat himba docked for less than 24 hours. So it was strange that at 6.30 in the morning, a crewman aboard the decade, remember that was the boat that the investor tied to.
00:22:54
Speaker
they noticed that the investor began drifting slowly away from the dock. So the boats had been disconnected and it would be discovered that the investor's expensive dock lines were left behind, still tied to the decade. And this was really strange because ropes are really expensive, especially high quality boating ropes.
00:23:16
Speaker
So the crew of the investor would usually use these over and over. And this crewman would see a man in the pilot house of the investor steering the ship away. This crewman believed that the man was Mark Colterst because the man was of similar size and had a similar gate to Colterst. So this crewman thought it was strange. Also that when the investor drifted away,
00:23:45
Speaker
the engine wasn't running. And he thought, well, maybe it's because it was so early in the morning and the investor's crew respectfully didn't want to wake anyone. But it's awfully hard to pull a boat away from the dock without an engine running. So would this have had to have been a seasoned
00:24:08
Speaker
like fishermen, a seasoned boatman, to be able to pull the boat away without the engine being on? I think so. I believe so. I mean, the tides, if the tides are going the right way, the boat could drift off really easily for a ways, right, until it gets far enough away. So it could have been that they were just using the tide to pull them away from the dock, or it could have been that they were sneaking away.
00:24:35
Speaker
I'm not sure, but eventually they did turn the engines on. About 15 minutes later, the captain of the decade would see a man on the deck, and the investor's further away now. 15 minutes, it's pretty far away. So the captain described this man as being of average height, stocky build, with light brown or blonde hair, and wearing a black and red plaid wool jacket. But that's all he could make out from that distance.
00:25:02
Speaker
So again, 45 minutes later, yet another crew member from yet another boat sees that the investor began to settle in next to a small island across the bay. It was about a mile away from crack. It appeared that the boat was anchored because it wasn't moving anymore, not drifting, not motoring. It was at a standstill. So this wasn't necessarily deemed to be strange because sometimes people just want peace and privacy. So they move away from the crowd.
00:25:31
Speaker
Later that morning, the investor Skiff, the smaller boat that helps with the fishing and ferrying provisions and crew back and forth, ended up being tied to Craig's main dock. This was seen by several people in town, and they didn't think anything of it because they just thought the crew must have forgotten to grab something. Maybe they needed some more groceries. Who knows?
00:25:53
Speaker
So the morning goes on, and a heavy fog rolls into the area. And later that day, the salmon season officially reopened. So all the boats are hustling and bustling, trying to get out to the ocean, catch all their fish, and the investor was forgotten about. But the next day, it would become the talk of the town. So Tuesday, September 7th, it was still foggy. But as the fog began to lift, locals and some outsiders who were still in town
00:26:22
Speaker
were surprised to see that the investor was still anchored near Fish Egg Island. They thought for sure the ship would have gone out and fished the last day of the fishing season. But what they didn't know was that Mark's wife and kids were supposed to have flown back to Washington that Monday. Their five-year-old daughter had been excitedly planning to attend her first day of kindergarten.
00:26:43
Speaker
So the family missed their flight. Oh, so they would have had to have been back or they would have missed their flight. Right. They were supposed to still be in Craig so they could catch that flight. So the family missed their flight. There'd been no signs of life on the investor since they drifted away from the dock the previous morning. And then later that morning, a man was seen purchasing two and a half gallons of gas.
00:27:09
Speaker
in Craig. So this gas station in Craig, it's got gas for cars, but it's also got a dock. So the boats come in there to get gas, and they just tie up their skiff or their dinghy, go up, fill their jerry cans, and then carry it back to their boats. So this man's getting gas, and he's putting the gas into the investors parked skiff. And the skiff had been there since the day before.
00:27:36
Speaker
So yeah, so at four p.m. OK, so the big boat is still anchored, but the skiff is back in town. So the big boat still anchored. Right. And then the skiff is back getting gas. OK.
00:27:51
Speaker
So at 4 p.m., the crew of the casino see smoke pouring out of the investor. It's still anchored a mile away. And the crew members know something seriously wrong. So they call the Alaskan state troopers. But the troopers were in Ketchikan, which was miles away. And I actually read that they would have to hop in a plane and take a 30 minute ride in a plane to get to Craig. So they were really far away. They wouldn't be there for a while.
00:28:21
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. So the casino and their crew, the boat and its crew begins heading out towards the smoking ship. So they hope to stop the blaze and help the investors occupants off the boat if they need it off, which I'm sure they did. The crew of the casino would pass by a young man wearing a dark baseball cap. The man was headed away from the investor towards Craig, but was in the investor's skiff. They called to the man
00:28:48
Speaker
Oh, I wonder if he set it on fire with the gas is what they all think, but not yet. So this young man spoke to the casino's crew members. I mean, he was 15 feet away and he was talking to them. And then he continued to the dock saying that he was going to go get more help. So a few minutes later, the man ties up to the Craig dock and he spoke to at least three people.
00:29:14
Speaker
and he's asking for help, you know, come help out at the boat. So the people who interacted with him described him as being a small man, a slight man with an acne or a pockmarked face, but they didn't pay that much attention to him at the time because their attention was drawn to the fire at the investor. It was growing more and more out of control with every minute. The skiff would be ultimately tied to the dock and left, abandoned and relatively undamaged.
00:29:44
Speaker
So the casino's crew members are back out at the investor and they're fighting the fire and they are not prepared. They don't have tools to fight this fire.
00:29:53
Speaker
it engulfed the pilot house really quickly, so the top of the boat, and it's working its way down. So over the next few hours, they're joined by other locals, other boaters, and the Alaskan state troopers eventually. So this group of first responders all work to extinguish the blaze, and they work on it for several hours before the Coast Guard finally arrives with two water pumps. So as the fire begins to die down,
00:30:20
Speaker
Emergency personnel finally are able to board the boat and they're looking for people, specifically survivors, but there were none. What they found was four sets of human remains which have been burnt beyond all recognition, three adults and one child.
00:30:37
Speaker
So as the authorities began to probe the scene looking for the potential cause of the fire, they began removing the sets of human remains from the boat. But as they did, the flames would rekindle, which delayed the recovery efforts and made it really hard to determine how many people had been on board the boat.
00:30:55
Speaker
Over the next several hours and leading into the early morning hours of September 8th, the four bodies recovered from the investor would be sent to Anchorage to be identified and investigators would determine an official cause of death. The results of which would end up adding an ominous twist to what had been presumed to be an accident. As soon as Alaska State Trooper Bob Anderson discovered that the two adults found at the scene were Mark and Irene Colt Hurst.
00:31:24
Speaker
and that they had been shot before the blaze had been set because autopsies revealed that there was no smoke in their lungs. He told Cheryl McCall of People Magazine, quote, we knew it was homicide right away, end quote. Mark Coldhurst had been shot in the face and Irene had also been shot in the head and both had been shot multiple times.
