In Kotzebue in northwestern Alaska, on a frigid morning in March 2020, the police found a woman dead on the ex-mayor’s property. Two years earlier, when he was still the mayor, they had been called to his property to examine the body of twenty-five-year-old Jennifer Kirk. She was discovered with strangulation marks on her neck and a bullet hole beneath her chin. The city police quickly ruled Kirk’s death a suicide and closed the case. They could not so easily dismiss the second death. They found Susanna Norton, thirty, in a second house on the ex-mayor’s property. She had been beaten and strangled, and the medical examiner determined her cause of death as murder.
Kirk and Norton were both Inupiaq women and had dated two of the sons of the ex-mayor. Both sons had previously been convicted of beating the women. Jennifer Kirk’s boyfriend had admitted to strangling Kirk twice before, and Susanna’s boyfriend pled guilty to kicking her in the stomach when she was six months pregnant. The justice system had only slapped their wrists for these offenses and others, charging them with low-level misdemeanors.
These cases are two of the frequent reminders of the grim statistics of violence against women, and in particular, violence against Native women, in Alaska. The Violence Policy Center lists Alaska as one of the most dangerous places in the United States for women. According to a 2020 University of Alaska Justice Center victimization survey, sixty out of every one hundred women residing in Alaska have experienced intimate partner violence, sexual violence, or both. This is a 14.7% increase from a similar study conducted in 2015. A 2016 report by the Violence Policy Center ranked Alaska first nationwide as the state with the highest homicide rate per capita of female victims killed by male offenders.
Alaska Native women are the most at-risk group to become victims of violent crimes. Alaska Natives comprise only 20% of the state’s population, but Alaska Native women represent 54% of Alaska’s sexual assault victims. Compared to all other women in the U.S., Alaska Native women are ten times more likely to experience domestic violence.
Alcohol and substance abuse contribute to these staggering statistics. According to the Alaska State Troopers, approximately 37% of all crimes they investigate annually involve alcohol and substance abuse, and drugs and alcohol contribute to 62% of all violent crimes. Alaska Native communities have the highest rates of family violence, suicide, and alcohol abuse in the United States. Rape in Alaska occurs at three times the national average, and the suicide rate is four times the national average.
Law enforcement is minimal or non-existent in rural Alaska. The three major cities and all the large towns in Alaska support local police departments, but the Alaska State Troopers are responsible for patrolling most of the state. Approximately three hundred troopers patrol a state 1/5 the size of the continental United States, leaving Alaska with one state trooper for every million acres of land. Also, 180,000 Alaskans cannot access a modern 911 system, and there is no Amber Alert when a child goes missing. Even where the 911 system is operational, residents in many small, remote villages must wait hours, if not a day or longer, for the troopers to respond to a violent situation. Due to the remoteness of many rural communities, the lack of roads, rugged terrain, changeable weather conditions, and the high cost of air transportation, response by law enforcement to a critical situation requires time and resources.
On February 5, 2013, in Kake, a small Tlingit village with 600 residents in Southeastern Alaska, a pastor’s wife found the naked, battered body of 13-year-old Mackenzie Howard in the back of Memorial Presbyterian Church. The church sits across the street from the house where Mackenzie lived with her family. A village elder immediately called the state troopers in Juneau and then gathered other villagers to cordon off the crime scene and guard Mackenzie’s body until the authorities could arrive and begin their investigation. The frightened villagers did not know who the murderer was or if he would strike again.
Kake is only accessible by plane or boat, so the Alaska State Troopers had to wait for daylight and for the weather to improve before they could make the 45-minute flight from Juneau to Kake. Residents waited and guarded the crime scene for eleven hours before troopers responded, and they waited several hours longer for crime scene investigators to arrive from Anchorage. Ten days later, troopers had collected enough evidence to arrest a fourteen-year-old boy from the village.
Less than five years later, in August 2017, violence again struck Kake when someone murdered nineteen-year-old Jade Williams in her home. Villagers called the Alaska State Troopers, but due to bad weather, the troopers were grounded in Juneau and could not fly to Kake. Instead, a Wildlife Trooper traveled to Kake by boat from Petersburg, 65 miles away. Two years later, a Sitka grand jury indicted Isaac David Friday for murdering Jade.
