White/Caucasian male Mark Dease Coulthurst, age 28, was the ambitious young skipper of the 58-foot seiner Investor when he brought his crew and family into the port town of Craig, Alaska, at the close of the 1982 salmon season. Witnesses later recalled the bustle of that Labor Day weekend: boats crowding the docks, a celebratory mood in town, and the arrival of Coulthurst's high-tech vessel that he had only recently purchased.
On the evening of September 5, the Investor tied up in Craig; by the morning of September 7, the boat lay at anchor near Fish Egg Island, adrift and out of place while other boats worked the grounds. When smoke began feathering off the water, a tender sped toward the Investor and found it aflame; shore observers and mariners also reported seeing a young, slight man in the Investor's skiff moving away from the burning vessel. In the charred hull, investigators discovered the remains of eight people—Coulthurst; his pregnant wife, Irene, also 28; their children, Kimberly, 5, and John, 4; and four teenage deckhands—each slain before the arson. The killings, among the worst mass murders in Alaska history, occurred in the waters off Craig on September 7, 1982.
The early investigation pieced together a stark timeline: the Investor's arrival in Craig on September 5; a night of end-of-season socializing in town; then the boat inexplicably anchored away from the fleet and set ablaze. Accounts converged on a lone figure ferrying the Investor's skiff back toward town and on suspicious gasoline purchases the morning the fire was seen. Forensic work indicated the victims were shot—accounts frequently cite a. 22-caliber firearm—before the killer attempted to erase the scene by burning the boat. Despite an armada of potential witnesses in a town swollen with seasonal crews, the case hinged on memory fragments, dockside sightings, and the grim evidence rescued from the wreck.
Two years later, in September 1984, troopers arrested a former deckhand with ties to the region, John Kenneth Peel, as the prime suspect. Peel stood trial in Ketchikan in 1986; the jury deadlocked. A second trial in Juneau concluded in 1988 with Peel acquitted of arson and eight counts of first-degree murder. Years afterward, the State of Alaska agreed to a civil settlement with Peel over his wrongful-prosecution claim, paying $900,000 without admitting wrongdoing. No one else has been arrested, and the murders of Mark Dease Coulthurst, age 28, male, remain officially unsolved.