00:31:52
Speaker
So I'm guessing that the person that set the fire was hoping that their bodies would just completely burn up because any smart person would know that an autopsy is going to reveal it was homicide. Right. And the person who committed the crime actually tried something else first that you'll hear about here in a second. So going deeper into the wreckage, they discovered five year old Kimberly's charred remains. And while she had not been shot,
00:32:22
Speaker
According to our interview with Leland Hale, she had been severely beaten. Still further, they located the body of Mark's 19 year old cousin, Mike.
00:32:41
Speaker
But now is when the problem with the investigation begins. You see, with so many boats coming to get a closer look at the wreckage, the primary act of law enforcement had been to keep people away from the crime scene. And what they hadn't thought about was the fire rekindling.
00:33:00
Speaker
One skipper, Greg Johns, who had helped to extinguish the fire, told People Magazine, quote, we told them that it had started again, but they told us to leave it alone. What really gets me angry is that we could have put the fire out then, end quote. And Sandy alluded. Why would they tell you to leave it alone? Well, I think they were just wanting to keep people away, like nosy people.
00:33:26
Speaker
Oh, and Sandy alluded to this rekindling and it's actually something that happens quite often and I asked Rodney about it. So Sandy, my husband is a retired firefighter.
00:33:38
Speaker
And he said that obviously anytime oxygen is reintroduced to a spark, then there can be a flare up because oxygen is food for a fire. And with the lifting and the sifting of debris on board the ship, these flare ups were happening continuously. So like every time they would sift through the remains, there would be another flare up. And one detective even had his boot melt
00:34:08
Speaker
from multiple flare ups and how hot they got. And fire departments actually today still hold fire watch in case of that rekindling. And they hold that for the rest of the shift or depending on the size of the fire, potentially for days after a really large fire.
00:34:28
Speaker
And what firefighters now also in many cases use instead of water is this fire retardant foam. And that's exactly what they ended up eventually using in the case of the investor. How cool is it that you have a pro at home to ask these questions to?
00:34:47
Speaker
I know. Exactly. Yeah. Oh, Rodney has come in handy so many times. He really has. So many times on the first case in particular. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but imagine, I mean, the scene's already destroyed. It took, remember, actually around four hours to control the flame and then another two days to fully extinguish it.
00:35:12
Speaker
And then you have the added difficulty of the scene now also being covered by a layer of sludgy foam.
00:35:22
Speaker
So just picture that. So pretty much their crime scene is ruined. Yeah. The first responders only able to remove three complete bodies and knowing that there should be others on board. I mean, they did eventually identify Mike. So four total, but we're still missing four others. So they actually began sifting the ashes, looking for bone fragments and other evidence. And in that sifting, they located a tooth.
00:35:52
Speaker
and over 10 pounds of bone fragments. One of which was a jaw bone belonging to Jeremy Keown. But we're still missing a lot of people, right? Like the Dean guy, the football player dude. Yep. Chris Heyman, we're still missing him and we're still missing the four year old John.
00:36:15
Speaker
And at this point, law enforcement couldn't yet verify, but they assumed that those other crew members, Dean Moon, Chris Heyman, and four-year-old John Colterst had also died in the tragedy. And knowing that this was a homicide investigation, Alaska State troopers, who were led by veteran homicide detective, Sergeant Charles Miller, began looking for a motive and for a killer.
00:36:41
Speaker
Because we don't have it either at this point. I mean we do have witnesses though. We do have that. We have a lot of witnesses. That's pretty much all we have right now. Yes we do have a lot of witnesses. So they started there.
00:36:56
Speaker
and they were able to begin piecing even more details together as well as to corroborate details of those eyewitness sightings. And as Sandy mentioned, there were many witnesses to a young man seen in the pilot house as the investor drifted away from the two ships that it had been tied to, to the driver of the skiff, again, multiple witnesses who saw this driver of the skiff,
00:37:24
Speaker
and to a young man seen purchasing gasoline. So we have eyewitness testimony for all of those sightings. Okay, I have a question. So is it possible that the man that they see in the pilot house, the man that they see driving the skiff, and the man getting gasoline, and then didn't they see like talk to the guy like 15 feet away from them or something? Could that all be the same person? I think the assumption is that it is. So you would say too, Sandy.
00:37:53
Speaker
Yes, I think there were three drawings done too. I was just going to say they all looked fairly similar. One picture looks skinnier. Yeah, but it's all of a white male, early 20s, pockmarked face. And so the next step for law enforcement was to figure out the movement of the crew and the days leading to the fire. Because remember, right now there are only the two adult
00:38:21
Speaker
or there are two adult crew members who have yet to be identified, even from the human remains. They were able to take the one jaw bone and say that was Jeremy Keown, but we still don't know about Dean Moon or Chris Heyman. And obviously they still had to figure out the movement of the skiff driver.
00:38:44
Speaker
So, according to an article by Jennifer Baldwin for medium.com, law enforcement were able to determine that Jeremy and Dean, who were high school friends, had gone ashore together to make phone calls and to have a few drinks. And I think that was a pretty common activity because, again, you can't make phone calls on your ship. You've got to go
00:39:05
Speaker
you know, to shore to make those phone calls back home or to whomever. And, you know, there were a couple of bars in town and we talked about the reputation of Greg. So this was a pretty common pastime.
00:39:18
Speaker
We also know that the Coldhurst family had gone to Ruthann's restaurant for Mark's birthday, as Sandy said, and they weren't able to verify the movements of Chris and Mike on September 6th. From what they could determine though, all of the investor crew was back on board by 10 p.m. The adults, all of them, had been drinking heavily by the time they returned to the ship
00:39:45
Speaker
as they clamored over the decks of the defiant and the partying deck of the decade to get to their own vessel. And around 10 p.m., a crew member of the decade recalls young John peeking his head out to say goodnight. I know. And the next morning in the heavy fog and with most witnesses, and this is what you've got to keep in mind, all those witnesses that Sandy talked about that next morning, number one, you're in heavy fog.
00:40:14
Speaker
And number two, most of those witnesses to anything were still hung over from the night before. And that's the state when the investor slips away from the being tied up to the other ships. And remember, it's not under power, which obviously was the oddity that stood out to investigators because like Sandy asked, were they trying to slip away unawares, which would mean that the crime had already happened.
00:40:44
Speaker
that the murders had already happened. And I'm wondering if the boat deck was kind of like a party scene. Maybe the crimes were able to happen undetected because it was so loud. Oh yeah. I couldn't hear. And we know it was loud because one article that I read and there was that big storm. Oh yeah. That's right. Yeah.
00:41:09
Speaker
One article that I read, they interviewed the captain of the decade, the ship that was partying. And he actually had sent Mark Colter some message apologizing for being so loud the night before and thinking, Oh, maybe they slipped away because they just needed some peace and quiet, right? And so he said, you know, sorry, if we were too loud, and he never received an answer. Yeah.
