White/Caucasian male Jerome Patrick Keown, age 19, was one of eight people killed aboard the 58-foot seiner Investor in the waters off Craig, Alaska, in early September 1982. The Investor, owned and captained by 28-year-old Mark Coulthurst of Blaine, Washington, had pulled into Craig over Labor Day weekend with Coulthurst's wife Irene, their two young children, and four teenage deckhands, including Jerome Patrick Keown.
After a night in town on September 5, the vessel was seen leaving the harbor the following morning with a lone figure at the wheel; by September 7, it lay at anchor near Fish Egg Island, where it burned. When authorities finally got aboard the charred hull, they recovered remains of the family and crew; evidence indicated the victims had been shot—likely with a. 22-caliber firearm—before the fire was set.
The dead included Mark and Irene Coulthurst and their children, Kimberly and John, as well as four crewmen close in age to Jerome Patrick Keown: Chris Heyman, Dean Moon, and Mike Stewart. The disaster—part massacre, part arson—stunned the tight fishing community and quickly became known as Alaska's worst unsolved mass homicide. Memorials and remembrances in the years since have emphasized that the teenagers aboard, including Jerome Patrick Keown, were hardworking deckhands at the end of a long salmon season.
Witness accounts from the harbor and surrounding waters sketched a chilling timeline. Early on September 6, multiple people reported seeing the Investor drift away from Craig with a single person visible in the pilothouse; later, a young man in the Investor's skiff was observed heading back toward town, saying he was going to get help. The next day, townspeople spotted the anchored seiner; soon after, fire engulfed the vessel on the water. The blaze not only destroyed the Investor but also the clearest physical evidence that might have pointed to the killer.
After a two-year manhunt, troopers arrested a former Coulthurst deckhand, John Kenneth Peel, in 1984. He was charged with eight counts of first-degree murder and arson, and prosecutors pursued a largely circumstantial case. The first trial in 1986 ended in a hung jury after months of testimony and days of deliberation. A second trial concluded on April 23, 1988, when a jury in Juneau found Peel not guilty on all counts. Peel remained the only person ever arrested in the case, and the murders of Jerome Patrick Keown, age 19, and the seven others aboard the Investor remain officially unsolved.
Years later, Peel filed a civil suit over his prosecution and reached a settlement in 1997 in which the state admitted no wrongdoing; the criminal case has never been revived, and no other suspects have been publicly charged. For the families and friends of the victims—including those who grew up with Jerome Patrick Keown—the story endures as a grim, unanswered chapter in Alaska's maritime history.
