On August 28, 2016, 25-year-old caucasian male Bryant C. “Brie” De Husson was found shot to death in Anchorage, Alaska, along the bike path in Valley of the Moon Park just before 2 a.m. As officers searched the grounds, they discovered a second victim nearby under the pavilion, 34-year-old Kevin Turner; both were pronounced dead at the scene. Police soon released De Husson's identity and age, and confirmed the location and timing of the discovery.
Detectives canvassed the area and neighborhoods but initially found little to go on. There was no indication the two victims knew one another. Bullets recovered from the scene were sent to the Alaska State Crime Lab, which later confirmed they matched rounds from two other Anchorage homicides that summer, signaling a single weapon — and likely a single killer — had struck again.
A break came months later after a pre-dawn confrontation on November 12, 2016, when an Anchorage police officer was ambushed and wounded during a downtown stop. The suspect, 40-year-old James Dale Ritchie, was shot and killed by responding officers. Investigators recovered a Colt Python. 357 revolver from the scene; ballistics tied that gun to five unsolved Anchorage murders from July and August 2016, including the killings of Bryant C. De Husson and Kevin Turner at Valley of the Moon Park.
In April 2017, after months of forensic work and case review, Anchorage police announced they had sufficient probable cause to conclude that James Dale Ritchie was responsible for the five murders linked by the same handgun. With the suspect deceased, there were no arrests; the department closed the cases while continuing to document the evidentiary trail that connected Ritchie to each shooting.