00:41:37
Speaker
And they found from witnesses that the investor spent the next day, and again, Sandy has already told us this, moored to Fish Egg Island. And this detail too stood out to investigators because obviously the investor should have been prepping to go back out for this final round of fishing. So all the oddities that the witnesses saw, the investigators are also recognizing.
00:42:04
Speaker
Which I guess though, the homicides could have happened when they were already out to sea because potentially they could have just been like hostages when they're leaving the boat dock. I guess they could have, but most theories about this case, and I actually asked Leland about this,
00:42:31
Speaker
argued that there was just one perpetrator and with so many people on board, I think that might've been hard and plus the placement of the bodies all in different, you know what I mean, in different positions and even the ones where they could identify the whole body. I didn't see anything where, you know. Different parts of the boat. Right. Yeah, they weren't like, oh, they were tied up or they were, you know, any evidence of that. Okay.
00:42:58
Speaker
And so this detail made them theorize that the boat was actually taken there by the killer and that those on board, like I said a second ago, were already deceased, which meant that law enforcement actually had two crime scenes.
Suspect Focus: John Peel
00:43:12
Speaker
They have one crime scene on board the investor when they're tied to the other two boats.
00:43:17
Speaker
and a separate one on board the investor when it was anchored to Fish Egg Island and set on fire. So do you remember earlier, Maggie, when you said, oh, do you think he had killed them and then he set it on fire to try to cover up his crimes? And I said he actually tried something else first. In the following days, the crime scene investigators discovered that the secret- Oh, I already know. Is he going to sink the ship? He tried. Yes.
00:43:47
Speaker
He did. Yes, yep. These valves that are on the ship, he had actually opened them in what looked like an attempt to sink the ship. And now they're thinking, okay, is this why the ship was anchored at that island in that location in an area that would have been deep enough to cover the sinking of even a boat as large as the investor. But wouldn't you want to be
00:44:15
Speaker
far enough away from people. Well, I guess the same thing could be said about setting it on fire. I feel like when you want to have been far enough away from people that they wouldn't have seen it sinking or seen it on fire. Unless he was thinking, okay, well, this is about a mile away and most of these ships are going to be out fishing.
00:44:33
Speaker
the very next day. And they're going to assume that the investor is going to be out also. I was going to say, it seemed like they anchored in water that was deep enough that if it had sunk, they wouldn't have found it probably. And then when the fog lifted and it was still there, he was like, oh crap, they're going to see that. It's going to be there for a couple of days. I better go take care of business.
00:44:58
Speaker
Oh, so maybe the intent was that it sank while it was still foggy out. Right. And then it would just be gone and be a missing ship. Right. And you know, I think even that one little detail that the water was deep enough that it could have covered a boat even as big as the investor, that at least shows that that location of anchoring, it would seem to indicate anyway, that whomever was responsible for the murders was at least someone familiar with the area.
00:45:28
Speaker
You know, to say, OK, I know to go to this island, I know to go on this side of the island. You know what I mean? Because there's a spot there that's deep enough. Or is there technology that can I mean, there are depth finders on boats. I think there's technology that could find a sunk boat, but you have to have some idea of where the boat would be to even start looking. And the remains of the investor, once they towed it away from the island, actually sunk.
00:45:57
Speaker
So now law enforcement were forced to rely solely on the skiff and on witness testimony. And within days there was a $15,000 reward for anyone who came forward with information leading to an arrest. And that's a significant amount of money for, I mean, for anybody, right? But obviously for these seasoned fishermen.
00:46:22
Speaker
And while witnesses came forward, it didn't get law enforcement any closer to a name. Detectives did come up with a working theory though. On Sunday, September 5th, a man, the one who was seen on the skiff,
00:46:40
Speaker
This is their theory, came on board after all of the crew members came back from dinner, perhaps during cover of a storm or entered quietly by virtue of the loud noise from the party ensuing from the decade. They believe law enforcement that a fight broke out and that the perpetrator killed Mark and then Irene with a 22 caliber that he had brought on board.
00:47:08
Speaker
One witness later reported that he thought he heard a noise like that of a woman scream. Do we have any type of motivation for this man? Well, and that that's something that we'll end up talking about here in just a little bit. But they believe that he then killed the others. And then on Monday, September 6th,
00:47:33
Speaker
that the killer took the boat during those early morning hours to Fishag Island, opened the valves and attempted to sink the ship to hide the crime. When by Tuesday, September 7th, the plan to sink the ship hadn't worked, he took the skiff and went to buy gasoline, later used to set the boat ablaze.
00:47:55
Speaker
after setting the boat on fire, in the middle of the day, by the way, which was another odd detail, you're gonna set a fire where everyone can see it, that he again took the skiff to dock, passing in the opposite direction of those who saw the smoke and were heading toward the investor to help with whatever issue they were having to cause the smoke. And those who arrived initially, they knew that something was terribly wrong. Ray Shapley, who was sheriff at the time,
00:48:25
Speaker
told People Magazine Investigates, quote, when I got there, black smoke was coming out of the wheelhouse and there was nobody on deck. It made the hair in the back of my neck stand up, end quote.
00:48:40
Speaker
So you think if there's a fire, there are going to be people outside trying to effectively put it out. Yeah. And wouldn't we, because I'm thinking like, obviously I have very little boating knowledge other than like what I've seen in movies. So I'm picturing the Titanic. Wouldn't we have had like a,
00:49:01
Speaker
Mayday signal or like SOS going out. You would normally expect a Mayday, but there was also no Mayday issued if there was someone alive on the boat.
00:49:13
Speaker
Right, if there was not a lot to do it. Right, who wanted help? Right. Yeah, now they're questioning who could have committed such a heinous and violent crime against not only adults, but children. And like you said, Maggie, why? Yeah, and that's kind of where I'm stuck up to. It's such, yeah. So one, why kill them, period? Then two, why do you beat the child? That's so personal. Well, plus Mark is shot in the face.
00:49:42
Speaker
It's heartbreaking. So now they're thinking, OK, well, there are two crew members who we can't solidly account for. So we know this working theory that they have. And they begin thinking, OK, well, could it have been a member of the crew themselves? Maybe someone who wasn't yet accounted for.
00:50:08
Speaker
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00:50:30
Speaker
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00:50:56
Speaker
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00:51:22
Speaker
You'll get 30% off your first three months of Zincaster Professional. We want you to have the same easy experience we do for all our podcasting and content needs. It's time to share your story. Mary Bove Zinn of the New York Daily News wrote of the crime and any indication of the perpetrator that it was, quote, impossible to determine
00:51:50
Speaker
if the fragments added up to eight bodies, the number of people thought to have been on the ship. Moon and Haman were not positively identified, leaving open the possibility that someone, perhaps the killer, had escaped. Investigators on the boat also found signs that the fire was intentionally set." And as for little John,
00:52:15
Speaker
He had actually been sleeping in an area of the boat that was hardest hit by the fire. So it's believed that all of his remains were completely consumed. And that's why nothing would ever be found that could positively be identified as him. But of course, like we've said, the fire not only destroyed bodies, but it also destroyed evidence.
