"Murder: Separating Rumors from Facts"

MURDER: SEPARATING RUMORS FROM FACTS

OCTOBER and NOVEMBER 2012

Murder in Alaska these days seldom fails to garner attention from the press and the public. Headlines and broadcasts, social media and rumors pump life into the story as the search for the truth plays itself out. Sometimes, the “truth” is a nebulous affair; other times, the facts are more clear-cut.

Back when the population of the central Kenai Peninsula was growing but much smaller than it is today, a murder was apt to make a bigger splash because more people knew either the victim or the accused, or both.  And the reputations of those involved could keep the pilot lights of interest burning for weeks or months, as can be seen in these two tales—the first from Kenai in 1948, the second from Soldotna in 1961.

The Murder of Ethan Cunningham (1948)

Author’s note: This story features two key characters whose names have varied spellings: Ethan (or Ethen) Cunningham and William “Bill” Frank (or Franke). Most of the information for this story came from four sources: the memoir Alaska Odyssey: Gospel of the Wilderness by Hal Thornton; an Anchorage Daily Times article from Jan. 22, 1948; an occasionally inaccurate Dec. 4, 1997, letter and accompanying documents from Sara Cunningham Scott to the Kenai City Council; and the research of Kasilof historian Brent Johnson.

On Monday night, Jan. 19, 1948, as Hal Thornton was relaxing with Pappy and Jessie Belle Walker in Kenai, Jimmy Minano raced up and issued his nearly breathless command: “That jeep!” said Minano, indicating Thornton’s vehicle. “Take me to the marshal! There’s been a murder!”

The murder, it was speculated, was the result of what Thornton called some “bad blood” between killer and victim. Now, some of that blood had been spilled and was “staining a snowbank where one of them lay—the victim of a point-blank gun blast.” Thornton and Minano sped toward the Allan Petersen residence, which included the jail.

Once he had learned the few facts available thus far, the stout, middle-aged marshal moved quickly into action. Turning to Thornton, he said, “You and Jimmy get a posse in order. Do you mind using your jeep to gather up some men?”

Thornton didn’t mind. He headed for the home of Al and Jessie Munson, where Henning and Ruth Johnson were visiting.  Al and Henning joined the posse, as did Odman Kooly, and they all motored off toward the end of the road a short distance beyond the local cannery.

With rifles ready and flashlight beams dancing in the darkness, the posse set off on foot up the trail along the river toward the old Windy Wagner cabin (off present-day Beaver Loop Road), where the killer was said to be holed up.

Despite the possibilities posed by the accumulated manpower and firepower, the conclusion was anticlimactic: The accused, William “Bill” Frank, surrendered to the marshal, was taken into custody, and freely admitted to killing Ethan Cunningham after an argument. (Johnson and Munson were left to guard the prisoner while the marshal went to recover the body and inspect the crime scene.)

The simplicity of this conclusion, however, belied the ensuing rampant speculation concerning Frank’s motive for murder. According to Thornton, via Minano: “It was assumed that jealousy over one of the wives [as both men were married] caused Bill Frank to go to Ethen Cunningham’s cabin where he called the man to come outside.”

According to an employee of the Civil Aeronautics Administration office in Kenai, however, the dispute had something to do with dogs.

According to at least two commercial-fishing families from the area, Cunningham had been having an affair with Frank’s wife. One person further speculated that, after the murder, Cunningham’s wife, Martha, pretended not to know the motive for the crime.

But three days after the arrest, Clinton W. Stein, the FBI agent in charge of the case, stated that no clear motive had yet been ascertained.

Here are the facts, including the contradictory ones:

Ethan Cunningham was born “sometime in 1908” and raised in Penrose, Wyoming. Mathematically, he must therefore have been 39 or 40 at the time of his death. According to the Times, he was 35.

According to records provided by his niece, Sara Cunningham Scott, Ethan married Martha Esther Sievers of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, in her hometown in the “early 1940s.” The newspaper, on the other hand, stated that the Cunninghams had been married for only two and a half years. Martha was born on Jan. 24, 1916, in Sheboygan.

By the time they were married, Ethan had apparently already started work on a Kenai River homestead approximately three miles upstream from the village of Kenai. After their marriage, Martha traveled north to join Ethan.

At the time of the shooting, said the newspaper, Ethan “had been in the area for five years and held a fishing site at Salamatof Beach, according to Jack Triber, a local policeman who was personally acquainted with the dead man.”

The Times report stated that Ethan at first had lived in a small cabin and then, between fishing seasons, built a larger one about 300 feet away for himself and Martha. At the time of the killing, 25-year-old trapper Bill Frank, his wife and his young daughter were residing in the smaller cabin, which they were renting from the Cunninghams.

