Do you know who murdered Laura Kramer? Caucasian/White female Laura Kay Kramer, age 70, lived quietly at the Royal Suites Lodge in Anchorage when, on February 15, 2017, a deliberately set fire tore through the building. Pulled from the aftermath with severe injuries, she was flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where she died on February 24, 2017, from injuries sustained in the arson at her residence.
Her death, along with those of Vivian Hall and Teuaililo Nua, marked a grim toll from the blaze that consumed the complex near Minnesota Drive and West 43rd Avenue.
Detectives from the Anchorage Police Department Homicide Unit, working with the Anchorage Fire Department, the Alaska State Fire Marshal, and federal ATF investigators, spent more than a year tracing the fire's origin and movement, gathering tips and interviews until a picture of intent emerged. Public calls helped identify a key figure early on, and investigators built a case that the inferno was no accident but part of a broader criminal plan carried out inside the aging lodge.
In August 2018, police arrested two Anchorage residents: 29-year-old Carleigh K. Fox and 30-year-old Andrew John Eknaty. A grand jury indictment charged them with nine counts of second-degree murder, sixteen counts of first-degree assault, six counts of manslaughter, conspiracy to commit arson, tampering with evidence, and failure to report or control a dangerous fire; Fox also faced an additional eluding charge. The indictment explicitly tied the pair to the Royal Suites blaze that killed Laura Kay Kramer, age 70, and two other victims.
Years later, the case closed in a quiet but definitive courtroom scene. On October 28, 2024, after guilty pleas to three counts of manslaughter and one consolidated count of first-degree assault, Andrew John Eknaty and Carleigh Kaye West—formerly Carleigh Kaye Fox—were each sentenced to 60 years and 20 days with 36 years suspended, followed by a decade of supervised felony probation. The sentencing order acknowledged the harm that rippled through survivors and families, a recognition that the fire's heat had long since cooled but its consequences endured, for Laura Kay Kramer, age 70, and for a community that remembered the night the lodge burned.
