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- [00:00]
Wesley Early
Support for Alaska Public Media On Demand comes from Siri, an Alaska Native corporation with operations and investments spanning five continents.
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Davey Lubin
45 states and two US territories.
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Kyle Hopkins
One big takeaway for me was I think we all assume that this process works better than it does.
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Wesley Early
A Bethel Cold Case Murder Spotlights faults in the Alaska Justice System From Alaska Public Media. This is statewide news on Alaska News Nightly for Friday to see December 26th. Good evening, I'm Wesley Early. Also tonight, Juneau residents should expect a lot of snow in the coming days. I don't think you're gonna be traveling on the roads if we get 20.
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Brent Bennett
Inches of snow in 24 hours.
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Wesley Early
So make sure you have food, fuel. Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly. The $900 billion spending law signed by President Donald Trump last week includes special benefits for soldiers and Coast Guardsmen in Alaska, hundreds of millions in new construction in the state, and a continued push to reactivate the US Navy base at adac. The Alaska Beacon reports that the yearly bill known as the National Defense Authorization act is normally a must pass piece of legislation and despite deadlocks on other key issues, it sailed through the US House and Senate with bipartisan votes. The bill raises milit military pay by just under 4% nationwide, but soldiers and active duty members of the Coast Guard in Alaska will also receive a round trip flight home each year. The bill also contained millions for additional cold weather gear and vehicles for soldiers deployed in Alaska. Earlier this year, the big beautiful bill act included $115 million for exploration and development of existing Arctic infrastructure. The new spending law requires reports every 90 days on how that money is being spent and quote, an assessment of the feasibility of any viol viable infrastructure options in the Arctic region. In an interview with the Beacon, Senator Dan Sullivan said that was targeted language for adac. However, Senator Lisa Murkowski noted to the Beacon that it could also apply to other Arctic infrastructure throughout the state. In May 2015, 23 year old bethel resident Eunice Whitman was killed. The next day her boyfriend Justin Paul was arrest for her murder and spent the next seven years behind bars without ever facing a trial. Then in 2022, Paul was released after the evidence that held up prosecutors case against him fell apart. Now, more than 10 years after Whitman's murder, someone is still getting away with it. Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica reporter Kyle Hopkins recently wrote about Whitman's murder and Paul's release. He says the incident speaks to wider issues within Alaska's justice system involving delayed trials, shoddy investigations and a lack of justice for rural I Started looking at.
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Kyle Hopkins
The story and was trying to understand how it would take six or seven years for someone accused of murder to get to trial. You know, like, why were there so many delays? Because you do have a right to a speedy trial. Our process is supposed to move much more quickly. And so I was trying to understand why it took so long. And the more I learned about that, how common it was for cases to be delayed and delayed and delayed dozens of times, sometimes 5, 7, 10 years. That actually led me to write a bunch of stories before this one like this. This story set me on a path of writing maybe six other stories before this that had nothing to do with it that were just purely about pre trial delay and this gridlock that we have in our Alaska courts.
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Wesley Early
So who was Eunice Whitman and how did she die?
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Kyle Hopkins
Eunice Whitman was, she was a 23 year old woman from Bethel, also from McCorjack. She had been living in Bethel long enough that she had gone to the Yubik Immersion School there. So a child of Bethel growing up in Bethel, now a young woman living there, she died on May 24, 2015, in what this one attorney who was familiar with the case described as kind of almost like a serial killer type of crime scene. And you know, I don't say that lightly. I mean the point was it was such an unusually like violent and public killing that it was, it stood out among, you know, even in Alaska, where we unfortunately have high rates of homicide.
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Wesley Early
And how was Justin Paul identified as a suspect in Whitman's murder?
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Kyle Hopkins
You know, if you're familiar with Bethel, there's the boardwalk that's kind of in the center of town. And she, her, she was found there, her body was found there at about 4am on a Sunday morning. And then so police, you know, police arrive and they rope it off and it's a crime scene throughout the day. And then that evening, Eunice's boyfriend, this guy named Justin Paul, called 911 and said that he was looking, I mean, he was aware that there was a body in the center of town. Like the whole, everyone in town knew because it was so public. And he called 911 saying that he was worried that that was his, what he called his fiance, but certainly his girlfriend. And he said, you know, I'm worried it's Eunice Whitman. And the police said at that point they had not identified the body. And they said, well, why don't you come to the police department and we'll talk about it. And so he comes to the Police Department about 6:30pm on that Sunday and then just doesn't leave. He's kind of behind bars for the next six or seven years.
