Fishing boat massacre
Family and crew slain in ’82; killer never found
There were no Maydays, no cries for help of any kind, when the Investor started to burn on Sept. 7, 1982.
The 58-foot fishing boat was anchored in a cove off the coast of Craig, an Alaskan town with a population of about 600, when smoke started to rise from the hull. A blaze soon engulfed the ship, making it impossible for other vessels to try to save anyone who might still be alive. But it was unlikely any living thing could have survived the inferno.
It took more than four hours to control the flames enough to board the smoldering ruin that had once been an $850,000 salmon-fishing boat, owned by Mark Coulthurst, 28, of Blaine, Wash. Extinguishing it took two days.
Troopers soon found victims, although it was hard to tell at first whether the piles of remains were even human. The three adults and a child were all burned beyond recognition.
Identification required dental records, and it took days to determine that the charred remains were what was left of Coulthurst; his wife, Irene, 28, and his daughter, Kimberly, 5. The third adult was Michael Stewart, 19, Coulthurst’s cousin and a deckhand on the Investor.
Coulthurst and his wife, who was pregnant, had each been shot several times.
Two days later, investigators found more pieces — bones, teeth and a torso. The speculation was that these were the remains of other crew members, Dean Moon and Jerome Keown, both 19, and Chris Heyman, 18.
Coulthurst’s son, John, 4, may have been sleeping in the area of the boat that was hardest hit by the fire. No remains of the boy were ever found.
The coroner said that the victims had died before the fire started; there was no carbon monoxide in their lungs. Blood alcohol tests suggested the adults were drunk.
It was impossible to determine if the fragments added up to eight bodies, the number of people thought to have been on the ship. Moon and Heyman 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.
Coulthurst was hardworking and well-respected in the community, a go-getter who dreamed of retiring at 50, wrote Leland E. Hale, in his book “What Happened in Craig: Alaska’s Worst Unsolved Mass Murder.” He had started fishing in his early 20s and was good at it. In one memorable week in 1979, Hale wrote, he’d caught $105,000 worth of fish. But the young skipper also had a cocky attitude and a quick temper, and that got him into fights.
Witnesses said that they saw a man in his early 20s, about 150 pounds and wearing a baseball cap, steering the Investor’s skiff away from the boat on the day of the fire. Some locals who knew Coulthurst and the men he hired as crew said they did not recognize the man in the skiff.
Others said he looked a lot like someone Coulthurst had hired in the past — John Peel, 23. Peel had been with Coulthurst since 1980, the first years he was working on fishing boats. But in 1982, he was a crew member on a different ship. Peel had also dated Coulthurst’s sister in the past.
No physical evidence tied Peel to the crime. Police focused on him because his appearance matched that of the man witnesses said they saw on the skiff. But as Craig’s mayor told The Associated Press, “There were probably 500 guys in town at that time that looked just like him.”
Things got worse for Peel when he failed a polygraph test, and acquaintances said that Coulthurst had fired him for alleged drinking and drug abuse.
Two years after the fire, police arrested Peel in his hometown of Bellingham, Wash., and charged him with first-degree murder for the eight deaths and first-degree arson.
The prosecution’s theory was that Peel, angered at being fired, flew into a rage and shot Coulthurst and everyone on the boat. Then he used the fire to cover up his crime.
Peel’s trial started in March 1986, with the case based on circumstantial evidence. One witness testified he was taking a nap a month after the murders when a neighbor’s target practice jogged his memory of screams and shots coming from the Investor. He assured the court he was not dreaming. A skipper who knew Peel said he saw him board the Investor on the night of the killings. Another witness said he sold Peel gasoline hours before the fire. Others talked of bad blood between the men.
Peel’s attorneys said that it was possible someone else could have committed the crimes—perhaps a hired killer or a crewman whose body was never identified.
Six months of testimony and six days of deliberations resulted in a hung jury and a mistrial.
Peel’s second trial started in January 1988. Newspapers noted that it was the state’s longest-running prosecution and, at $2 million, the most expensive. This time, it took three months of testimony and four days of deliberation to acquit Peel.
Two years after his acquittal, Peel filed a $177 million civil suit against the state for wrongful prosecution. Seven years later, he settled for a reported $900,000.
In an interview on “A Current Affair” shortly after his acquittal, a reporter asked Peel what he thought it would take to clear his name. “For them to solve the case,” he said.
Thirty-seven years later, the identity of the killer remains a mystery.