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This photo of John Floyd King was taken during his U.S. Army service during World War I. Written beneath the photo was “Some soldier, eh!” (Photo courtesy of the Brennan Family Collection)

Life

The Separate Lives of the Man Who Fell — Part 3

Alec Hardin MacDonald appeared in the census count as a resident of Takotna Village in Interior Alaska

John Floyd King served in the elite Rainbow Division during World War I. By the end of his tenure, he was a machine gunner fighting in France. (Photo courtesy of the Brennan Family Collection)

Life

The Separate Lives of the Man Who Fell — Part 2

John Floyd King disappeared from the record and Doc MacDonald came into being

When Takotna resident Alec MacDonald registered in February 1942 for the military draft, he falsely claimed to have been born in 1900 in Chautauqua County, Kansas.

Life

The Separate Lives of the Man Who Fell — Part 1

Even now, with much more of the truth laid bare, mysteries remain

“A Thousand Cabbages and other poems” by Mary Mullen. Published by Hardscratch Press, 2023. (Promotional photo)

Life

Taking a wider view

‘A Thousand Cabbages and other poems’ sweeps across time and distance in Mullen’s second outing

Photo #1.628 courtesy of the Seward Community Library Association Dr. John Baughman’s wife, Mina (left), poses in this circa 1905-10 photo with Mrs. E.E. Hale on a Seward city sidewalk near the Alaska Central Railroad and Seward’s first school.

Life

Dr. Baughman’s Unusual Second Job, Part 2

Dr. John A. Baughman also filed a lot of paperwork.

(Photo from a lantern slide courtesy of Gary Titus This 1904 Baughman Collection photo shows two hunters—Dr. John Baughman (left, holding girl) and W.H. Case—with four mountain goats they killed near the summit of White Pass and brought back to their home in Skagway later by train.

Life

Dr. Baughman’s Unusual Second Job, Part One

In the late 1990s, Michael Hankins and two of his pals were treasure hunting near Old Knik when…

The date is Oct. 19, 1957. The place is an airport in Kokomo, Indiana. The occasion is her departure from the Midwest. Her ultimate destination is Whittier, Alaska. (Photo courtesy Fair Family Collection)

Life

Jane’s Story

I imagine my mother’s inability at this moment to truly understand the change her life is about to…

Bank robber Paul Stavenjord was back in the news in big way in the late 1990s. In this KTUU-television images, he is seen here in law-enforcement custody.

Life

Unfortunate Choices: Three lives and a robbery gone awry, Part 4

Upon his release from prison in Lompoc, California, in March 1975, Stavenjord vowed to turn his life around…

A year after the 1971 bank robbery, two of the suspects pleaded guilty and were sentenced to six years in prison, as seen in this Anchorage Daily Times headline from August 1972. The third suspect pleaded guilty a few days later.

Life

Unfortunate Choices: Three lives and a robbery gone awry, Part 3

Even the U.S. attorney himself promoted a sentence shorter than the maximum because of the youth of the…

Trainer Ted Fields, of Anchorage, stands with his search dog, Hite, in Seward in August 1971. (Original photo from the Seward Phoenix Log)

Life

Unfortunate Choices: 3 lives and a robbery gone awry, Part 2

When this part of the story begins, they have been behind bars for one year.

Seward Police Chief Bill Bagron puts his feet up contentedly after the arrest of all three suspects in the robbery of a Seward bank in August 1971. (Original photo from the Seward Phoenix Log)

Life

Unfortunate Choices: 3 lives and a robbery gone awry, Part 1

Perhaps for the first time they were realizing that they had made a series of questionable decisions

After 18 years at Leavenworth prison in Kansas, William Dempsey was returned to McNeil Island federal penitentiary in Washington in April 1939. He would escape from McNeil nine months later. (Photo courtesy of the University of Alaska Fairbanks archives)

Life

A Nexus of Lives and Lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 9

On Jan. 30, 1940, nearly eight months later, Dempsey, while on a road gang in a heavy fog,…

Murder suspect William Dempsey is pictured shortly after he was captured on the outskirts of Seward in early September 1919. (Photo courtesy of the University of Alaska Fairbanks archives)

Life

A Nexus of Lives and Lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 8

Dempsey spent more than a decade attempting to persuade a judge to recommend him for executive clemency

After Pres. Woodrow Wilson commuted his death sentence to life in prison, William Dempsey (inmate #3572) was delivered from Alaska to the federal penitentiary on McNeil Island, Wash. These were his intake photos. (Photo courtesy of the University of Alaska Fairbanks archives)

Life

A Nexus of Lives and Lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 7

The opening line of Dempsey’s first letter to Bunnell — dated March 19, 1926 — got right to…

In 1914, Pres. Woodrow Wilson appointed Charles Bunnell to be the judge of the Federal District Court for the Third and Fourth divisions of the Alaska Territory. (Photo courtesy of the University of Alaska Fairbanks archives)

Life

A Nexus of Lives and Lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 6

Prosecution lawyers were fortunate to have a fallback plan: witnesses to the crime.

This photo postcard, purported showing William Dempsey (L) and an unnamed partner, was one of two such cards that Dempsey sent from Alaska to his parents in Cleveland in late 1918 and early 1920. (Photo courtesy of the University of Alaska Fairbanks archives)

Life

A Nexus of Lives and Lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 5

Although William Dempsey didn’t know it as he fled for his life, several things were working against him

As a teen-ager convicted of larceny in 1916, William Dempsey was incarcerated at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio. (Image from the National Register of Historical Places)

Life

A Nexus of Lives and Lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 3

The lines of history are most accurately understood in retrospect.

Marie (sometimes called Margaret) Lavor was buried in the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery in 1919 after she was murdered by William Dempsey. (Image provided by findagrave.com website)

Life

A Nexus of Lives and Lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 4

AUTHOR’S NOTE: In the first three parts of this story, William Dempsey, who confessed to killing two Alaskans…

In 1918, a year before he would be gunned down on the streets of Seward, U.S. Deputy Marshal Isaac Evans posed for this photo on his Port of Seward waterfront pass. (Image courtesy of the Resurrection Bay Historical Society)

Life

A nexus of lives and lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 2

Anchorage authorities believed Dempsey was planning to sail from Seward and flee to the States

This artwork, as well as the story that accompanied it in the October 1953 issue of Master Detective magazine, sensationalized and fictionalized an actual murder in Anchorage in 1919. The terrified woman in the image is supposed to represent Marie Lavor.

Life

A nexus of lives and lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 1

William Dempsey and two other men slipped away from the rest of the prison road gang on fog-enshrouded…