Whatever the dispute concerned, the FBI said that Mrs. Frank “had warned the victim earlier in the evening that her husband had a rifle, a .32 Winchester Special, and was attempting to find Cunningham.”

A .32-caliber Winchester Special cartridge was most often used in the lever-action hunting rifle called the Winchester Model 94; its killing power is roughly equivalent to a more modern .30-30 Winchester. According to David Thornton, owner and operator of the Brown Bear Gun Shop & Museum in Kenai, the Model 94 has long been considered an excellent deer-hunting weapon, but is capable of stopping a moose or a bear.

Kenai residents living near the Cunningham homestead reported that at about 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 19, they heard three gunshots. When Cunningham’s body was recovered, authorities counted three bullet wounds. Although rumors at the time placed the wounds in the groin, the chest and (a kill-shot in) the head, the autopsy report offered more precise locations: a shot into one of Cunningham’s hips, another in his abdomen, and one behind his left ear.

The Cunninghams had had no children, and at some point after the shooting, Martha moved to Anchorage and became a nurse. She was briefly remarried and then divorced, returning to her first married name. Eventually, she moved back to Sheboygan, where she died on Feb. 25, 1973, from complications of breast cancer.

Before she died, however, Martha Cunningham made a gift to the City of Kenai that has kept alive her Alaska family name. In August 1971, she offered to donate a two-acre tract of her homestead land on the Kenai River to be used as a public park and to be named Cunningham Memorial Park. Council members unanimously voted to accept the offer.

The Murder of Jack Griffiths (1961)

Very little about this killing was straightforward, except for the fact that Jack Griffiths, co-owner of the Circus Bar (the current location of Good Time Charlie’s) wound up dead.

The Cheechako News, in its Oct. 13, 1961, edition, stated that the body was found by two different men, apparently not at the same time. Arvin Diggs, a customer, reportedly discovered Griffiths when he went looking for him to have Griffiths help him install a heater in his car. And Steve Henry King, the other co-owner of the bar, reportedly found Griffiths at 12:40 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 8.

Regardless who discovered the body, the signs of foul play were clear: Griffiths’ body, with multiple skull fractures, was discovered in his bed in his Quonset hut home behind the bar. Investigating officer Wayne F. Morgan of the Alaska State Troopers found no murder weapon and stated that Griffiths had likely been dead for at least six hours before his body was discovered.

The rumor mill cranked swiftly into motion, particularly after 21-year-old Soldotna resident James Franklin Bush was questioned and released and subsequently arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

Many of the rumors concerned Bush’s alleged interest in Griffiths’ 15-year-old daughter, while others concerned the likelihood that Bush was merely attempting to protect members of the Griffiths family from the hard-drinking bar owner. A few gossipers even speculated that Griffiths’ wife, Alice—and not Bush at all—had finally had enough of Griffiths’ alleged abuse and had done the killing herself.

But in the end, it was Bush who was convicted of the murder and received a 12-year prison sentence.

Griffiths, who was born in 1922 in Salt Lake City, was a World War II veteran and a five-year Soldotna resident who had first come to Alaska in 1946. He had worked initially as an auto-body repairman and mechanic. He had married Alice E. McDonald in California in 1942, and together they had produced five daughters and a son.

Bush, who had been picked up initially on an unrelated charge in the vicinity of the Circus Bar, reportedly broke down later under questioning and admitted to striking the blows that killed Griffiths. According to the Cheechako, Bush said that he had knocked on Griffiths’ door and was told to enter. Griffiths, who his co-owner Steve King claimed had been drinking that night, was in bed, and Bush said that Griffiths was pointing a rifle at him.

Bush stated that he grabbed a piece of stove wood, knocked the rifle aside, and then struck Griffiths twice in the head. After bludgeoning Griffiths, Bush said that he turned out the lights in the room, tossed aside the firewood, and left.

After his arrest, Bush waived his right to a preliminary hearing and was held in a federal jail in Anchorage on $30,000 bail. A “pauper’s oath” led Judge Edward Davis to appoint Anchorage attorney Wendell P. Kay to represent Bush.

In January 1962, Bush was indicted by a grand jury, and in June he was sentenced to prison.

The violence at the bar, however, did not cease.

About a year later, water-well driller Bill Hansen bought into the Circus Bar and later purchased the establishment outright and changed the name to the Hilltop Bar. In 1967, an argument over the payment for some hamburgers led to Hansen himself being shot and suffering serious injuries.