The Dean Moon Phone Call: On the phone, the Bellingham fisherman told Chuck Miller that the young man he saw appeared to be about five-foot-nine or ten. Told him that that he was a pretty stocky kid, with broad shoulders and a baby face. A description that, to Miller’s mind, was consistent with Dean Moon.
Dean Moon, Blaine High School 1981 yearbook (wrestling team photo)
Even with that, however, Miller knew it was easy to chase wild geese. He’d been doing that all along, it seemed. Better, he thought, to have someone else check out this witness. That belief was reinforced after he called the Coulthursts and told them about the reported sighting of Dean Moon in San Francisco.
“Why would he go down there?” Sally Coulthurst asked. “If he’s alive, he wouldn’t be walking around San Francisco where all the Bellingham fishermen are.”
Bellingham Detective Dave McNeill talked to the witness three days after Miller talked to him. The witness said that the man he saw “appeared to have looked tremendously like Dean Moon.” Just as he told Miller, he said the man he saw was about two feet away. McNeill wanted to know if the young man had any reaction when he recognized him. After all this guy was a suspect in a major homicide. He might be expected to panic if he thought someone had seen him.
“There was no response to him to immediately look away or show that he recognized me,” the witness admitted. “All I can remember is that the guy looked exactly like Dean Moon did.”
Based on the two interviews they’d conducted, it seemed reasonable for Sergeant Miller to make a trip to San Francisco. Seemed reasonable to go there and look for Dean Moon. The trouble was, Sergeant Miller was having difficulty finding an opportunity to travel south. Crime in Anchorage was keeping him busy. And then something dreadful intervened.
On Tuesday, March 1, 1983, an unemployed computer programmer went on a rampage in the town of McCarthy. An abandoned mining town located deep in the Wrangell Mountains southeast of Anchorage, McCarthy had a population of 29 people. By the time the killer finished, six of McCarthy’s residents were dead. Three were injured. But no one was quite certain why.
Miller’s job was to find out. His superiors told him to drop everything.
Main Street, McCarthy, Alaska
Excerpts from the unpublished original manuscript, “Sailor Take Warning,” by Leland E. Hale. That manuscript, started in 1992 and based on court records from the Alaska State Archive, served as the basis for “What Happened in Craig.”
Copyright Leland E. Hale (2019). All rights reserved.
Order “What Happened In Craig,” HERE and HERE. True crime from Epicenter Press about Alaska’s Worst Unsolved Mass Murder.
when was that phone call made to Chuck about seeing Dean on the boat, and where does San Fransisco come from? Nothing here says anything about why or if he is in San Fransisco
ignore my comment by dyslexia just acted up
Thanks for the correction – but just in case… check this page, too… https://www.lelandhale.com/wordpress/fork-road-two-paths-forward/