While the troopers arrested the killers in Kake, many other murders of indigenous women remain unsolved. Mary Anne Alexie, a 33-year-old mother and Alaska Native woman, went missing from Anchorage, Alaska, in 2012. Mary Anne lived in Fairbanks but was considering moving to Anchorage to attend school to become a medical assistant. Mary Anne hoped advanced education would help her secure a better job to support her family. She wanted to be a role model for her children. The Anchorage police determined that Mary Anne arrived in Anchorage around noon on October 9, 2012. At 3:00 a.m. on October 10, Mary Anne called her friend, Peggy, and said she was lost in the Spenard area of Anchorage. She said Mary Anne did not sound coherent when she called, and Peggy feared she was intoxicated. After her call to Peggy, no one saw or heard from Mary Anne again.
Mary Anne’s family immediately headed to Anchorage to search, but they found no trace of her. The Anchorage police stated that foul play was suspected in her disappearance. Anchorage is surrounded by wilderness and ocean. It is not difficult to dispose of a body in this environment.
In the remote village of St. Michael in western Alaska, nineteen-year-old Chynelle Lockwood had just graduated from high school and planned to move to Anchorage and attend college for the upcoming semester. She was interested in becoming a nurse or a medical aide.
On July 10, 2017, Chynelle rode ATVs with her uncle, John Cheemuk III. The two then ate a dinner of rice and Spam and talked about Chynelle’s plans to move to Anchorage in the fall. Chynelle lived with her uncle and other relatives, and her mother lived in Anchorage. Yvonne had lost legal custody of Chynelle and her siblings two years earlier due to problems with alcohol abuse. Still, she and Chynelle texted each other at least twice daily, and Yvonne flew back to St. Michael to watch Chynelle graduate from high school. Yvonne said the last time she heard from Chynelle was on July 10, when she texted her mother to tell her she was going for a walk. Her mother told her not to go alone. Yvonne was afraid Chynelle might run into a bear or a moose. She never imagined the horrors Chynelle would encounter.
A resident discovered Chynelle’s body on the beach. She was severely bruised, and a chunk of hair had been pulled from her head. According to the Alaska State Troopers, they were notified that a body had been found on the beach on July 11, and they responded to the incident immediately. The State Medical Examiner’s Office positively identified the body as Chynelle Lockwood, and the medical examiner determined that Chynelle’s death was “due to drowning of undetermined etiology due to submersion in ocean water under unknown circumstances.” He said the manner of death was undetermined, but he considered it a homicide.
According to Chynelle’s family, they heard conflicting information about Chynelle’s death from official and unofficial sources. They were initially told that Chynelle had ligature marks on her neck, indicating someone had strangled her. When they viewed her body at the funeral home, they noticed heavy bruising across most of her face, and they could see she was missing a chunk of her thick hair. Yvonne said she told the funeral director that she didn’t like the thick makeup they’d put on her, but the director said they had to put it on to cover the bruises.
The family and villagers were angry with the troopers for not sharing more details about their investigation, but the troopers said they could not share every piece of information they had because it could compromise the investigation.
In 2023, the Alaska State Troopers said a small amount of DNA was collected from Chynelle’s body, but two labs determined there was not enough DNA for analysis. The troopers said they had interviewed seventy-five people and identified a community member as a likely suspect in Chynelle’s murder. They sent their findings to the Alaska Department of Law, but the Department determined they did not have enough evidence to prosecute the individual the Alaska State Troopers had identified. Since the troopers said they had reached the end of their investigation, the Department of Law announced, “There are no other investigative measures that can be taken to increase the likelihood of prosecution.” They said, “This matter was thoroughly reviewed by the Department of Law. That review of the investigation resulted in a determination that there is insufficient evidence at this time to file charges in the matter. If at any time in the future, we receive new, additional information related to this case, we will evaluate the additional evidence to determine whether it is appropriate to bring charges.” For now, the Department of Justice considers the Chynelle Lockwood case closed, and Chynelle joins the long list of missing or murdered indigenous women in Alaska whose cases have gone unsolved.
