Tag Archives: F/V Investor
Alaska: 8 People Were Murdered Aboard a Fishing Boat. Though It’s the State’s Most Infamous Mass Killing, It’s Also Unsolved.
It was the men who worked on a troller named “Casino” who first noticed the fire. Thick black smoke was rising high against the misty skies of a crisp fall afternoon. A “Casino” crewmember alerted authorities in nearby Craig, Alaska, then rode their fishing boat less than a mile across the water to see if they could help. Their destination was Fish Egg Island, on the west side of Prince of Wales Island. It’s been over 40 years since the fire, the investigation and the discovery of the largest mass murder in the history of the state of Alaska. The tragedy goes unsolved, despite two trials. Residents of the fishing village of Craig have heard all the theories about who committed the horrible crimes that obliterated an entire family. Eight people were living aboard, half of whom were members of the Coulthurst family. Fishing boat veterans who had no known enemies and piloted a beautiful seine admired by the local fishing fleet. >>click to read<< 11:31
The Alaskan Mass Murder Thats Remained Unsolved For More Than 30 Years
In 1982, the F/V Investor, a commercial fishing boat, was set ablaze on an island near Craig, a remote fishing village in Southeast Alaska. The charred remains of eight people were later found onboard: The boat’s owner, Mark Coulthurst, his pregnant wife, Irene, their two young children, and four deckhands; all shot and killed before the boat was burned. By 1984, John Kenneth Peel, a boatyard worker, was arrested for the crime, but later acquitted. Speaking with People in 2017, David McNeill, a former Washington state police detective involved in the investigation, said this is less an indication of innocence than a prosecutorial failure to present sufficient evidence against Peel. >click to read< 09:10
‘What Happened in Craig’: True crime novel delves into unsolved fishing-boat murders
It’s been 37 years, and the unsolved murder of eight family and crew members on a fishing boat in Craig, Alaska, is still the subject of conjecture among fishermen, legal analysts, crime followers and conspiracy theorists. Seattle author Leland Hale has now published a true crime account, based on his extensive research, of what happened on that day in early September 1982 and in the months and years of investigation and trials that followed. >click to read<10:16
‘What Happened in Craig’: Trying to piece together one of the state’s most perplexing murder mysteries
Leland Hale, along with his late coauthor Walter Gilmour, is known for writing the book “Butcher, Baker” about Anchorage serial killer Robert Hanson in the 1970s and early-’80s, which more recently was made into a movie. And Hale went back to 1980s Alaska for the subject of his new book, “What Happened in Craig?”, out this week.,, HALE: Let’s set the scene. It’s in September. It’s the end of the fishing season in Southeast Alaska. There’s a little town called Craig. There’s about a hundred fishing boats in town. So now the population has doubled and people are out celebrating because the fishing seasons over. They’ve made their money and one of the vessels there is actually from Blaine, Washington. >click to read<20:58
Exonerated Suspect in Unsolved Alaska Fishing Boat Mass Murder Breaks His Silence
Thirty-five years have passed since the massacre of eight people on the fishing boat Investor first shocked the nation. For those whose lives were upended by the killings, the case remains a painful cloud that refuses to lift. For John Peel, the former deckhand who police and prosecutors suspected of committing the grisly slayings, the mystery is something else: a question mark that still hangs over his head. Peel was charged with the killings in 1984, but after two expensive, headline-grabbing trials, he was found not guilty. Decades later, the case is Alaska’s worst unsolved mass homicide. Video, click here to read the story 12:25
8 killed in 1982 F/V Investor murders remembered in Blaine exhibit
Does the time ever come when a community stops remembering a murdered group of its own? In the case of Blaine, possibly not. Almost 34 years ago, a Blaine fishing family, including two children, and four young crewmen were killed aboard the Investor, a purse seiner found ablaze Sept. 7, 1982, near Craig, a fishing village in Southeast Alaska. A Bellingham resident, John Peel, was later tried twice for the slayings. His first trial ended in a hung jury; his second trial acquitted him. The Investor remains the biggest unresolved murder case in Alaska history. Read the rest here 15:05