00:52:39
Speaker
Now there's one piece of evidence that is the glaring item, and that is the skiff. However, according to Leland Hale's blog post about the crime, Trooper Anderson saw the skiff on Tuesday, but didn't fingerprint it. Granted, at the time, obviously the focus was on the fire. Lieutenant Roger McCoy saw the skiff the next day, didn't fingerprint it.
00:53:04
Speaker
Sergeant Chuck Miller also didn't fingerprint the skiff their reasoning for not doing it They said between the weather and so many hands touching it. It probably wouldn't yield any helpful results That was their reasoning. Okay, but probably wouldn't isn't definitely wouldn't exactly Exactly. So that's a big disheartening. Huh? Yeah
00:53:31
Speaker
at issue in this case. So now there's only eyewitness testimony and that faith and witnesses actually turned out to be a slippery slope indeed. The mayor of Craig, Lee Axemaker, was actually one of the individuals who saw the skiff driver.
00:53:51
Speaker
As noted in Jennifer Baldwin's Medium.com article, he stated, quote, I saw the guy in the skiff. He was a cool character. He came up, talked to a few people, made a phone call and left, end quote. And I'm wondering if like maybe part of the reason that they didn't suspect or like fingerprint the skiff right away is maybe they thought the person was part of the crew. Yeah, I think
00:54:21
Speaker
Well, I think there's a couple of reasons. I think they were focused on- Absolutely. Yeah, figuring out who started the fire. And then obviously they're not hearing from these witnesses. They're focused on the fire, putting it out and trying to figure out what happened. And then once they discover, oh my gosh, these bodies on board, they were actually dead before the fire was started. Now they know they have to figure out, okay, who said it.
00:54:47
Speaker
You know, and where did they go? And obviously when they get to the investor, clearly the skiff is missing. You know, and now it's, you know, been some time and other people have touched it probably. And you know what I mean? Yeah.
00:55:05
Speaker
But even the mayor of Craig. Yeah. I see what you're saying. Yeah. Who saw the perpetrator with his own eyes. He also admitted in hindsight that there were about one hundred and fifty guys in town who matched a similar description. Yeah. I was getting ready to say I feel like all not all that most men who work in this industry are probably going to be similar builds. Right.
00:55:32
Speaker
So like you can be a wimpy man and be catching thousands of pounds of salmon. I mean, I don't know. I would assume you'd have to be pretty fit. Right. According to Leland, he said all the men are, you know, the same age even.
00:55:44
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah, he said they're all pretty young really young guys. And so the problem obviously with reliance on eyewitness testimony and we you know Maggie you and I talk about this all the time all the time with eyewitness testimony unless there is something that stands out Like the one case the guy who's holding a ferret You know, so obviously you're gonna remember that then other things they slip your mind and
00:56:13
Speaker
And so at the time, the people who saw the skiff driver, either they didn't know anything was wrong yet, right? That next morning when they see the boat floating away and they see somebody in the pilot house and they think it's Mark. So they wave and he waves back. They're not thinking anything different.
00:56:29
Speaker
You know what I mean? When you see somebody come in on a skiff to buy gasoline, like Sandy said, it happens all the time, right? So, I mean, were they really paying attention? And then even when they're headed toward the fire and the skiff driver is headed in the opposite direction, their focus is on the fire and trying to get there and see what's wrong and see if they can help. And so every time somebody is seeing this skiff driver,
00:56:58
Speaker
It's in one of those situations where it's not really your point of focus. Yeah. And while I don't think that like initial plan, you know, wasn't to burn down the ship. I mean, even though it didn't go how he initially thought it would like sinking it or whatever, he still was successful. He in.
00:57:18
Speaker
this case. I mean, the evidence is destroyed. And like you said, every time somebody passes him to see him, their attention is diverted to something else. Right. So while it wasn't how he may have intended it to be, it was still
00:57:38
Speaker
enough that we've lost pieces of evidence that we needed to solve it. And even with all the witnesses, by the end of at least the first week of the investigation, police still didn't even have a composite sketch of the perpetrator. So whoever did this, crew member or otherwise, had to either still be in Craig or to have left by one of only two ways in or out of the town.
00:58:07
Speaker
on another boat or by seaplane. And with so many boats in Craig at the time narrowing down which point of escape proved to be impossible, especially because this was the end of the season.
00:58:23
Speaker
And many ships whose brooms were up, who had, you know, they've said, okay, we've caught enough fish for the season. We're not going to wait out two days to just go out one more time. Or who had just said, you know what? The season is a complete bust. We're not going to go back out. Let's just go back home. Had already started making their way out of Craig. In her People Magazine article, journalist Cheryl McCall wrote, quote, no one matching that description
00:58:50
Speaker
left by the seaplane to catch a can or the thrice weekly ferry. So investigators concluded he must have escaped on one of the approximately 150 saners and trawlers in Craig's Harbor at the time of the killings." So this is like a needle in a haystack. So again, yeah, that's what I was about to say. We are not going to be able to easily find this person. Right.
00:59:16
Speaker
Bellingham, Washington police detective David McNeil, who worked on the case, told Fred Moody of People magazine that detectives actually tried to contact every skipper who had been in Craig at the time of the murders to get a list of their crew. He noted, quote, it would be easy to say that everyone who had been in Craig at the time was a suspect. We also considered everyone a witness.
00:59:45
Speaker
We felt that one of those witnesses was the guilty one. There were approximately 150 people at the beginning who had to be interviewed. After about two months, we were sure we had talked to the responsible party, but we didn't know which one it was. After about a year, we had narrowed it down to three people, end quote. I mean, that's still pretty impressive. Yeah, I mean, yeah, to narrow it down.
01:00:14
Speaker
And then two years after the crime, by October 1984, the list was down to one. A man by the name of John Peel. Of course, the means by which law enforcement landed on Peel as the most likely suspect was not an ideal one. Here's what Leland Hale had to say about it in our interview. So it's, I always think of it as
01:00:44
Speaker
And this is not entirely the best description. But in an ideal case, you've got a broad base at the beginning. And it's a lot of data. You're gathering a lot of data. And you sort of go up a pyramid. And when you get to the top, everything points to the perpetrator. And in this case, it's almost like an inverted pyramid, where
01:01:12
Speaker
Yes, you have a lot of data, and then we eliminate, and John Peel's the only one left. It's not a positive case, it's a negative. And we, you know, the old cliche, right? You can't prove a negative. It's hard to prove a negative.
01:01:33
Speaker
So Peale was originally ruled out as a suspect, but after nearly a year, the investigation would circle back to him because two separate phone calls were received by authorities telling police that he should be investigated. Not only because he matched a suspect sketch, but also because he had a troubled history with Mark Colterst.
