White / Caucasian male Jeremie Speaker, age 26, was discovered on the afternoon of Sunday, May 14, 2017, near Mile 4.8 of Knik River Road, just south of Palmer, Alaska. Alaska State Troopers and the Alaska Bureau of Investigation responded, and the scene hinted at violence: two burned vehicles sat close to where his body was found and were impounded for forensic work as investigators tried to trace their connection to the killing.
An autopsy and identification followed, and troopers initially kept details about the manner of death close, even as early reports pointed to a shooting.
Within days, the investigation yielded arrests. On Tuesday, May 16, troopers and investigators from the Palmer ABI and Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory identified and detained two Palmer residents at a downtown motel: 38-year-old Robert Barker and 35-year-old Joed Weyand. Each was charged with first-degree murder and booked into the Mat-Su Pretrial Facility, where both were held without bail as the case moved forward. Authorities said the burned vehicles had been seized early in the inquiry, part of a broader push to reconstruct the hours leading to the discovery along the Knik River road.
By midweek, troopers publicly confirmed the homicide investigation and the arrests, and wire reports echoed the terse outline: the body found off the Old Glenn Highway spur near the river; the swift identification of suspects; the no-bail holds; and the unanswered questions about what precipitated the shooting and how the fatal encounter unfolded in that stretch of road south of Palmer. Though early summaries avoided graphic detail, memorial listings and local reporting aligned on the central fact that the 26-year-old had been shot, with the case rapidly transitioning from a remote-road death report to a charged murder file naming two local men as the accused.