On August 31, 2020, in Nome, Alaska, Florence Okpealuk was last seen on West Beach, and then she disappeared into thin air. Florence’s family searched for her in the bars of Front Street in Nome and questioned gold miners camped on West Beach. Throughout the investigation, the Nome Police Department, FBI, Alaska State Troopers, the Nome Volunteer Fire Department Search and Rescue Team, and the U.S. Coast Guard have all conducted searches for Florence. Search efforts included mini-submarines, helicopters, and private citizens. The police also searched the area with cadaver dogs. No trace of Florence has yet been found.
Alaska’s Indigenous women face danger from strangers and from those they know. In 2019, Brian Steven Smith, a naturalized US citizen born in South Africa, admitted to the brutal torture and murder of two Alaska Native women near Anchorage. These were likely not his first victims, and Smith had no known ties to the women he murdered. Smith has never publicly stated why he chose Alaska Native women for his victims.
However, far too often, the danger does not come from a stranger but someone the woman or girl knows. In 2018, ten-year-old Ashley Johnson-Barr, a sweet girl with a beautiful smile, was raped, murdered, and discarded on the tundra outside of Kotzebue. Her brutal attack and murder occurred in the same small town and only four months after the Kotzebue police found Jennifer Kirk dead on the mayor’s property. Kirk’s murder had received no publicity, but news media across the country covered the search for young Ashley. Authorities and citizens searched for Ashley for several days before they discovered her body, but Alaska State Troopers had little doubt about who had abused and killed her. Not long after they found Ashley’s remains, troopers arrested forty-one-year-old Peter Wilson, and prosecutors charged him with murder, kidnapping, and sexual abuse of a minor.
Two of Peter Wilson’s female relatives admitted that Wilson had repeatedly raped them when they were children. A cousin told a reporter from the Anchorage Daily News that Wilson raped her more than forty times in 1996 when Wilson was eighteen and she was twelve. When she tried to fight him, he began choking her. Wilson’s younger sister reported she was only three years old when Wilson, then twelve, sexually abused her and another child while he was babysitting them. Wilson later apologized to his sister for the incident.
Wilson’s sister and cousin regret not coming forward sooner and feel that if they had spoken up, Ashley might still be alive. Both recall telling adults at the time about Wilson’s attacks, but the adults told them not to talk about the sexual abuse, and so they remained quiet. Now, they want to tell their stories and empower other women to come forward. They want other abused women to know they are not alone and that they matter.
The ugly problem of violence against women in Alaska, and especially sexual abuse against Native women, is not new, and for it to go away, attitudes need to change. Public service television ads now air, featuring village elders talking about how women should be valued, honored, and treated with respect. Alaska has even adopted a special version of the “Me Too” movement as Native women begin to open up and report instances of sexual violence.
Perhaps as attitudes change, the statistics detailing the high rate of violence against Native women in Alaska will drop, but the issue is complicated. In 2019, The Department of Justice declared a rural law enforcement emergency in Alaska. Some villages have received funds to hire and train local police, but it will take more than money to solve the problem. Where does a small village find qualified police candidates?
In Stebbins, Alaska, a small village on an island at the southeastern end of Norton Sound in western Alaska, the village council took the matter into their own hands by hiring anyone they could find willing to take the job as a village police officer. In 2019, all seven police officers in Stebbins had pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges within the last decade. How can the statistics of violence and sexual assault against Native women improve in the many small villages in Alaska until these villages find more reliable, unbiased law enforcement?
According to a 2020 Department of Public Safety study, trooper posts around Kotzebue, Nome, Bethel, Dillingham, and Kodiak were understaffed by approximately 22%. A 2023 federal spending bill included three million dollars to address these shortages. While the money won’t stretch far in rural Alaska, where food and fuel costs are incredibly high, the funds are at least a step in the right direction. The women living in these small communities won’t feel safe until there is a more robust police presence and the justice system treats cases of sexual abuse as serious crimes.
Robin Barefield lives in the wilderness on Kodiak Island, where she and her husband own a remote lodge. She has published five novels: Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, The Fisherman’s Daughter, Karluk Bones, and Massacre at Bear Creek Lodge, and two nonfiction books: Kodiak Island Wildlife and Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier. Robin also writes a monthly true-crime newsletter about murder and mystery in Alaska and produces the podcast Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.