01:01:55
Speaker
Peel had worked for Mark in 1980 and 1981, but he wasn't brought back as crew in 1982. He was allegedly fired the year before for drug and alcohol abuse, and this incident was said to permanently sour the relationship between the two men. So Peel began working on another boat, a boat called the Libby 8.
01:02:16
Speaker
But before he worked for Colter's directly. So would that boat have been there? They were, yep. And actually the captain of the Libya, I'll get back to later, he's going to testify against Peel.
01:02:27
Speaker
So I found that really interesting. So before he worked for Colt Hearst, he had, the two men had known each other because Peel had dated Colt Hearst's sister and their relationship was described as tumultuous and it carried off and on for approximately three years. So the families knew each other fairly well. Peel's lawyer would later argue that he hadn't been fired.
01:02:51
Speaker
from Coulter's crew, but rather he chose to work aboard another ship the next year. And they argued that the two men were friendly in the following year, which was seemingly validated because many of Coulter's family members remembered that Mark and Irene had purchased a wedding gift for John Peel after he had been allegedly dismissed.
01:03:16
Speaker
So Peale had no prior criminal history. He had nothing that would indicate a predilection for violence or any criminal behavior. In fact, until his arrest, he was considered a law abiding citizen. He married his wife the year before the murders and she had given birth to their first son shortly after. So by most accounts, he was just a young man hoping to start a family and had no signs of having been a vicious killer.
Defense Strategies and Trial Outcomes
01:03:43
Speaker
On the other hand,
01:03:45
Speaker
He had flown home the day after the murders and the airline staff remembered him well because he had drunk heavily on the plane and he passed out, listen to this, he passed out with his pants around his ankles in the bathroom before the plane landed. And this was, how embarrassing, right? This wasn't exactly rare for the airline crew, but it was memorable nonetheless. So he was heavily drinking.
01:04:16
Speaker
Uh, his questionable relationship with the Colter's family, along with being identified by some as the man driving the skiff and his odd behavior after the murders would lead to his arrest. So despite the witnesses who identified John Peel as the suspicious young man that was seen in Craig around the time of the murders, there were many who didn't identify the suspicious young man as John Peel.
01:04:44
Speaker
One even said that he knew Peale and that Peale was not the man in the skiff. So as the trial begins, during the preliminary hearings, Peale's been extradited to Alaska, and his lawyer is arguing that the prosecutors had intimidated the witnesses. And this allegation would come up again and again during the early hearings, and it would cause two of the 24 witnesses, 24 people who supposedly saw this man,
01:05:12
Speaker
And two of them would plead the fifth. They claim that they now doubted themselves and their own testimonies. It's like, like Alison said, you know, some of them were hung over. They were too far away. It was just a perfect storm of kind of like misinformation and mis-memories and just not enough solid testimony. So people, what ifs? Yeah, a lot of what ifs.
01:05:41
Speaker
and unknowns and doubting themselves. Peale's lawyers would also bring to light a discrepancy with the transcription of Peale's police interviews. This was important because his interview had been incredibly valuable in obtaining the grand jury indictment. The transcription allegedly stated that Peale told investigators, I'm scared, man. I'm scared. I can't believe the things I did in there. However, Peale's lawyers said that what Peale actually said was,
01:06:12
Speaker
I'm scared, man. I'm scared. I can't believe you all think I did that. So the difference between those two statements is huge. I feel like it should have been recorded and there should have been multiple people listening and you can't just go by what he said. Peele had been identified as the young man getting the two and a half gallons of gas that morning. And it was assumed that that gas was used to light the fire, like you said, Maggie.
01:06:41
Speaker
What the prosecution had failed to mention to the grand jury was that there was only a white residue found at the crime scene. And this steered around the idea that the killer was using an accelerant to start the fire that was not gasoline because gasoline tends to leave a dark residue. So Peale's lawyers would ask the judge to refloat the now sunk investor. Like Alan said, it had sunk about five miles away from Craig. It was supposed to be being towed back to Washington for a rebuild.
01:07:11
Speaker
And the defense argued that because the investor sunk, it was like destroying a crime scene because they couldn't test for bullet holes or ballistics or things like that. And as Alison mentioned, the prosecution's case relied almost entirely on witness statements and memories, especially human memory, doesn't last forever. There isn't any memory, no matter how intense, that doesn't fade after time. I mean, like we've talked about, imagine trying to remember a stranger's face
01:07:41
Speaker
in seconds of passing, just a few seconds of time while your attention is being pulled towards a raging fire. Peale's lawyer, Philip Widener, ended up representing Peale for free because he viewed the state's evidence as preposterous. And of course, the case was being widely covered by the media, so it was good for his practice.
01:08:04
Speaker
Good for him. Yep. He would tell reporters that of the many cases he'd encountered in his career, he'd never seen such serious charges brought on the basis of weak evidence reflected by the records in the case. He said, although it's unfortunate that there even has to be a trial, Mr. Peele and I are looking forward to an opportunity to point out to a jury the lack of evidence and the unreliability of the state's witnesses. So the trial begins.
01:08:32
Speaker
the prosecutors began to paint a picture of an employee who was upset because you know his boss had fired him from a good job and a year later he just happened to end up in the same town as the Colhurst family. He hopped aboard the investor the night of the murders and he got into an argument with his former boss and at some point that evening
01:08:56
Speaker
He got so angry, he shot Mark and his wife and then murdered everyone, fearing that any one of them would be able to identify him as the killer. He then tried to scuttle the ship, but he wasn't familiar with the new expensive boat and it wouldn't sink. So when he stopped floating the next day, he panicked and tried to start the fire.
01:09:18
Speaker
The prosecution would bring Captain Larry Demert Jr. to the stand. Captain Demert was the captain of the ship that John Peel was now working for. And he testified against Peel. This was someone he had known and worked for for over a decade. And he would tell the court that on the night of September 6th at 2 a.m., he awoke. He thought he heard a woman scream and immediately after that heard popping sounds like a generator backfiring.
01:09:45
Speaker
He said, I wasn't sure. I was real scared. I've never been that scared in my life. It was like there was danger in the air, evil in the air. It was real thick. I saw John Peel standing on the dock. It looked like he might've had a rifle in his hand.
01:10:01
Speaker
Larry Demert said that he identified John Peel because the figure was wearing the same sweatshirt and hat that Peel often wore, and he said that the only gun that would have been available to him was usually locked up on their boat, the Libby 8, and it had an identifiable scope on it. He also found it strange that Peel had decided to fly home to Bellingham instead of riding back with the rest of the crew on their ship.
01:10:24
Speaker
So on the sixth, when he's waking up at two, is this the night that everyone's like drinking and partying on all these different ships? Yes. That's the night everybody gets back late. Okay. So, I mean, perhaps the screaming that he thought he heard was just a party taking place. The same with the popping sounds.
