White/Caucasian male David Bartholomew “Barry” McNulty, age 52, was working the late shift at the Garden Island Party Store on Illinois Street in Fairbanks on the night of May 30, 1994, when a panic alarm summoned police at 11:07 p.m. Responding officers found the male clerk fatally shot inside; the cash register had been emptied, pointing to a robbery that turned deadly. The quiet routine of closing time was replaced by the harsh geometry of crime-scene tape and the unanswered question of who had come through the door in those final minutes.
McNulty, a 52-year-old man known to friends as “Barry,” was soon memorialized by loved ones as investigators worked the case. Public listings and memorial records fixed his age and date of death, while local mentions kept alive the details of the scene: a convenience-style store, a single gunshot, and a cash till left bare. The picture that emerged was stark and narrow—no publicly named assailant, no clear getaway noted in open sources—only the late-evening interruption of ordinary work by violence.
In the months and years that followed, the homicide remained unsolved. No arrests were publicly announced, and authorities continued to describe the case as an open investigation, seeking tips from anyone who might remember something from that night. Decades later, the killing of the 52-year-old male clerk still appears on cold-case roundups and community callouts, a reminder that the person or persons who entered the Garden Island Party Store that night have not been brought to justice.