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Wesley Early
And why did it take so long for his case to be dismissed, despite what you write is kind of a lack of evidence?
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Kyle Hopkins
Some evidence was presented to this grand jury that suggested that the police said, look, this is the boyfriend of the woman who died. We found a backpack at his house where he was staying, and it was full of bloody clothes. And we think the blood on those clothes is going to connect him to this murder. So from the grand jury's perspective, it's a really damning case. It's seems like a slam dunk of a case, but the problem was when that evidence started to be tested at the crime lab, you know, they send that evidence down to Anchorage to be tested. Well, the blood, it didn't match her DNA. It was his own DNA. So that evidence fell apart really early. And meantime, there are other people, other potential suspects that were not, like, aggressively investigated. There are people, certainly in Bethel, who feels that police had the right person. The detective who led that investigation for Bethel police, she thinks he did it. The victim's family, they think he did it. Right. But the problem with the way that this played out through the police investigation and the courts is that the steps were not taken to exclude and kind of close the door systematically to these other likely suspects. And so years later, the case gets thrown out and no one is served. Right. You have a defendant who, if innocent, was kept robbed of his freedom for seven years, and if guilty, as in the eyes of the police detective, well, that case was dismissed. Right. So justice was served to no one.
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Wesley Early
So with Paul released, you write that the case has gone back basically to square one, and the state's missing and murdered indigenous persons unit has taken over. Has the unit had much luck in solving any of these cases?
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Kyle Hopkins
You know, I have a line in the story, one of the stories, that says that they have not solved a cold case homicide in their tenure since. Since they were created. So they've been around three years. They haven't made an arrest in a cold case mmip homicide, which, you know, I was careful with that fact. I think, to be fair, to provide context, what they would say is that they've been hard at work. They said they've been working their butts on these cases and that they've done other things like help connect families who had lost track of someone who a family member had gone missing and reconnected people who had lost track of each other and had relatives who they could no longer find. So they said, look, we've had successes, but just not yet in the arena of making an arrest on one of these cases.
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Wesley Early
What does this case say broadly about the justice system in Alaska for the.
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Kyle Hopkins
People who believe that police did have the right person, they're not satisfied because it never even got to a trial because there were so many problems with frankly, like the investigation and the way that the case was handled in the courts. One big takeaway for me was I think we all assume that this process works better than it does because we've all seen a bunch of law and order and we're like, yeah, you know, someone gets arrested and then they're going to go to trial and if the evidence shows they didn't do it in the first 10 minutes and that person excluded, now we're on to the next suspect. And like, no, I mean, you can be indicted on an assumption and then when the lab results kind of blow up that assumption, you're not necessarily gonna be released. I mean, maybe you are if you have resources and you could pay for like a private attorney and who's aggressive. But, you know, not necessarily, like you might spend years in jail until they get sorted out.
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Wesley Early
Kyle Hopkins is a reporter with the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica. His story can be read at adn.com, a longer version of is on our website, alaskapublic.org still to come on Alaska News nightly, an Utga Ygvik artist is designing a workbook to help young children learn Inupiaq.
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Alaina Bankston
You're learning the Alphabet, the numbers, the colors, and we have all that in English. But I'm like, what if we had that in utak?
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Wesley Early
That's ahead. Stay with us. Heavy snow is forecast to hit Juneau and other parts of Alaska's Panhandle this weekend following days of record breaking frigid temperatures. According to the National Weather Service, Juneau is forecast to see more than a foot of snowfall in 24 hours, beginning late this evening through tomorrow evening. That storm is an atmospheric river and will bring warmer temperatures which could reach into the high 20s. Andrew Park, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Juneau, says residents should pay attention to the weather and prepare for hazardous conditions. Definitely be prepared. You're not going to be, I don't think you're going to be traveling on the roads if we get 20 inches.
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Alaina Bankston
Of snow and 24 hours.