01:10:47
Speaker
It's very possible. And I think, I think you're right, Maggie. I mean, I think all of these doubts, that's what's adding up in the jury's mind too. I mean, they're hearing all of the, you know, this like damning evidence, like Larry Demert Jr., who's saying, I know John Peel and I saw him and I heard these sounds.
01:11:08
Speaker
But then you've got the defense who are saying, OK, well, yeah, there was loud partying. And then are you really sure you saw it? Because all these witnesses are saying, OK, maybe I was too drunk. OK, maybe I didn't see it. OK, it might have been John Peel buying gasoline, but it wasn't gasoline that started the fire. And so there's all these questions.
01:11:29
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, Demert was testifying against Peel, but the defense would counter saying that Demert was only testifying for the prosecution because he was trying to get out of separate drug charges that he was facing.
01:11:47
Speaker
Right? And he was questioned extensively about his prescription for valium, so this may have impaired his memory at the time of his testimony. The prosecution was continuing to paint a picture of an angry employee, but the defense presented numerous witnesses that claimed Colt Hurst and Peale were friends. After all, they lived close to one another and belonged to the same large friend group. But there were some other possibilities that the defense put forward.
01:12:15
Speaker
Right. And so like for the defense, their biggest, I guess, offensive move is saying, remember in a trial, you've got to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. And so they just started throwing out potential theories, other people who might have committed this crime. So that's what we're going to talk about next, Maggie. And the majority of their other theories centered around other potential motives.
01:12:46
Speaker
So one of the theories, there was a conflict between Alaskan natives, fishermen from Alaska, and those from out of state like Mark. So in Washington where Mark was from, fishing allowances were also a topic of contention. Washington tribes were not getting enough of the fish during the season. So recent legislation had actually ruled that 50% of the fish were to go to tribal fishermen.
01:13:14
Speaker
And the remaining 50% could be caught by other fishermen. So to combat that limit, Mark Colterst and others like him had been part of a great migration north to the Alaskan waters to fish. And so the defense argued that Mark's death could have been a message to other fishermen like him to stay away. So that's one theory that they threw out.
01:13:43
Speaker
Was this a message? Another theory they posited was jealousy. After all, Mark clearly had the largest boat in Craig, meaning he could stay out fishing longer, which meant, in essence, more money. He was young and he was sure of himself.
01:14:01
Speaker
This is where the motive I kind of thought of at first was, did someone kill him out of jealousy or to kind of put him out of the game? Right. Yeah. Like you're the top dog right now. Well, not for long. But Sergeant Charles Miller said of this theory, quote,
01:14:21
Speaker
Realistically, there's always been some hard feelings among the Alaskan fishermen toward out-of-state people, but this would have been pretty bloody extreme. I sincerely believe it was an isolated incident that won't happen again." Has anything like this that you all know have happened since the investor murders? Not that I'm aware of. Me neither. It seems like the Sergeant Miller's right.
01:14:50
Speaker
But never fear, even though there are questions about that theory, the defense were out to prove that there wasn't just one potential other theory. There were several. And if there are several other theories, then combined with the changing testimonies, people pleading the fifth, could this jury be sure beyond a reasonable doubt, right? Because if there are multiple potential theories,
01:15:18
Speaker
Another theory that they threw out was that the killing was linked to drugs. Sandy mentioned this earlier in the episode that, I mean, Craig was kind of a hub for a lot of drug activity and three jailhouse informants were willing to testify that it was their knowledge that Mark Colterst's crew were running drugs on their boat. And that was linked with drug trafficking.
01:15:46
Speaker
and actually former Craig police chief, Ray Shapley, had told People Magazine Investigates that he is convinced that the crime was the direct result of a drug deal gone wrong. He said, quote, I've heard a lot of talk that it was a drug vote. They say Craig floated in drugs in those days, end quote. So they're saying not only is
01:16:15
Speaker
the investor making money from fish. They're also making money from drugs. That's what this theory is. Yeah. Okay. And Leland Hale actually did tell Sandy and me that he heard from at least one reliable source that some of the crew members were using drugs, including potentially cocaine and had brought it on board. However, you know, if you're the jury,
01:16:43
Speaker
You've also heard Tussing's testimony, and remember he's the crew member who quit just a week before the murders, that Mark had been working them too hard. And so if this theory were true, when would they have found the time to run all these drugs when all they did was fish? Unless they're using the drugs. I mean, I have no idea because I've never done cocaine. But doesn't cocaine speed up your heart rate?
01:17:10
Speaker
So wouldn't you have more energy when you're high on cocaine or is it a depressant? No, it's definitely an upper. It does increase. Yeah. And I think that's why it was so rampant is they were using it. So they had energy to fish. But let's say he hid some cocaine in the hull of his boat that he would sell at the next port. So transporting the drugs rather than. Right.
01:17:38
Speaker
necessarily selling them, he'd be shipping them from port to port. And so you've got Tussing saying all they did was work. And then Coldhurst's friends and family are also denying any prior history of drug use. And then, kind of like other witnesses where you start to question their character, you know, these are three informants who were looking for reduced sentences in exchange for their testimonies.
01:18:07
Speaker
Yeah, we've talked about that too, like in prison when people say, Oh my cellmate told me they killed so and so, you know, just to try to lessen their own sentence. Yet another theory was that their deaths was a professional hit, particularly with how violent the crime had been. So they're saying maybe somebody was jealous of Mark, they had it out for him and they hired someone to commit this murder.
01:18:34
Speaker
The problem with this theory, though, is that many people point out is that usually professional hits have the intention of being seen, right? Like you have a hit, you want it to be a clear message to everybody else. But in this crime scene, the perpetrator attempted to hide it to cover it up. Maybe they were new. Maybe they were new.
01:19:02
Speaker
This was their first job. This was their first rodeo, yeah. I actually asked Hale if he believed that the killer were just one person or more than one because at first I was like, oh, maybe there's more than one, right? And then we could subdue people. And here's what he had to say. I am of the belief that one person could. And I'd say that because you really sort of have
01:19:29
Speaker
two separate crime scenes, one opt, you know, in the wheelhouse, a focus scene, it's not a big space, right? You've heard of like fish kitchens, they're small, I mean it's a small space, it's confined. Because again, the boat is just, the big part of the boat is for fish.
01:19:53
Speaker
The more space you have for fish, the more money you can make. You don't want a lot of space given over for the mechanics of the boat. So there's that crime scene, and then there's, you know, there's a scream, and there's, so there's kind of that thing. And then what appears to happen next is that somebody in the crew, and it's actually the Cowan kid, comes up and says, what's going on? And he's shot immediately.
01:20:24
Speaker
my guess, and I'm only guessing, I mean, I've slept in the forecast, the folks, as they say, forecast was sort of the longer English word. It's cramped space. There's stuff going on. And you might be inclined to just pretend you're asleep and they'll go away. Or conversely, you're kind of drunk and you're passed out and you're just unaware. But I think after the, you know, the killing, the
01:20:53
Speaker
culturists, and then killing the cow and kid. It's kind of like a shooting gal right down there, right? It's like shooting fish in a barrel. They're just kind of there waiting to be shot. There's only a narrow set of stairs that go up to the rest of the vessel. I mean, they're trapped in there. Now, could there have been more than one person? Yes, obviously.
