While Alaska is a powerhouse and a progressive state in the United States, it also has the unfortunate reputation of being a very hedonistic place.
It’s true that some of the world’s most terrifying serial murderers have called Alaska home. Whether you label them as wicked, troubled, or just mentally sick, serial murderers do exist.
Today, I am going to talk about some of the most notorious serial killers in Alaska, who really took their name to history.
1. Robert Hansen
While many of his neighbors in Anchorage believed Robert Hansen to be a good father, devoted husband, prosperous businessman, and proficient hunter, his neighbors eventually found out that he was the most notorious serial killer in Alaska who had killed close to twenty young women over more than ten years.
Hansen, the proprietor of a well-known Alaskan bakery, frequently prowled the streets of downtown Anchorage looking for exotic dancers or prostitutes who he might persuade being alone with him.
2. Israel Keyes
Israel Keyes, age 34, kidnapped Samantha Koenig, age 18, from the coffee shop where she was a barista on February 1, 2012. Koenig was the victim of a sexual assault and murder by Keyes, who then dumped the teen’s body in a shed on his property while he went on a vacation.
Even though Koenig had been dead for a few days, Keyes was able to convince her parents to pay a ransom once he got back from vacation, and the police were able to follow the serial killers in Alaska movements thanks to bank transactions.
3. Miranda Barbour
At the age of 18, Miranda Barbour admitted to killing a guy who was 42 years old. She was a young mom to a newborn girl and newlywed to her spouse, Elytte, when the two of them agreed to kill Troy LaFerrara in November 2013. He was stabbed 20 times in the neck.
Check out the most dangerous cities in Alaska.
4. Klutuk
An Eskimo man by the name of Klutuk became a legend in Alaska after he ruthlessly murdered several trappers, both white and native, who he thought were invading his area close to the Kuskokwim River and the Cook Inlet.
Beginning in 1919 and lasting almost 20 years, Klutuk’s reign of terror resulted in the deaths of many men from gunshot and ax wounds.
5. James Dale Ritchie
James Dale Ritchie opened fire on Anchorage police on November 12, 2016, after they had been called because he had allegedly refused to pay a cab fare. Officers from the police opened fire back on the serial killer in Alaska, the 40-year-old.
However, once specialists ran ballistics tests on the firearm Ritchie used, they discovered it was the identical one that had been used in five other homicides that had remained unsolved.
6. Joshua Wade
Joshua Wade, then 27 years old, broke into the house of Mindy Schloss, a neighbor in Anchorage, on August 3, 2007, and intimidated her until she gave him her ATM card and PIN code. The 52-year-old nurse was then tied up, coerced into her car, driven an hour north, taken into the woods, shot in the head, and had her corpse set ablaze.
Also take a look at these major prisons in Alaska.
7. Michael Silka
Alaska State Troopers went to the Fairbanks cabin of 25-year-old Michael Silka on April 29, 1984, worried that the man could have been hurt due to the fresh blood on the snow outside his residence. The soldiers left when Silka reassured the authorities that the blood came from a moose hide, not suspecting that the guy had killed his neighbor Roger Culp the day before. He is a most ferocious serial killer in Alaska.
8. Thomas Richard Bunday
Thomas Richard Bunday, a technical sergeant assigned to the Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska, killed four women and an 11-year-old child between the years 1979 and 1981.
The FBI’s psychological profile and an eyewitness account helped the investigators track down Bunday, who was subsequently apprehended. Bunday had already been moved to another base close to Wichita Falls, Texas, by the time investigators named him their main suspect.
9. Edward Krause
In southeast Alaska, numerous men suddenly vanished between 1912 and 1915. James Christie was one of the employees of a nearby mine, and the administrators of the company engaged a detective firm to find him.
Christie reportedly vanished after being last spotted by a guy posing as a U.S. A summons for the employee was sent by a marshal named Edward Krause to the Alaska Treadwell Gold Mining Company.
10. Louis D. Hastings
Louis D. Hastings, a 39-year-old jobless computer programmer who had relocated to McCarthy, Alaska from California three years prior, went to his neighbor Chris Richards’ home on March 1, 1983, and murdered the young man without cause.
Fortunately, Richards was able to get away and escaped the vicious attack. Many of the village’s other 21 people, though, weren’t as fortunate. By the time his murderous rampage came to an end, Hastings had killed six people, and he was another top serial killer in Alaska.
It wouldn’t be completely inaccurate to suggest that there are still unidentified serial murderers out there who may be mingling with the wider public.