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Wesley Early
So make sure you have food, fuel, take care of the things you need to do for stuff like that. Like now the forecasted Heavy snow comes after the capital city broke multiple record low daily temperatures earlier this week. Just Tuesday, Juneau saw a new daily record low at the Juneau International Airport of -10 degrees Fahrenheit. It broke the previous record of -3 degrees set back in 1971 for that date and marked the fifth day this month that the airport recorded lows reaching below zero. City officials are advising residents to ensure heating sources in their homes are monitored and maintained. Earlier this week, Juneau saw two destructive residential fires in a mobile home park in the course of just three days. While the causes of both fires are still under investigation, officials warn that residential fires are more common with the onset of cold weather because of heating system failures. Juneau Harbor Master Matt Creswell says the forecasted snowfall and rise in temperature could cause problems for boats at Juno's Harbors.
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Alaina Bankston
If you got a boat, it's time.
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Wesley Early
To get down and check on it.
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Alaina Bankston
Take care of it and get ready for what will be our third round.
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Wesley Early
Of snow in this so far this month. Juneau's emergency warming shelter remains open to patrons each night and transportation is available to Juneau's Glory hall homeless Shelter. Major changes in jury service are coming for the western Alaska hub community of Bethel beginning in January. The state court system is putting a pause on drawing jurors from a dozen Nearby Vill. As KYUK's Evan Erickson reports. They say the move to rely solely on Bethel based jurors is due to limited housing options.
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Brent Bennett
Residents of Bethel will soon be significantly more likely to be called for trial jury service. That's after the Alaska court system announced that it will not be pulling trial jurors from a dozen nearby villages beginning in January. Judge Brent Bennett issued the order. He says the move comes down to one core housing.
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Alaina Bankston
We have within the last year or so been noticing that we've been having more and more diffic with making hotel accommodations for the jurors who are coming into the community.
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Brent Bennett
Weather delays and cancellations are the norm when flying in the region, and Bennett's order specifically cites the risks of jurors getting stranded in Bethel without options for shelter.
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Alaina Bankston
We're bringing these folks in by plane and they may have. If we don't have a place for them to stay, we're flying them back and forth.
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Brent Bennett
Bennett says the court has run into situations where jurors from villages needed to be flown back and forth every day for trials lasting multiple weeks. Typhoon Halong made the sit, but Bennett said the problems existed before the storm.
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Alaina Bankston
At this point, we are down to one hotel that we are able to use in Bethel.
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Brent Bennett
That one hotel is the 39 room Longhouse Hotel, located around a half mile from the courthouse. General Manager Brandon west says the hotel was booked pretty much solid with relief workers in the weeks that followed Typhoon Ha Long, but otherwise, he says the hotel has worked well with the court system in recent years.
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Alaina Bankston
We've always handled their jury load. The only time that we've not accepted the jury member is if they were on our Do Not Rent list.
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Brent Bennett
The changes to jury service are scheduled to run through June 2026, but they could be extended. West says he welcomes the additional business that comes with bringing in outside jurors. The dozen outside communities currently eligible for jury selection all fall within a 50 mile radius of Bethel. That 50 mile radius has been criticized in the past for leaving out numerous communities culturally bound to the YK Delta but generally unrepresented on Bethel juries. The upcoming changes also increase the duration of TR jury service in Bethel from one to two months. Grand jury service, which was already limited to Bethel based jurors, is being extended.
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Alaina Bankston
To three months based on taking these jurors from these outer communities out of the pool. The total population that we have to draw from in Bethel drops with this smaller jury pool.
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Brent Bennett
Bennett says the extensions will cut down on the frequency that the same jurors are called and increase juror diversity. Bethel has historically been one of the most expensive courts in terms of jury Service. In its FY2024 report, the Alaska Court System noted that trials held in Bethel accounted for almost half of the nearly $2 million the state spent on juror expenses that year. But a court spokesperson said these costs have been dropping and that the jury changes are not based on budget concerns. Bennett says the order to exclude non Bethel communities could be extended beyond the end of June if additional housing options don't open up in the communities. But he says it's not intended to be permanent in Bethel. I'm Evan Erickson.
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Wesley Early
The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, or deed, found that the Juneau School District did not provide occupational therapy services to some students that were supposed to receive them last school year. According to a report from the department, the district lost an occupational therapist last year and did not follow the correct procedure to ensure students would continue receiving services. Some students with an Individualized Education Program, or iep, require a certain amount of occupational therapy during the school year. Don Enoch is DEED's special education administrator. He says that when a school loses staff to provide a specific special education service a replacement should be found as quickly as possible, and a compensatory education plan must be offered to students in the meantime.
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Alaina Bankston
The IEP guarantees the parents will receive those services for their students, and when that's not done, the district's obligated to make that right.