01:21:21
Speaker
But the question I have to answer as a writer is, could one person do it? And I think that answer is yes, they could. Now, one theory that they could all rule out, though, was robbery. So the way the seasonal fishing worked was when boats brought their hulls to the cannery for weighing.
01:21:42
Speaker
the money that they were owed was actually just kept in a ledger and it wasn't paid out until the end of the season when the books were balanced and the accounts were closed. So even for Mark's birthday dinner, when they went out to Ruth Ann's, he had actually written a check to a fellow friend who was another boat captain, just so he could have a hundred dollars in cash to pay for the meal. So obviously there's not money on the boat. So that wasn't,
01:22:12
Speaker
a viable motivation. Yeah. One thing witnesses did seem to corroborate was that that could kind of lead toward a clear perpetrator was that the person who drove the skiff seemed to know what he was doing.
01:22:31
Speaker
even steering around what fishermen in the area knew was more treacherous shallow waters when driving the skiff back to the dock. And he had the skills necessary to land the boat. So then they're thinking, okay, so this isn't someone unfamiliar with boating.
01:22:52
Speaker
OK, so now then that we're talking about this, which was what I was saying, do you have to be like a skilled person to get your boat out of dock without turning on the motor? Because I would not understand if the tide was going the right way or whatever. So now I'm wondering if they are possibly thinking it could be two of those crewmen that were never identified because they would be, I'm assuming, able to do that and familiar with the boat itself.
01:23:19
Speaker
And that's one of the theories that the defense brought up, right? So John Peel's lawyers, they're saying, okay, well, okay, it might be John Peel. These people are saying, okay, this person looked like John Peel, but obviously this person who did this was familiar with this area, was familiar with boating. Could it have also been one of the members of the crew who were not yet identified like the new skiff driver
01:23:49
Speaker
Dean Moon. Because remember Tussing trained him before he left. And all that was found of Dean Moon was a single tooth.
01:24:02
Speaker
Okay, like on Harry Potter with Peter Pettigrew, all that they found was his finger, and then he brought Lord Voldemort back, so. Right, yeah, so I mean, they didn't bring up Harry Potter, obviously, in this trial, Maggie, but yeah, so they're bringing up, you know, all we found is a single tooth, and a forensic dentist, actually, they had forensic dentists on both sides of the courtroom, one trying to argue, yes,
01:24:28
Speaker
you know, unequivocally this was Dean Moon's tooth. And then the other one saying, well, we can't really say for sure. Yeah, so he could have just pulled it out. Yeah. So defense argued that, you know, maybe it was Dean Moon who could have gone mad, gone mad, killed Mark and then killed the rest of the crew. And then in an attempt to cover up the crime out of fear of being identified. And remember, I think that's the biggest. You know, we keep questioning why would they have killed everybody?
01:24:58
Speaker
Including the kids and we keep going back to this idea and I think Sandy mentioned it earlier with John Peel and that is well if the kids saw John Peel or if they saw Dean Moon They would recognize him and if they can recognize and they could you know identify him to police did John Peel and Dean Moon have similar builds and
01:25:25
Speaker
Could they have been confused for one another? They did not look alike. And so this is what the defense is bringing up, right? And they're saying, OK, well, he could have also gone mad. He would also know how to drive this skiff. He also would have had to have killed the rest of the crew and attempt to cover up the crime. Maybe he attempted to sink the boat because he knew that there were these valves. Maybe he just didn't know.
01:25:55
Speaker
you know, how well they would work or not, and then to burn the bodies. But the key problem with the theory is what you just said, Maggie, and that's that moon didn't match the skiff driver description that was given by any of the witnesses. Plus, there was obvious damage to the investor in the attempt to launch the skiff off the back of the boat.
01:26:21
Speaker
And Sandy, you can speak to this too. Leland Hale basically said the way this skiff was on or attached to the investor was different than other boats with their skiffs.
01:26:37
Speaker
Yeah. I guess a lot of the boats would pull the skiff behind the boat, but on the investor, they had a lift that lifted the skiff onto the back of the boat. Right. And so there's damage back there on that lift. And so the problem with this theory of it being Dean Moon, as somebody who was trained on the skiff, Moon would have been able to launch it without any damage. And so
01:27:05
Speaker
again, for the prosecution, the only one who comes close to fitting the details was Peel. And this was someone Peel was who had been in Craig at the time, who had a familiarity with the waters, and who presumably knew the family and crew, since that would explain why, again, all of them had to die, so he couldn't be identified. And if Mark had refused to rehire him, could that have led to anger?
01:27:36
Speaker
Fisherman and boat broker, Holly Hanson, friend of the cult cult hersts, told Fred Moody of People Magazine, quote, we could never understand why Peel wasn't the prime suspect from the beginning, but all that the detectives could think was crew, crew, crew, end quote. So there are people close to the cult hearse who were saying, I thought it was Peel from the beginning. But then you've got all of those problems that Sandy mentioned. If Peel were guilty,
01:28:06
Speaker
And what do we do with the wedding present that the Kulthurst gave Peele and his new wife that would seem to indicate that they had no hard feelings? Or maybe the Kulthurst thought they didn't have hard feelings, but Peele was still upset. Maybe. Those who were on Peele's crew also changed their story. So at first they were like, you know what? I didn't see him the morning of the fire. And later they're saying, maybe he was there. I wasn't really paying attention. So they have kind of muddied recollections.
01:28:36
Speaker
which was, again, also likely true from drinking, right, that was taking place. And Laurie, Mark's sister, said of Peale after meeting him after the murders, along with her sister, Lisa, at a local diner, quote, I don't know if he's actually the one who pulled the trigger, but I think he knows more than he's saying, end quote. But of course, these trials, they're not based on what Peale knew
01:29:05
Speaker
but whether he did it and whether he did indeed pull the trigger. So defense was also able to poke holes in some of the evidence against Peel merely by questioning the trustworthiness of those who were testifying. For example, Jim Leroy Robinson, the garage owner who testified that he sold Peel gasoline,
01:29:29
Speaker
was actually named Kenneth Robertson, and he had changed his name and moved to Alaska because he was a convicted arsonist on the run from Arizona. Okay, so yeah, very credible right there. Right.
01:29:42
Speaker
And you heard that right. He had been an arsonist, but he didn't fit the description of the mysterious man in the skiff. He was too old. He was too short. He had no experience on boats at all. And the eyewitnesses said that the skiff driver wasn't someone they'd seen before. And Kenneth Robertson owned the only gas station in town where all the cars and boats filled up. So many people would have recognized him.
