Do you know who murdered Deborah Ruth Lawson? Just after midnight on May 29, 1993, Anchorage police were called to the Eagle's Nest Hotel at 4110 Spenard Road. Inside one of the rooms, officers found Deborah Ruth Soules Lawson, a 34-year-old white woman, dead from a single gunshot wound to the neck. Witnesses reported hearing an argument followed by one shot, and several people were seen fleeing the room in the moments that followed. Lawson was also known in records as Deborah Ruth Soules.
Detectives interviewed multiple suspects and witnesses but were unable to make an arrest. The case was classified as an unsolved homicide by Anchorage Crime Stoppers, which repeated the witness accounts of the argument, the single gunshot, and the people leaving the scene. Decades later, public appeals continued to ask anyone with information to come forward, underscoring that no charges have been filed.
Contemporaneous obituary records list her as a lifelong Anchorage resident, with the death reported in late May 1993 under the name Deborah Ruth Soules Lawson, reinforcing the identity details cited in cold-case summaries. Secondary compilations of Anchorage cold cases have echoed those core facts: the Eagle's Nest Hotel location, the single fatal shot, and the absence of arrests, preserving the outline of a case that remains open.