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Wesley Early
The report states that the district must offer services to make up for lost time. It also has to send a spreadsheet to DEED that lists which students qualify for services and whether families decided to go through with the services. The initial complaint was filed in June, and DEED issued the final report in November. In an email to ktoo, Juno School District Student Services Director Jason de Camillus said the district worked to resolve the issue before November. He said fewer than 30 students were affected before the report was completed. Decamillis says the district hired new staff, provided makeup services or created a plan to provide services in the current school year. In the email, he said, quote, we do take these gaps very seriously and proactively address known issues as soon as possible with as much communication as possible, end quote Enoch says many parents don't realize the state is a resource to help students with IEPs. In addition to investigating complaints, DEED can also hold due process hearings and mediate meetings between parents and the school districts about IEPs. He says deed can also help explain an IEP to parents. He wants more parents to reach out to Deeds if they're having issues.
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Alaina Bankston
We don't get very many calls from parents at all and it's kind of concerning sometimes because we hear things that are going on out in the communities.
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Kyle Hopkins
And we have to go out and investigate.
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Alaina Bankston
But one phone call from a parent could help clue us into problems that a district is having.
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Wesley Early
The district has until the end of next year to complete all compensatory services as outlined by deed. International travel takes a lot of work and planning, even for a solo traveler. But for nearly 20 years, a Sitka High School Spanish teacher has been taking a growing group of students, sometimes dozens, to Guatemala each spring. While the language immersion program has been a big hit, she says after this year she's hanging up her hat. KCAW's Catherine Rose reports.
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Kathryn Rose
Nearly 20 years ago, Sitka High School Spanish teacher Ariel Starbuck took her first couple of international trips with students, first to Costa Rica, then to Spain with a popular tour company and several other school groups. But she said something was missing.
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Davey Lubin
It was a beautiful trip, but it had a lot of components that I thought were missing from travel. Everything was really geared towards high school kids, so not a lot of cultural food like A lot of burgers and fries and just it was so many people going to the same places at once too. And I felt like they didn't really have to speak Spanish, they just spoke English altogether.
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Kathryn Rose
When she got back from Spain, her friend Davey Lubin and his family had just returned from a trip to Guatemala. And she said he was eager to tell her about a man they met there, Rigoberto Zamora Choruk, who operates a traveling library in the country. Lubin connected Starbuck with Charuk, and the next year she hopped on a plane with around 15 students and some funds they raised to support his efforts to open a rural school. They had dinner and met his family, heard his life story, and then they all traveled on the library bus to northern Guatemala.
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Davey Lubin
Think of like a 1985 Detroit school bus. The shelves are lining the sides of the buses and there are chess tables in the middle. So they've taken out a lot of the stuff. And every town you roll into, you know, the kids get so excited to see the library bus coming into town because that's kind of their only access to books. It's really limited.
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Kathryn Rose
The trip was a hit. It became an annual tradition for Starbucks Spanish students, one that gave them a big boost in their language fluency.
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Davey Lubin
Kids live with families. They go to school for four hours in the morning, eight to noon, with a one on one Spanish teacher, which is awesome. And it just meets them wherever they are. And it's just, it's something I can't recreate in the classroom. Right. I can't give that individualized attention to each stud for four hours a day, every day.
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Kathryn Rose
Then each afternoon the students meet up and they venture out into the country, visiting bustling markets, women's weaving cooperatives, and coffee plantations. Every year they hike a volcano too, that's a touch warmer than Mount Edgecumbe.
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Davey Lubin
Sometimes they get to the top and they roast marshmallows over the lava. The very first year we went like we were able to poke sticks into the lava. Like we got so close to it, there were melted shoes all over the place. I know it's totally changed now. So now the lava's underground and you can see like where it bubbles up, but you don't, you can't like touch it like we could before. I can't even believe that we did that. I was, yeah.
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Kathryn Rose
Traveling with teens internationally is not always easy. A lot of work goes into making sure the trips are safe and successful. And even still, there have been some hairy moments, like the occasional injury and subsequent trip to the er. One student choked on a steak at the airport and ended up having emergency surgery abroad. And once a student mistakenly brought live ammunition in her bag.
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Davey Lubin
And Guatemala does not take kindly to that. And that was a big deal. The military had to come and, like, had to talk them down about letting her go back in the country. Lots of really fun things.