01:30:08
Speaker
Ultimately jurors would end up spending the better part of 1986 observing the trial. It took months and over this span of time the jurors reviewed more than 800 pieces of evidence including more than 150 witnesses who were flown or shipped in to the remote location at the trial and this was all at the state's expense so the total cost of this trial would be estimated to be upwards of two million dollars.
01:30:37
Speaker
This was a steep price to pay for answers and even worse when the answers and the justice would not come. After six days of deliberation, the jury informed Judge Thomas Schultz that they couldn't come to a consensus regarding John Peel's fate. He was not found guilty or not guilty. They would weigh whether or not to pursue charges against Peel for a second time.
01:31:03
Speaker
And the second trial would unfold very similarly to how it had the first time. There was a bit more focus spent on Peele's ability to drive the investor's skiff, as well as testimony from two brothers who testified that John Peele had confessed to the killings while playing cribbage with them months after the murder. However, one of the brothers would say that he thought Peele was joking and the defense would push back against the validity of these two witnesses.
01:31:30
Speaker
So they ended up claiming the state had agreed to drop unrelated drug charges against one of the brothers in exchange for combined testimony. So we're back to, you know, paying criminals to testify or not really paying them, but exchanging goods, I'll say. So again, the burden of prosecution falls to the state. And once again, they fail to prove Peale's guilt.
01:32:00
Speaker
John Peel would then move forward with a federal lawsuit against the state of Alaska and Alaska would eventually have to pay $900,000 to John Peel for violating his civil rights during his detainment. Wow. So they spent nearly $3 million once they paid him out for this lawsuit, probably over that. Yep.
01:32:26
Speaker
for this investigation or for this trial of the investor. Yep. And I mean, this was the trajectory of the case since day one. I mean, once one lead seemed sure, the bottom drops out. Sergeant Charles Miller stated, quote, every time I pursue something, I keep coming up short. There's always something that doesn't fit. One thing that has stuck in my craw is why the murderer didn't burn the boat right away.
01:32:56
Speaker
or at night when there was darkness to cover his escape. There must have been some compelling reason that caused him to do it in broad daylight." End quote. So Maggie, what are your thoughts?
01:33:14
Speaker
Well, I definitely think that setting fire to the boat was plan B. I don't think that was plan A. I think plan A was to sink the boat under cover of fog. And like Sandy said, it would be so deep that no one would even know that it was there. So I think that was the plan A. I think, I mean, I don't know. I don't think it was any of the crew.
Unsolved Case and Community Impact
01:33:40
Speaker
I think they just weren't able to recover those.
01:33:42
Speaker
people's bodies or bone fragments of them.
01:33:47
Speaker
I kind of don't think it was someone who was jealous. That's what I'm going with. I feel it was a fit of jealousy. Tim, the Spain of the Alaska State Troopers told People Magazine Investigates, quote, the case is closed, end quote. And police detective David McNeil stated, quote, they got the right guy. Just because someone is acquitted doesn't mean they're innocent. It just means there's not enough evidence to show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, end quote.
01:34:17
Speaker
but others are still doubtful. This murder happened 40 years ago this month. And unfortunately, it's just as unsolved as ever. Allison, Maggie, myself, and Leland Hale, author of What Happened in Craig Alaska's Worst Unsolved Mass Murder, as well as The Butcher Baker, a true account of an Alaskan serial killer, would love to see this case solved.
01:34:42
Speaker
Leland was an incredible source for us while researching this case. And you should read his book, especially if you want to learn more about this case. Obviously, I purchased my copy of What Happened in Craig from Amazon. But where else is it available? Anywhere you can buy books. Barnes & Noble, Amazon. Yes, you can buy it on my blog, lelandhale.com slash WordPress.
01:35:13
Speaker
And there's a clever little link there and it hooks you up to a bunch of resources where you can buy the book. As for the true identity of the perpetrator. Well, Hale says you should be the judge. You know, there's a lot that the jury did not hear.
Podcast Conclusion and Listener Engagement
01:35:31
Speaker
Because the whole trial process is really a filter. It's kind of an artificial
01:35:36
Speaker
reality that's run by the defense saying, I don't want that evidence in, by the prosecution saying, I don't want that evidence in, by the judge making a decision as to what goes in and what stays out. And they're all there to obviously protect the innocent person as a presumption of innocence. But there was a lot of data there.
01:36:04
Speaker
that to me gives a slightly different look. And that's what I was after. Like, do you be the judge? Read what happened to Craig and I'll let you be the jury with more information than the jury had. One thing that is certain is the loss felt by the Coldhurst family who lost on that fateful day in September, 1982, their son, daughter-in-law, nephew, and two grandchildren.
01:36:33
Speaker
It was a loss felt by the entire community as well, though. Dave Freeman, friend of both Keown and Moon, said, quote, the shock of losing everyone really tore up our town. They all had their whole lives in front of them and they were just blown away. It's just such a shame and tragic for no reason, end quote.
01:37:00
Speaker
Again, please like and join our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast to continue the conversation and see images related to this episode. As always, follow us on Twitter, at casescoffee, on Instagram, at coffee cases podcast, or you can always email us suggestions to coffeeandcasespodcastatgmail.com. Please tell your friends about our podcast so more people can be reached to possibly help bring some closure to these families. Don't forget to rate our show and leave us a comment as well. We hope to hear from you soon.
01:37:30
Speaker
Stay together. Stay safe. We'll see you next week. It's love notes for Maggie and Allison time.
01:37:59
Speaker
So Love Notes today are going out to two new reviewers that we got on Apple Podcast. If you left a written review, they haven't come through yet, which could potentially mean they are from outside of the US. Which means they could be from Canada.
01:38:18
Speaker
That's true. And we usually don't see those until about a week later. So if they are good reviews, we love ya. If they're bad reviews, how dare you. I mean, we still love you, but you know. But how dare you.
01:38:41
Speaker
So we would also like to send our love out to Nicole and April, who have reached out to us on social media, and to send our love to Talkin' After Midnight, who left us a review on Podchaser and wrote, quote, How is the show not better known?
01:39:04
Speaker
I inferred from the title it would be yet another light-hearted true crime podcast, but thankfully not so. One of them tells the story, the other adds the comments and theories. It's conversational, but respectful, and mostly they don't do the obvious cases." I know. The best. Yeah. We should be better now.
01:39:29
Speaker
Yeah, we should be famous by now. Thank you Talkin' After Midnight for realizing that along with us. So please keep talking about us on social media, listeners. And with that, all of our love is going out to all of you.
01:39:46
Speaker
Until next week, Sluthounds. And if you can't wait until then, make sure you join us on Patreon for some bonus content at all the levels. Plus we have a plan starting in November, which is the season of thanks and giving for members and food. Yes. And food who are joined or will join the 15 or the $20 a month level quarterly swag boxes.
01:40:13
Speaker
Yep, so the number of items actually depends on your level, but you must have been a member of the $15 or $20 a month level for at least two months to be eligible. So mark your calendars to join this month or go ahead and upgrade today.