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Kathryn Rose
But the trips have generally gone smoothly with the help of many volunteer chaperones over the years. And Starbucks says the work has been worth the payoff. Students walk away from the experience with a stronger grasp of the language and a renewed appreciation for privileges taken for granted, like free education and access to books.
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Davey Lubin
Beyond teaching Spanish and that kind of stuff, just teaching kids that travel is amazing, and it really opens your eyes and broadens your perspective and gives you faith that you didn't know you had. Maybe it just provides so many things. And I think teaching these little travel skills and like, giving kids confidence that they can do it. Kids that have gone on the trip have gone back to Guatemala and volunteered or gotten jobs and done all kinds of things from there. Going back to Antigua to that place where we started, and I think that's so cool to think that I can help kids see this bigger perspective and that they can travel.
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Kathryn Rose
This coming spring, Starbuck plans to lead her final trip with students she's taught for 21 years and plans to retire at 25. And she has two kids in the Sitka school district, both with just a few years left before they leave the nest.
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Davey Lubin
I feel like this is going so fast. I don't want to miss any of their of their time. So I'm going to make this my last trip so I can just be part of whatever they're part of.
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Kathryn Rose
The final journey to Guatemala is shaping up to be a big one. As of right now, more than two dozen students are planning to go next March. But Starbucks says there are more trips in her future. After she retires, she's thinking about leading an adult Spanish class in Sitka that culminates in a similar international trip. No chaperones required. Reporting in Sitka, I'm Kathryn Rose.
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Wesley Early
From an Anupak Wordle game to a new language immersion program, A wave of efforts to revitalize the language has been sweeping across northern Alaska. Earlier this month, one utqiagvik artist received a Rasmussen Award to create an Inupiaq language workbook for kids. Alyona Neidson with the Alaska destination, has more.
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Alyona Knighton
Alaina Bankston has loved making art since she was a child. Now that she has a child of her own. She wants to use her art to help him learn the Inupiaq language. Bankston is an Utkarovic artist who recently received Erasmussen Award to create a workbook that will do just that. She will spend a year designing and illustrating a primer for children that teaches the Inupiac Alphabet and numbers. Bankston says her four year old son, Kahali Yaug was her inspiration for the project.
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Alaina Bankston
It all kind of started with creating for him and being able to use those resources. Now that he's like, getting into the workbooks, I'm like, oh, I need to create a workbook.
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Alyona Knighton
Bankston grew up learning Inupiac in school, and she says she's still on her own language learning journey. She practices speaking with elders and uses dictionaries and the Rosetta Stone. But Bankston says children learn differently than adults, and she wanted to create educational materials that cater to the youngest learners.
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Alaina Bankston
You start kindergarten, you have the whole workbook. You're learning the Alphabet, the numbers, the colors, and we have all that in English, But I'm like, what if we had that in a box?
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Alyona Knighton
Bingston says some resources for learning in UPIAC are available through the North Slough Borough School District, but she says regular parents might not have access to them.
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Alaina Bankston
I think it's really born out of necessity. Like, I'm sure there are resources out there, I'm sure there are things, but they're not something you can just go pick up at the store or buy online, you know?
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Alyona Knighton
Bankston's project is just one example of the language revitalization efforts in the region. Two years ago, the school district restarted its Inupiac immersion program. And a few years before that, Alaska Native linguists created a digital Inupiaq dictionary. And when the popular puzzle game Wordle took off across the country, local linguists and enthusiasts created an Inupiac version.
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Alaina Bankston
I think it's a really important journey, and I think we've been making big strides recently, you know, with the history of it. It's definitely a dying language, but I think it's important we keep it alive.
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Alyona Knighton
Bankston says everyone can do their part to preserve the language, and the workbook is just one step for her. In Anchorage, I am Alyona Knighton.
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Wesley Early
And that's all for this edition of Alaska News Nightly. If you missed any of tonight's stories, we're online at Alaska Public. And wherever you get your podcasts, we had reports tonight from Clarice Larson and Jamie Deep in Juneau, Evan Erickson in Bethel, Kathryn Rose in Sitka. And Alyona Nidzip in Anchorage. If you want to send us a news tip, question or comment, email us@newslaskapublic.org Our audio engineer is Crystal Hyde. Madeline Rose is our producer. And I'm Wesley Early. Have a great weekend. This is statewide news on Alaska public media.